GBBW: Jesus Feeds a Crowd
plus the skills of time-hopping and connect the dots
One thing I’ve found helpful over the past few years is to name with my kids and our church kids different skills we use to explore Bible stories. These are made-up names, easily changed if you’d like, but the skills are like tools in the archaeologists' kit, things that help them dive into the past world of the Bible and bring it into the present.
Today, let’s talk about two skills that can be used separately or combined: time hopping and connecting the dots.
Time Hopping
The skill of time hopping is about asking what the people at that time might be thinking or feeling, how they might experience or process a phrase or event based on their time and place.
When we invite kids to use time hopping, we ask things like,
“What do you think they’d be thinking/feeling?”
“For them, in that time, what was important?”
“In their culture, how did this thing work?”
Connect the Dots
The skill of connecting the dots is about seeing Bible stories connect to each other or how the storytelling style connects to a specific cultural situation the people were experiencing.
When we invite ids to use connecting the dots, we ask things like,
“Can you think of other times in the Bible when something similar happened?”
“This story has [something specific, like a key image of bread or water, or a key number like 12 or 40] in it. Can we think of another story with that thing in it?”
As an example, let’s use this week’s story: Jesus feeding the crowd. It comes to life in some very cool ways when we use both skills together.
In our story, Jesus takes a small meal, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it away to the thousands of people gathered around him. Matthew and Mark put this account right after the death of John the Baptist at the hands of King Herod. Luke refers to the same event right before as well. John meanwhile does his own thing (because… he’s John.)
In other words this story tells us that Jesus stands in contrast to Herod. These are two very different kings.
First the time hop, about kings in the Ancient Near East:
It was not uncommon for other nations to have stories where a person was “in god’s image”, but it was always ONE person–the king. As such, the king was more than human. As the representative of the gods on earth, the king was now free to command the people to do what pleased the gods–namely to harvest and give their crops. Conveniently, as the king in god’s image, the crops became bread in the palace.
Meanwhile Genesis says that all people, of all ranks, from all backgrounds, are made in God’s image. To be simply human is enough, and God delights in making all people representatives of Themself on Earth.
Now, connecting the dots to Jesus:
Here’s the one who is actually more than merely human, who could have opted out of humanity entirely if he’d liked. Other kings claim to be more than human, he chooses to be a king who is fully human.
And while other kings collect all your grain to please the gods, he makes bread to feed his beloved people. Not only to feed them, but to feed them in abundance.
Back to time hopping:
At the time Jesus came on the scene, the expectations for the messiah, the king were deeply shaped by the reality of living under occupation by the Roman empire. Surely the one God would send would be the king who drove out the Romans by a massive show of force and military might. Then the kingdom of God would replace the Roman empire.
And again we connect the dots:
Jesus, throughout his life, does things that point to his embrace of the role as king, but then subverts the expectations for the type of kingdom he brings. The kingdom of God is not about displacing Rome, and it’s not brought to reality by military action or violence.
It is, however, marked by abundance, like all the food you can eat. And it’s a community a person belongs to, the family of God, like the 12 founding tribes and 12 leftover baskets. It’s a kingdom where God is present, because God’s activity is what makes the miracle possible. It’s a kingdom of justice, because when justice is active everyone has enough of what they need.
It sounds a whooooole lot like the way Isaiah and others talked about the reign of God.
In other words, Jesus is not simply king. He is the kind of king who is pleased to be one of his people. He is the kind of king who cares for his people. And Jesus is not bringing in a kingdom that will work like any other. In kid-speak, giving a bunch of food away says something about the kind of king Jesus is and the kind of kingdom he leads.
This idea of Jesus’ kingship is an example that isn’t instantly obvious as we read or listen, but when we time hop and connect the dots we find another neat layer of meaning to the story. (Next week, by the way, we’ll talk more about normalizing and practicing that stories have many meanings.) As we do, we help equip kids to approach the Bible with curiosity and wonder, rather than as a morality manual.
REMEMBER! If you haven’t tried this much yet, the GBBW Commentary and Context page points out genre and context elements that help you time hop, and key numbers and images and “connections” for connecting the dots. Hopefully they help you feel more prepared to practice!
