One of the current TV shows is called “24” … as in the longest 24 hours a person has ever experienced. Each one hour episode represents one hour in the 24 hour day. We happened on a marathon of one season … so we saw all of one day in one day.
In His life on earth, Christ experienced a number of “24”s. Perhaps if we had known Him, we would have said He exhibited a high level of energy. Teaching and healing through the week and preaching (and sometimes) healing on the Sabbath.
One of Christ’s “24” days is recorded in all four gospels – the day He fed 5,000 men plus unnumbered men, women and children.
The passage in all four gospels begins with either a report of the beheading of John the Baptist or the return of the disciples from a small ministry trip. Both events called Jesus attention. He surely mourned the physical death of His cousin, and as a teacher/rabbi, He needed time to debrief His disciples.
In fact that seems to be implied in the Matthew passage, that teacher and disciples set out to go apart for a while. But then the crowds come and seek His attention.
Christ has compassion on them. He begins talking with them, meeting those in need of physical healing and healing them. Hours later when everyone is healed, His disciples stop Him and say, “Enough.”
Christ looks at the crowds of people. Realizes how late in the day it is and how long these people have to walk home. And He wants to invite the whole bunch for supper.
The disciples are aghast. How can we feed that many people? It would take a year just to earn the money for the bread.
Jesus asks what resources they have. Andrew comes up with a boy who has 5 loaves and 2 small fish.
Jesus instructs the disciples to have everyone sit in groups of 50. He blesses the bread and fish and begins breaking and passing it out to the disciples.
Let’s see that would be 300 groups of 50 (if one assumes at least one woman and one child for each adult man?) They begin passing out the baskets of bread and fish. This takes time, even with 12 disciples. Everyone eats their fill and they pick up the left overs and have 12 baskets left.
Jesus sends everyone home. (Have you ever seen how hard it is to disperse a crowd?) and sends his disciples in a boat to the other side of the lake.
He goes up the hill (mountain) to pray. While he is praying, he sees that a storm has swirled up and that His disciples fear for their safety. So Jesus just walks down the mountain and over the water to them. They think they are seeing a ghost, maybe.
As He draws closer, they recognize Him, maybe. Peter calls out, “If it is you, Lord, invite me to join you.”
“Come.”
Caught up in the moment, Peter hops out and starts doing the impossible … walking on water. Then he looks around and realizes … hey! this is a storm and I am not in a boat. He begins to sink, Jesus walks over, reaches out and pulls him up again and they climb in the boat and the wind dies down. Maybe they got some sleep on the boat after that, for sure when they reached shore more people waited for them and the miracles.
Matt. 14, Mark 6, Luke, 9, John 6
My son Mert pointed out these other “24” days
One other busy & long day: Read the first chapter of Mark … Apparently the call of the first disciples, the healing of Simon’s mother in law, the healing of many others, & an early wake-up the next morning were also all in one day.
Reading through the events just prior to the choosing of the 12 in Matthew 10 &
related/parallel in Luke & Mark passages … I think you would see that this was also a very busy time.
It is interesting then: Jesus, an itinerant preacher, typically taught in synagogues on Sabbaths & visited folks & trained various folks during the week … along with prayer & reading himself. After all, synagogues would have been open several time a week for public study each week.