Bread and Fish: Connections Between John 6 and 21

Two famous stories: one with a cast of thousands on a vast grassy plateau; the other a dawn breakfast on a beach with just seven guests.Two very different scenes in John 6 and 21.

Only the host is the same: Jesus of Nazareth.

And the menu: bread and fish.

The author is a master at hinting at something more with just one or two words. This gift is on full display in 21:9.

When they landed, they saw a charcoal fire there with fish on it, and some bread.

We have the charcoal fire. And Peter. The idyllic beach scene suddenly opens up to a cold hostile night where Peter is warming his hands - over a charcoal fire (18:18).

Two words, but such poignancy, such pain. And such kindness. Jesus deliberately makes a charcoal fire to resolve the issue with Peter. And that happens. For when Jesus asks all the disciples to go and get some fish, it is Peter who takes the initiative. The old energy is back.

Then we have the bread and fish, and so the signal to John 6, for this is the same menu as Jesus and the disciples gave to the five thousand.

It is the same menu because this is what both the crowds and the disciples ate: bread and fish. That is the primary meaning. However at a secondary level the menu is the same because the two chapters complete each other. Without John 21, John 6 is incomplete; without John 6, John 21 is incomplete. That is what the ‘bread and fish’ (21:13) opens up. You could almost say the two chapters are talking to each other.

In John 6 there is total silence about the fish; in John 21 there is explanation. In John 21 there is total silence about the food for the sheep; in John 6 there is a long explanation. In John 6 there is silence about how people will be fed the bread of life; in John 21 it is made clear. In John 21 there is nothing about the way of feeding; in John 6 there is detail. In John 6 there is nothing about how the food is to be cooked; in John 21 it is shown.

Let’s consider these connections, starting with the fish.

In John 6 Jesus tells us a lot about bread. But what about the fish? There is no ‘I am the fish of life’ discourse, indeed even the suggestion sounds odd. And yet it is half the menu. Surely it would be strange if the fish was to be just fish. The bread is so significant, and the fish, just fish? This is a question that hangs.

It is answered in John 21. Here it is impossible to escape fish. Peter decides to go fishing, but they catch no fish (v.3). Jesus then asks if they have caught any fish, and they say no (v. 5). The miracle happens and there are ‘so many’ fish they cannot haul in the net (v.6); then ten of them are able to drag the net, ‘full of fish’ (v. 8). When the ten arrive at the fire, there they see some fish cooking (v.9), and now (v.10) the unexpected request of Jesus for some more fish (He already has some fish) and the gracious observation, ‘that you have just caught’ (without His intervention there would be no fish in that net) Now Peter, just one man, can haul the net ashore and we are told more about the fish: they are large and there’s 153 of them (v.11). And so breakfast begins and Jesus takes both the bread and the fish and gives it to them (v. 13).

If the fish got forgotten in John 6, they are centre stage in John 21. Are they just fish? Surely not. And we know that not from our author, but from the Synoptics (Mark 1:17; Matthew 4:19; Luke 5:10) whom the author assumes his readers will have read[1].

The fish are people whom the church will catch. As often happens the author takes an idea sparsely mentioned in the Synoptics and develops it. It is quite a development. The catch must be miraculous; yet it needs disciples whose contribution is acknowledged; and it will be universal (the ancients believed there were 153 different types of fish).

But what about the fish on the menu – both in John 6 and 21?

It is interesting that while fishing in church language is easily understood as evangelism and fish are people who might be interested in the faith – the logic of a fish being caught is not carried through.

Fish are eaten.

This is outrageous. It means in John 6 we have people eating themselves, and in John 21 it is Jesus and the apostles eating future believers.

Let’s leave the fish as fish.

However the shocking nature of the image does not rule out that the fish, just like the bread, is meant to have a meaning. Eating Jesus’ body and drinking his blood is just as shocking, but it makes sense in Christian doctrine.

So the question is this: does the fish being eaten also make sense in Christian doctrine?

The answer is most certainly yes; indeed the fish being eaten spells out what total faith in Jesus actually means and sinks any idea that Christianity is about mechanical easy believism.

Jesus gives the bread. It is broken. Christians ‘eat’ the love of God in Christ as shown on the cross when his body is broken.

Jesus also gives the fish to be eaten with the bread. This is the divine menu – bread and fish. The two must merge, must become one, must be absorbed. And so the sense emerges. Just as Jesus’s body is ‘eaten’, so too the true believer is ‘eaten’.

The divine meal is not just God’s offering of Jesus to mankind; it is mankind’s offering of themselves to God. That is the heavenly banquet of John 6, that is the intimate breakfast of John 21: man’s union with God.

This sense is painfully underlined in the final conversation Jesus has with Peter. He has eaten the bread – and the fish. After the commission, there is the prophecy that Peter will be executed. And after the prophecy the command: ‘Follow me’. Jesus is executed for us; Peter will be executed for Jesus. There is union, but it is costly.

This meaning of fish makes sense in Christian doctrine. It is just another image that underlines a Christian’s union with God as being something total. So in this Gospel we have the man who must be born again (3:7); the seed that must die (12:24), the branch that must abide in the vine (15:5,7).

There is exactly the same emphasis in Jesus’ teaching in the Synoptics. The cost of following him is – everything, even death. So Matthew 16:24, ‘Take up your cross and follow me’ (Matthew 16:24), or ‘None of you can be my disciples unless you give up everything’ (Luke 14:33). And its the same in the Epistles, perhaps best illustrated by Romans 12: 1 – 2. The believer is a ‘living sacrifice’. Sacrifices are burnt; fishes are eaten – the meaning is the same.

And it is certainly there in Revelation. Indeed the context of one of the most famous verses in the Bible (Revelation 3:20) is about Jesus consuming the would-be believer.

I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. (Revelation 3:15-16)

Here the meaning is simple. It is only the wholly committed who are consumed. The meaning of the fish is exactly the same. Either we become fish that are eaten with the bread and so participate in the heavenly banquet; or we, like the lukewarm water, are spat out.

John 21 completes then what is left unsaid about fish in John 6.

And John 6 completes what is left unsaid about the food for the sheep. Jesus tells Peter – twice – to feed ‘his sheep’ (21:15,17). But Jesus does not say what the food is to be. There is no need. There has been a whole discourse in chapter 6 on what the true food is. It is Jesus – as the bread of life.

There is a much-ignored radical edge to this. For Jesus as the bread of life in chapter 6 primarily means the food of his death, and by implication his resurrection[2]. ‘The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’ (6:51). Jesus expands on this in 6:52 – 58.

The radical edge is this: the church’s primary responsibility is to proclaim – in word and sacrament – Christ’s death. This is what feeds the sheep. John the Baptist underlines this, hence twice he says, ‘Behold the Lamb of God’ (1:29,36). His message about Christ does not change. The spotlight is on the sacrificial death. Jesus himself emphasizes this in the first two church services. On the first Sunday He comes – and shows his wounds (20:20). And then about a week later, another gathering, and Jesus does exactly the same as the week before: He shows his wounds. Here we have the template for a true Christian meeting. The wounds must be seen. The cross must be revealed. For this is ‘the bread of life’. Paul says the same, ‘We proclaim Christ crucified’ as does the writer to the Hebrews, except he replaces the word cross with grace: ‘It is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them.’

John 6 proclaims Jesus as the bread of life, but there is not a word on how people will be fed, nor is there any detail on how the food will be prepared. John 21 gives the detail. The sheep are to be fed by Peter – and so the leaders of all churches who have followed him. The food is heavenly, but as in John 6, the distribution is very human. Indeed without the disciples serving, the people would remain hungry. True then, true now.

As to how the heavenly food is to be prepared, again the answer is in John 21. The bread is to be cooked on a charcoal fire (21:9). The proclamation of Jesus as the bread of life must not be given as a cold mechanical mathematical announcement. Rather it must come from a life that has known intense failure and restoration, a life – like Peter’s – that knows grace as a living experience.

Finally in John 21 there is nothing about the method of distribution Peter and those who come after him are to use; it is John 6 that fills this in for the reader. The would-be feeder of others must organize people into groups; he or she must get the people to sit down (so they can see); they must then take round the food themselves; and once that duty is finished, they must clear up, making sure no food is wasted. There is no record of they themselves eating, unless the twelve rubbish bins are meant to be what they were to eat. (6:10 – 14)

While both John 6 and John 21 stand on their own, it is surely true that they are much richer for each other, and while at one level the writer records the menu for both chapters as being bread and fish because that is what the crowd and the disciples ate, it is impossible not to conclude that he is signalling to the reader to look for more: to look for connections between the two chapters.

Once you start looking, those connections are not difficult to see.

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[1] For a detailed argument as to why it is reasonable to assume that the author knew his readers were familiar with the Synoptics see ‘Gospel of Glory’ by Richard Baukham, chapter eight.

[2] It is well known that in John’s Gospel the death and resurrection are collapsed into one event, hence the lifting up image (3:14, 8:28, 12:32, is both the lifting up on the cross and from the tomb.