Bread

Christ Church, St. Joseph, La., 12 August 2012

A couple of years ago, I spent 10 days traveling about Europe. Since returning home, I have more than once stood in the bread section of the supermarket thinking, “We U.S. Americans have a great deal to learn from the Europeans about the production of bread!”

Bread in my Spanish Mother's cupboard.*

In Europe, bread is fresh each and every morning, and often still warm when it gets to your table. It comes in a variety of rolls and buns and small loaves, crusty on the outside, soft on the inside, brimming with aroma and flavor. I hardly noticed that, in Europe, bread is often served without butter. It’s so good it doesn’t need butter.

It is no coincidence that bread figures prominently throughout the Bible whenever God has a lesson for humankind. Thus when Jesus taught us to pray for “our daily bread,” he was also teaching us to ask for messages and lessons from God.

The prophet Elijah has had to flee from the death threats of Jezebel ( I Kings 19:4-8, 9-15, NRSV), wife of Ahab, King of Israel. He is discouraged; he believes himself to be a failure. And so he sits under a tree and asks to die.

But God has other plans. He provides food for Elijah, food so nutritious that it sustains Elijah on his long trek back into the wilderness to Horeb, the mountain of God. There was something special about that food, which is called “cake” in this passage, but must have been rather bread-like to have been baked on hot stones.

From the continuation of Elijah’s story, we know that he encounters God on Mount Horeb, just as Moses had before him. It is no coincidence that Elijah’s story reminds us of “manna,” the bread from heaven God provided to the Israelites on their original trek through the wilderness.

Bread from God seems always to have more than one purpose. It is first, of course, to ensure the physical survival of God’s people—the Israelites on their exodus journey, Elijah on his pilgrimage back to the mountain of God.

But bread from God also has spiritual purposes. It reminds us of our dependence on the bounty of the earth for our human existence. Although we indeed must cultivate and plant and reap, we had nothing to do with creating this fertile planet and we cannot control the weather that makes harvest possible and fruitful. Surely I’m not the only one awestruck by the differences between our planet home and the barren surface of Mars, as revealed to us this past week by Curiosity.

Elijah had apparently lost faith in God’s purpose for his life, so he sulked under the tree and—rather melodramatically—wished to die because his prophetic word had indeed raised the ire of those at whom it was directed.

You have heard, “No good deed will go unpunished!” but apparently Elijah had not heard it!

Today’s psalmist seems to have understood that the connection between God and daily bread has meaning beyond physical survival. Taste and see that the Lord is good, he writes, happy are they who trust in him (Psalm 34:8, NRSV). We and Elijah are reminded that bread from God has larger meaning.

What, then, should we make of today’s Gospel reading? In the context of a long history of bread given, received and celebrated as a sign of God’s grace and faithful care, what are we to make of the complaining that breaks out when Jesus claims to be living bread from heaven (John 6:35, 41-51, NRSV)?

And not only do the good church people of that day complain, but they also attempt to discredit Jesus! Notice that they do not complain that he claims to be bread. That metaphor apparently does not give them a moment’s pause.

Rather, they complain because he claims to have come down from heaven. Here’s where the story begins to sound like a family reunion to me, with all the aunts and uncles sitting around gossiping and weighing the merits of people not present by identifying what family they come from.

You have heard these kinds of conversations! “Oh, well, you know, she’s from the Such & Such family,” or “His father is so and so,” “his brother did thus and such,” as if that’s all you need to know about a person to judge him or her.

So here’s my question: Had we been among those listening to Jesus proclaim he was the Bread of Life come down from heaven, how might we have responded?

Complaining is certainly alive and well. When someone else’s version of reality does not line up with our own, we assume it cannot be true. When we do not like something we hear, we belittle it and attempt to discredit the speaker.

We hear this from talk show hosts, as well as from people who call in to voice their opinions, often on things about which they know little and often in ways that label all other points of view as unworthy before they have even been expressed. We hear it at parties and family reunions, in offices and at church.

Jesus said lots of things that did not sit well with the good church people of his day.., and still don’t. Complaining and discrediting are alive and well, in our churches as well as in our politics and throughout everyday life.

Try to tell those who operate on a “teach them a lesson” mentality about turning the other cheek and see how far you get. Bring up what Jesus said about violence in a discussion of, say, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and you might be accused of being un-American.

Dare to mention what Jesus said about taking care of the poor when the discussion turns to welfare, or point out that he healed everyone who asked without question in a discussion of health care, and you will be tagged a socialist.

What Jesus taught 2000 years ago is as unpopular today as it was then, even among those who claim to follow him.

Anyone who participates in social media knows that posting pithy quotes is a really popular way to fill up all of that online space and appear to have a lot to say to all of your friends and followers. I scroll over most of them pretty quickly, but recently I saw one that seemed sadly right on. It went something like this: “People will be mean, but nobody’s meaner than the person being mean for Jesus.”

We are about to share in the Eucharistic bread, and we are quite clear that we do it not to satisfy physical hunger but because of its larger meaning. But what do we think it means?

Mother Teresa of Calcutta said, In Holy Communion we have Christ under the appearance of bread. In our work we find him under the appearance of flesh and blood. It is the same Christ.

Jesus said he was living bread, given for the life of the world. And if we look at his ministry along with his teachings, we know that the bread of life lives, not only within us, but within the least desired and least loved of humanity. This is Christ’s true presence.

AMEN

*I took this photo in the summer of 1979 when I was an exchange student in Spain and lived with a Spanish woman. My more recent travel in Central Europe was in the summer of 2009.