“Bread”
August 4, 2024
Rev. Rebecca Migliore
Bread. Could anything be better than homemade bread? I can smell it right now. That aroma that fills the house, or wafts down the street. You can imagine cutting into the still warm loaf, buttering a slice, and taking a huge bite, chewing as your eyes close, and a wonderful smile beams on your face. All right, already--you’re making me hungry. Back to Bread.
We live in a world where we don’t usually make our own bread anymore. We stop by the supermarket, and usually purchase something that wasn’t handmade, has probably been in transit for weeks, yikes, could it be months? The idea of making bread was an old-fashioned one, until the pandemic, when we all had more time than we knew what to do with, and anxiety that surrounded our thoughts, and so, some people started to make bread.
If you have ever made bread, you know that it is not a quick process. After assembling the ingredients, you have to mix them, and let them rise, and punch them down, or kneed them, and then (often) let them rise again. After kneeding again, you have to put your dough in a container of some kind and bake it, at the right temperature, for the right amount of time, and then you have to take it out and let it set for a little while. It takes time.
And it takes repetition. Kendall Vanderslice says, “At every Bake & Pray workshop I teach, I let participants know that they will need to make the same recipe over and over again in order to really get to know it. Take notes, I encourage them. It might feel repetitive, maybe even boring, but that repetition is the key.” Bread takes time. Bread making is something you do over and over and over and over and over again.
And that is something that we might want to consider during these weeks that the lectionary has us reading the “Bread” discourse from the gospel of John. Five weeks reading the 6th chapter of John! (if your preacher can stand it). What are we supposed to say for 5 weeks about Bread?
Well, maybe that is the point. We need to hear and think and hear and think and hear and think, just as you make a recipe over and over and over.
We do say, “Give us this day our daily bread.” But maybe we mean, God, you do the work. I’ll just show up to eat. That is kind of what happened in the wilderness. When the Israelites were complaining about being free, because freedom meant that there wasn’t readily available food, and everything was new, and unknown, and hard. And so they complained to Moses, who went to God and God had a solution. I’ll give them bread from heaven (and meat as well). Every day.
But you still had to catch and cook the meat in the evening. And every morning, you had to gather up this frost-like substance, this manna, this bread from heaven. And you couldn’t go out and collect enough for a few days (unless you were collecting on the day before the Sabbath). Because this manna did not have preservatives, and it went bad quickly (unless it was the Sabbath). So you had to do something, every day, to have your daily bread.
I wonder, what with delivery services, and places to eat out, and microwavable meals, and every other sort of “convenience” food—we sometimes forget the work it takes to make the “daily food” that we need to fuel our bodies. And maybe we have forgotten that not only do our bodies need food, but our spirits need it as well. That is what Jesus is getting at in our reading.
We started chapter 6 last week with the feeding of the multitudes—a miracle, what John’s gospel calls “a sign.” People were so taken with this sign, this feeding, that they wanted to make Jesus king, right then and there. And so, Jesus decides to give them a little time to think about this multiplication of the loaves and the fishes. He withdraws to the mountain, alone.
At the beginning of our reading, the people who have eaten, who have had this epiphany that this Jesus might be a prophet, are searching for him. High and low they look. They question everyone they can. Have you seen Jesus? No, but his disciples took off across the sea. But where is Jesus? Did you ferry him over? Did you?
Well, he isn’t here. We’ve searched everywhere. Let’s go ask the disciples. And so they did.
And when they found Jesus, they asked, “How did you get here?” Now if Jesus had wanted to cement his prophetic status, he would have answered with the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth—"well, I walked across the water even though it was stormy, and when the disciples took my hand, POOF, we were on the other side.” But Jesus doesn’t say that. He says, “What you really mean is, can you feed us again? You aren’t here to learn about heavenly things. And that is a mistake. You should be looking for/working for the food that doesn’t perish, the food of eternal life.”
Bread. Give us this day our daily bread. Not just the warm bread of comfort, that we love to munch on, and swallow, and have our fill. But also the bread that doesn’t perish, the food of eternal life. The food that the Son of Man will give you. And he doesn’t mean the manna falling from heaven. He doesn’t even mean the miraculous abundance of physical food from what seems like scarcity. This is different food. This is spiritual food. This is food for thought. This is bread that takes time, and requires repetition.
He is giving them hints. Food for eternal life. Food that the Son of Man gives. Maybe he even said, bread from heaven. And that does spark a memory. Oh, you mean, like the bread from heaven that Moses engineered for the people? That manna stuff? Is that what we’re supposed to look for? Moses gave the people signs. What sign are you going to give us, so that we may see it and believe you?
Kind of a stupid question, don’t you think? What sign are you going to give us? What sign? How about feeding five thousand people with 5 loaves and 2 fishes? How about healing people near and far? (for that has been happening in John’s gospel too!)
But Jesus doesn’t get mad. No, bread takes time. Spiritual food takes time. And it takes repetition. “No,” Jesus says. “I’m not talking about manna. And by the way, let’s get the story straight—it was God who gave the manna, not Moses” God is the one who gives the true bread from heaven. And here we get to a kernel of truth, spiritual food for this day, and every day. “For the bread from God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
And they understand, maybe dimly. But they say, “Sir, give us this bread always.” If we are a reader of the gospel of John, this should be ringing all kinds of bells. We have just heard in chapter 4 about the living water, gushing up to eternal life, water that we can drink and never be thirsty again. And the Samaritan woman, who is talking with Jesus says, “Sir, give me this water.”
Water, Bread. The things that sustain us in this life. But Jesus isn’t just talking about physical reality. He wants us to begin to see something else, the eternal reality, God’s reality, what we have been exploring in the gospel of Mark as “the kingdom of God.” We might be beginning to understand that the ingredients of this spiritual food are bread and water. But the first step for us, is being ready to listen, being ready to meditate, being ready to sit with the concept of bread for a little while. The first step is to say, “Jesus, give us this bread always.”
We don’t have to deeply understand what that means. We don’t have to go looking for the pot of gold that will unlock the treasure. We don’t have to spend years reading every scroll or book we can find. We just need to come with an open heart, an open mind. Jesus has something to give us. Jesus has something to share with us. Jesus wants to provide that which will fill us up, and fuel us for the journey. Jesus has enough to provide for us every day—in fact, that is what we should do--stop and take daily bread. Stop, each and every day, to eat the bread of heaven, the food of eternal things.
And when we say, “Please give us this bread always,” Jesus responds. “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
Bread. I am Bread. I am, like the One who Moses met in the wilderness, in the burning bush. The “I am who I am.” The “I am” is here—in bread and living water. Taste and see. Isn’t that why we gather around this table, week after week. To taste and see. To take the physical bread which reminds us to take the spiritual bread. This is a foretaste of the heavenly feast, we say. This is the bread of life.
As often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we remember. We remember Jesus’ life. We remember Jesus’ ministry. We remember how Jesus calls us to follow him.
We remember the hard road that can come with living believing in the reign of God more than believing in the reign of the powers of this world. We remember Jesus’ death—how evil thought it had won. We remember the empty tomb, the startled cry, the One who was raised and was alive again.
We remember because it is an act of worship and it calls us to live our lives in worship and service, until he comes again.
So we are off on the journey. We have said, “Please, give us this bread always.” Give us this day our daily bread. And Jesus has told us, “I am the bread of life.” Chew on that for a while. Think of that whenever you smell bread, or slice bread, or toast bread, or eat bread. That bread is sustaining your body. Jesus, the living bread, sustains the soul.
May it be so, Alleluia, Amen.