Intro to Chapter 19: The Bread of Life.
Before Jesus proclaimed that he was the bread of life, he performed the only miracle found in all four gospels. The miracle was feeding five thousand (plus women and children) with five barley loaves and two salted fish. Jesus did not multiply the loaves, which would have been miraculous enough. Rather, he fed the five thousand with five loaves without multiplying the loaves — and when all had had their fill, what was left was still the same five loaves. “They gathered them up,” John tells us, “and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves.” Earlier miracles had shown Jesus’ power; this one suggests something unexpected about time and space.
Later, at the Last Supper, he would break bread and say to his disciples, “This is my body,” when, of course, his body was sitting right there in front of them, holding the bread. Again, something unexpected, though it was foreshadowed with the five thousand by the Sea of Galilee. “I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever,” Jesus said to those he had fed with barley loaves. When we participate in the Lord’s Supper, we share — somehow — in that same promise.