In the gospel of John, Jesus feeds the five thousand in a staggering miracle—a rare miracle that is mentioned in all four gospels. He immediately follows this up by teaching His disciples that He is the bread of heaven, and that his flesh is life for the world.
Now what this means is that the miracle of feeding the five thousand is an instructive miracle, an enacted parable, an object lesson. What does it mean? It means that Jesus is going to do for the world what He did for the five thousand. He is the bread of life, He is the bread that came down from heaven. He is gathering all the nations of the world, today, this morning, and He is doing so in order to feed them.
The Lord is not stingy, and the meaning of the miracle is not that there is only bread enough for five thousand, a typified and tiny elect. We are being invited to think and believe and pray expansively. The Lord is kinder than any of us imagine. The five thousand are a type of all the nations under heaven, gathered on the mountain of the Lord, in order to fellowship with their Redeemer and Lord.
Would God send down bread from heaven in order to feed a tiny handful? Would God deliver the bread of life to a world full of death simply to rescue a remnant? No, this is the bread of life, and it is life to the world. This is the bread of heaven, and all men are invited to partake.
The Lord made this manifestly plain when He told us to scatter, going into all the nations, discipling them. How do we disciple them? We baptize them, and we teach them to obey all the Jesus commanded, which includes faithful attendance at this meal. Jesus commanded us to feed the world, and to do so with spiritual food and drink.
And so this is what we do. This is not the meal for a secret and exclusive club. This is the staple meal for the future of humanity. All are invited, all may come. We invite them by faithfully partaking—because we are told that partaking of this meal faithfully proclaims the death of Jesus Christ, which is the gospel, which is the world’s only hope.