Jesus is a crazy guy. It turns out that you can walk with him, literally, for years and still not know who he really is. You can, literally, spend every day and every night with him for years straight and, in the middle of such a “life season” or “trial period”, still believe him to be King Leonidas. In fact that is almost exactly who the crowds and even his closest disciples believed him to be by the time we get to chapter six in the gospel of John.
OK, so “King Leonidas might be a slight exaggeration. But the exaggeration really is slight. The Jews of first century Palestine, those who populated the crowds that follow Jesus in John 6 and the time period in which the story takes place, all expected their Messiah to be a powerful military figure. Their Messiah would be the one to lead Israel against the Romans, the one to free God’s people from the yoke of the pagans. And this expectation or, better yet, the eagerness for the coming of this prophetic figure was at an all-time hi during the first century. An example of the fire in the hearts of these ancient Jews would be any video clip from the Libyan rebellion against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. The Libyan rebellion is not an exact parallel of the situation of first century Palestine but does suggest what the climate of Jerusalem was like under Roman rule.
Imagine the kind of individual it would take to lead a rebellion like the one in Libya. Chances are your mind conjured up, if not Leonidas himself, some sort of ethnic variation of the famous Spartan (always with a beard, of course). Actually all you need to do is change John 2:16 to “THIS IS SPARTA!” and Jesus starts to seem pretty dang ripped. But let’s get back to John 6.
Actually, to John 6:1-15. The feeding of the five thousand was perhaps the greatest sign performed by Jesus during his ministry, hence it’s being the only miracle recorded by all four gospels. All of the gospels have subtly different chronologies but in John the feeding of the five thousand take place at least twelve months into Jesus’ ministry. We know this because the Passover festival was and is celebrated once every twelve months and verse four tells us the time of the Passover was near when this sign took place, the second time in the gospel that the Passover has appeared so far. John does not specify the amount of time that lapsed between John 2:13 (the first mention of the Passover) and the stories preceding it. We will take the conservative route and say that by the time the feeding of the five thousands occurs not only have rumors and stories about this Jesus guy been circulating towns and hills of Palestine, not only have thousands seen him heal and preach in the temple in Jerusalem, but at least twelve men, whom Jesus called his disciples, have been at Jesus’ side virtually every hour of every day since Jesus asked them to follow him. Such was the relationship between a Rabbi and his disciples. Class was not in session during select hours of select days of the week. Rather, class was never not in session. One learned from one’s Rabbi by watching and listening to everything he did and said.
The feeding of the five thousand was truly incredible. A careful reading of verse ten reveals that only the men were counted. The customary way to estimate or count a large crowd was to count the men. If you figure (conservatively) that every other man had a wife and a child then it is highly likely that there were at least ten thousand people on this great grassy plain.
For all its grandeur the feeding of the five thousand ends as a tragedy. The crowds are amazed at the powers of Jesus and try to forcibly capture him and make him their king. For all his efforts people have yet to see and hear who Jesus is. Verse fifteen ends with an important detail, “Jesus, as he realized they were about to come and take him by force and make him king, fled back to the hills alone” (New Jerusalem Bible). That he was forced to flee alone, without his posse following at his heels or protecting him, means that his posse was on the same page as the crowds who saw not Jesus, the Lamb of God (1:29), but King Leonidas.
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