Bread

When we meet Jesus in the Gospel today he is being pursued by those who witnessed the feeding miracle where he transformed a simple lunch into enough food to feed thousands. The crowd wants more, they want a conjuring trick – or do they? These are people who are mostly hungry. No doubt they would like to see another miracle but might it be more pragmatic than that, perhaps they want another good, square meal.
Jesus tells them that he is the true bread. This, of course, is an offer to end their hunger in a different and enduring way. But what does it mean that Jesus is the bread of the world? We are called to the altar, of course, we receive bread and wine to join into the heavenly banquet. We understand that there is real hunger in the world and that we are called to work together to dismantle unjust structures which perpetuate poverty and systematic inequality.
These two things go together. For some the social justice side of the equation, the actual feeding of the hungry crowd, comes easy. For others the holding close of the bread of heaven and entering ever closer on that journey with Christ is their native language, but we are called to both. It struck me that as I was reading around this passage several folks said we should remember not to get stuck on the spiritual meaning of the Gospel and remember that there is real and pressing hunger in the world. Then one commentator noted, abruptly, that, actually as a Church, we are pretty good at social justice – like the crowd which came to Jesus we understand the physicality of our presence in the world, but like the crowd we often stop there, failing to see Jesus for who He really is.
This week has been a week of contrasts for me. I guess I am taking away from several deaths and conversations about death that that line from the movie The Shawshank Redemption  is just about right,
“Get busy living or get busy dying”. Isn’t that what Jesus is inviting this crowd to today, to get busy living. And isn’t that a challenge for us?
When we talk about bread we think of something which is a staple, something which is good and nutritious, but the simple fact is that most of the bread which we buy in the store is so processed that it is simply filler in our diet. The bread which Jesus would have known was made from coarsely ground flour. It would have been padded with various grains and even pulses. It would have been dense and heavy and flavorsome. It would have needed chewing and would, indeed, have been a meal by itself.
We have turned bread into something else – we add fat and sugar because we have made the bread itself so tasteless. Bread is simply the holder for our peanut butter, our salad or our cheese – it simply provides a case for the rest of our eating, to the point where we are invited on diets which remove all carbs, including bread.
The symbolism of what bread is to us is lost. Water we get, we need that. But bread is an optional extra in many of our lives and when we do eat it we hide it underneath a variety of flavors.
And if we have rendered our food so much less nutritious and rendered it useless without a cupboard full of additions, what does this do to our view of Jesus as bread of the World?
Get on with living, or get on with dying.
If you ever get to walk into, or even by, a bakery which is making fresh bread you know that it is and experience which envelops you and draws you in. You take an extra breath to savor the scent, you might want a taste, buy a loaf. Where we lived before this the grocery store baked bread on the premises. My children loved the French Bread. It came in long paper bags with a tantalizing clear panel on the front. Despite saying we had to pay first I would often get to the register with chunks torn off and it was not unknown for a whole loaf to disappear on the walk home – I had to buy two if I wanted one to serve with dinner. If we took a detour on the walk home from school we could go by the store and Katherine would often choose a half baguette over candy (not always, let’s be real!)
But that is the sort of bread which Jesus is offering us, the bread of a life which we want to tear into. A bread whose warmth we want to hold onto, whose scent we savor. That is so different from the plastic wrapped, don’t squash me bread with which many of us a familiar.
For centuries bread lasted a day. Feeding a family with bread was a daily task. The fire had to be rekindled, the dough assembled and kneeded and the bread baked. As a child my mother still walked to the bakery each day to buy bread for the day – she refused to succumb to, as she called it, “Plastic Bread”. It can all seem a bit romantic, but bread was something which required daily attention, the yeast was a permanent presence in the house, except, of course, during fasts.
It is no accident that during the Highland clearances in Scotland the sign of a household, or community, which had been eradicated was the extinguishing of the fire. Cold, broken houses where no bread could be baked.
Get on with living, or get on with dying.
Do we come to Jesus the Bread of Life as if this is something we cannot wait to dig into, as if this is something to savor, as if there is a journey worth making, work worth doing, as if this is associated with our very life and the warmth of our being? Is coming to Jesus a daily task of necessity and satisfaction?
When Jesus says to the crowd that he is the bread of life he uses the verb to eat but then he switches to the word “chew”. It is not a pleasant sort of word, we would tell our children off for the sort of chewing which Jesus mentions. It is a rough and ready, childlike word. But just like my children in the store tearing pieces off the loaf, children, especially when they are hungry, are not careful eaters, they stuff their mouths and make a mess.
What we do at the altar has to bring all of this to mind – not to make us disgusted but to remind us of our vitality, the urgency of our need and our utter dependence.
Of course we need to work on giving all people their daily bread but fulfilling this basic level of need only begins to offer a full humanity. There are many who are well fed who are poor. What Jesus offers is a real and significant hope, meaning and purpose. It does not come shrink wrapped and it is not full of chemicals which will keep it fresh for weeks – like the manna in the wilderness it is God’s daily provision for us. We cannot make it small or easy and we must get on with living.