This is another anecdote that is covered by all four Gospels.
Jesus is in a remote place and a very large crowd follows him. The Gospels provide two different reasons as to why Jesus was in the remote place to begin with. In Matthew, Jesus retreats to the remote place after hearing of the death of John the Baptist. (14:13). This suggests that Jesus or his disciples needed to mourn and reflect. In Mark, the disciples have not had a chance to eat and Jesus suggests that they go off by themselves. (6:31). These reasons are not inconsistent with each other. Perhaps Jesus wanted to mourn about John the Baptist and also knew the disciples needed food.
Note, they get to this remote place by crossing the lake.
However, the large crowd follows. Jesus sees this crowd and forgets whatever reason he needed for going off alone. His hearts breaks for them.
It is getting late. The disciples suggest to Jesus that he send the crowd away that they can find food on their own.
Jesus asks Phillip where they could buy bread for the crowd. The text even states that this was a test for Phillip by Jesus. The Bible is largely silent about Phillip until the book of Acts. Phillip responds that eight months' wages would be needed to feed them. This does not actually answer the question, but it is an understandable answer. Phillip is saying that do not have enough money to buy the food. They probably only have a little bit of money since they spend their entire time following Jesus and not working.
The question to Phillip comes from John's account. The other Gospels note that this event happened after Jesus sent the disciples to preach without spare traveling supplies. At that time, they were totally reliant on faith in Jesus for food, even if Jesus remained behind. That said, they probably received food from the people they visited as opposed to food miraculously appearing.
So, perhaps Phillip's answer could be understood to mean - hey Jesus, you make the money appear, and then we can worry about where we will buy food.
A small boy within the crowd has 5 loaves of bread and two small fish. Given the prior discussion about buying food, we can probably assume that Jesus bought the food from the boy.
Jesus instructs the disciples to arrange the crowd in groups of 50 and 100. There were 5,000 people in the crowd. Jesus took the food, gave thanks, and then the disciples start handing out bread and fish. The food never runs out. Rather, the entire crowd has enough to eat and the leftovers fills 12 baskets.
The crowd is amazed. They talk amongst themselves that Jesus is the prophet that came to save the world. They take it even further and decide to install Jesus as king by force. By this point, Jesus must withdraw.
It is interesting that there were 5,000 of them and this event resulted in them discussing installing Jesus by force. A typical Roman legion had about 5,000 men, so had it gone through, it would have given Jesus an army the size of a legion.
Jesus declined this army and instead withdrew from it. This shows that Jesus did not seek political power, that his kingdom was not of this world, nor did Jesus need a human army.
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