First United Methodist Church. Birmingham, Michigan
Scriptures: Exodus 16 (selected verses); Matthew 6:11
Today’s subject is bread. And I have got to believe that, were I to divide you into groups of five and give you ten minutes to discuss the matter, each such grouping would come up with twenty good bread stories, so universal is the topic. But since our sanctuary is not built for small group discussion, I am going to tell you my bread stories and you will have to either resonate or suffer in silence. So here goes: “A Short History of Billy and Bread.”
I am but a boy….a “wee lad” as the Scots say. It is either a Monday or a Thursday (those being the days my grandmother bakes bread). Never on Tuesday or Friday. Always on Monday and Thursday, with at least one loaf per day coming home under the arm of my father. As bread goes, it’s good….although I am more impressed with the baking part than with the eating part. For my grandmother’s crusts are….well….crusty. Which is why I make my mother trim them from my sandwich before cutting my sandwich into squares…..or (better yet) triangles. Living with my lunchtime requirements is not easy for my mother. But I outgrow them in time for marriage.
About this time I become interested in the communion bread at my church. Not theologically interested, but functionally interested. I notice that the bread is always passed on little silver trays piled with precut pieces. I find myself wondering:
1. Who cuts the pieces and do they need any help?
2. Who decides how big the pieces should be, and how quickly can I scan the entire tray in order to select the biggest one?
3. Do Christians always trim the crusts before cutting the pieces, or is this simply the whim of the Methodists?
Occasionally, I ride with my father down Grand River late at night and pass the best smelling building in all of Detroit. It is the building where they bake Wonder Bread, and the aroma that permeates the street almost persuades me to become a baker. Except my father points out I’d have to work nights. Today, that building houses a casino and, in its own way, still makes bread. Which still smells.
I am now a young minister, attending a denominational meeting, listening to a sermon by a man who, for my money, may be the best preacher I ever heard. His name, Colin Morris. His denomination, Methodist. His country, Great Britain. His particular assignment, President of the United Church of Zambia. In his sermon, he is describing a severely malnourished Zambian male who dropped dead just a few feet from the front door of the manse. A subsequent autopsy revealed nothing in his stomach, save for a few undigested balls of grass. When death came to the beggar outside his study, Colin Morris was inside his study reading a clergy journal of the Church of England. The subject of the lead article being: “The Ceremonially Proper Way to Dispose of Leftover Eucharistic Bread”….meaning communion bread already consecrated by the priest, but not consumed by the smaller-than-expected number of congregants. Within a few weeks of hearing Morris’ story, a grade school kid approaches me after communion and asks if he can have the remainder of the loaf left on the altar. I hear myself saying: “Sure.” In response to which I hear him saying: “Oh boy.”
I am now as mature in my career as I am in my midsection, having been just appointed senior minister at First Church, Birmingham. It is late Saturday night before my first Sunday. The doorbell rings. I open it to find Bill and Ivah DaLee standing before me. I learn that Bill bakes bread as a hobby and that he and Ivah think it appropriate to feed me on Saturday night prior to my feeding them on Sunday morning. Which they do. And which I do.
A few more years go by and Kris and I find ourselves in Egypt. We are quartered in a converted Cairo palace, one of the most opulent hotels in which we have ever been privileged to lay our heads. In one of the garden courtyards, a woman is baking flatbread in a makeshift, wood-fired oven. Still stuffed from lunch (and having just made reservations for what I expect will be a sumptuous dinner), my stomach rebels with the cry: “No….no….pass her by.” But seeing her seated there baking her heart out (looking for all the world like an Egyptian Martha), I can’t not buy some.
Finally, I am in an Israeli kibbutz, flush on the shores of the Sea of Galilee (midway between Tiberias and Capernaum). I am far from alone, given that forty friends are with me. The morning cannot be any more perfect (even though the tour bus is a tad late). Communion by the lakeshore is suggested. Of course. Why not? An inspired thought. Someone produces a bottle of wine bought the day before. Someone else produces a silver chalice bought the day before that. But what about bread? No one has a spare loaf anywhere. A breakfast bagel, maybe. Toast from the dining room, possibly. Then it is remembered that the buffet table in the dining room features an incredible centerpiece of foodstuffs (fruits….vegetables….cheeses….and a beautiful loaf of braided bread). Which I dispatch someone to steal (the bread, I mean), so that we can break it with Jesus….on his shore….of his lake….in his land. In response to which everybody says: “Never has holy communion meant so much to me. Thanks, preacher, for creating such an inspirational moment.”
* * * * *
Enough of stories. Digest them at your leisure. Like over a sandwich. Or whatever. It’s time to make a few points. Biblical points. Hopefully, obvious points. Better yet, memorable points.
Point number one: We need bread. Everybody knows we need bread. God knows we need bread. Jesus knows we need bread. And by “bread,” I mean the kind that is found on the table and the kind that is found in the wallet. In a best-loved Bible story, Jesus tells several thousand people to sit down (in groups of 50, no less) and then tells the disciples to feed them. As you will recall, the disciples voice a pair of protests. First, they say they have no bread. Second, they say they have no money to buy bread. So Jesus takes matters into his own hands. Or he puts them into a little boy’s hands (depending upon which version of the story you prefer). But at the point where the story lands in the lap of the disciples, they lack bread of both kinds…..the edible kind and the spendable kind.
Both kinds are important. Jesus tells the tempter that “man does not live by bread alone.” Notice he does not say that man does not live by bread. Of course man lives by bread. Man is a bread-dependent animal. I am talking about bread which is wheat, rye or pumpernickel. But I am also talking about bread which is salary, Social Security and stock options. People have to eat. People have to be able to afford to eat. I have never been a proud bread baker. But I have been a proud breadwinner. Anything wrong with that? Nothing whatsoever is wrong with that. Unless (and until) I come to the point when life starts and stops with bread….when the day begins and ends with bread….or when I get sucked into the popular mythology that if I just have enough of this (hold up loaves) and this (hold up twenty dollar bills), I will be happy. Because I won’t.
Point number two. We need bread. God provides bread. It is okay to ask for bread and okay to receive bread. There may be an occasional blessing we gain from fasting, but there is nothing that we gain from starving. God wants you to eat. God wants you to be able to afford eating. God would prefer that you not obsess over either….eating or affording. But God is into providing. It may not come as expected. But it will come. Daily manna is what the people of Israel got in the wilderness. To be sure, they got sick of it….and tired of it. But it kept them going. As best as we can figure, “it” may have been a sticky, sweet secretion from the tamarisk tree which dripped to the ground (generally in May and June), crystallized by night, turned white, and actually contained calories. It hardened into thin, wafer-like sheets which people broke off and ate. Someone once described it as having the texture of Styrofoam. But hey, a little peanut butter and jelly, and anything’s edible.
Did they actually eat the stuff? Probably. Did they eat it exclusively? Probably not. But the story is their way of saying: “It is not God’s will that anyone should go without.” And the word “daily” means that it will come when needed (as needed) so that just when you think “Oh, I’m all right for now, but I’m gonna be hungry tomorrow….lonely tomorrow….weak and fainthearted tomorrow….poor in spirit tomorrow….or just plain poor tomorrow,” you can ask God tomorrow. You can take the “daily bread” promise to the bank, although you cannot necessarily take the bread to the bank. This is what is meant by the suggestion that manna spoils when you try to keep it overnight. Which is not a prohibition against stored-up things like savings bonds, insurance policies, college funds, freezer plans or home-canned tomatoes. But which is a statement of trust which proclaims: “I may not know what tomorrow holds, but I know who holds tomorrow.”
Let me illustrate. I do all kinds of planning, the better to do a consistent job of preaching. But I never have so much stuff in the well….so many ideas in the pipeline….so many stories at the spigot….that I don’t occasionally come up dry. But I have got to tell you that on those empty-well days, something always seems to come from God-only-knows where (and I literally mean from God-only-knows where) when I need it most. Daily manna! For some of you, it’s a kernel of corn. For me, it’s the germ of an idea.
Point number three. We need bread. God provides bread. Churches ought to double as bread trucks. Meaning that the church which turns its back on issues of hunger and hungry people forfeits its right to the title “church.” No matter how poor the church is….how weak the church is….how hell-bent and focused on survival the church is….if some form of bread delivery is not part of its charter, it has no charter. You think I’m wrong? Read the New Testament and then come back and tell me where I’m wrong.
Every year at Annual Conference, a slew of ministers retire. At that time, they have the option of giving a brief retirement speech. One year, a fellow whose career had been nondescript at best, chose to forfeit his few minutes at the microphone and, instead, presented the Bishop with a loaf of his homemade bread. Which generated tumultuous applause (either because it took less time or because it was different). The guy who followed him was a fellow who really felt that the Bishop had done him wrong by putting him in all the wrong churches at all the wrong times, following all the wrong people, thereby contributing to his overall sense of depression and failure. All of which led him to say: “Wouldn’t you know it? First they send me to follow Paul Blomquist and you know how hard it is to follow Paul Blomquist. Then they send me to follow Tim Hickey, and everybody knows that nobody can follow Tim Hickey. Now, on the day I finally hang it up, they send me to the microphone to follow a bread act.”
Well, if we clergy read the New Testament, we’re all sent to follow a bread act. And if we don’t have a bread act…..or can’t create a bread act….we’d better hang up the old preaching robe, stick several ballpoint pens in our shirt pocket, and go door to door selling aluminum siding. Because the day is coming when Jesus will say, “Friend, why didn’t you notice me when I was hungry?” And, for the life of us, we are not even going to remember when that was.
Point number four. We need bread. God provides bread. Churches ought to double as bread trucks. And just as Jesus is full of bread, bread is strangely full of Jesus. Start with the fact that Jesus is full of bread. Jesus was a Jew. Which suggests that every Friday night, Jesus celebrated Shabbat with a Sabbath meal. And every Friday night after his mother lit the candles and his father poured the wine, he (as the oldest son) pronounced the blessing over the “challah,” the flaky bread of the Sabbath family meal.
Which happened every Friday. Without exception. Until that Thursday when he said: “I’m afraid I’ll miss the next one, friends. But if you break the bread without me, I’ll be in it.” Meaning what….“that I’ll be in it?” Did that mean in body….in spirit….in memory? Two thousand years later, we’re nowhere near settling that one. But while the Catholics come to the table proclaiming “a doctrine of real presence,” I’ve yet to meet anyone coming to the table proclaiming “a doctrine of real absence.” All of which makes me wonder why we can’t come together around the notion that, where bread is concerned, “Jesus is in there somehow.”
* * * * *
That’s enough for one morning. Except for this. Notice in the Lord’s Prayer that the request for daily bread is phrased in conjunction with the request for forgiveness from trespasses (“Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses….”).
Perhaps it would surprise you to learn that during Medieval times there emerged a Jewish custom whereby, on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, people gathered on the shore of a lake or river to cast their sins into the water. How did they do it? In the form of tiny pieces of bread, that’s how they did it. The Jewish name for it is “tashlich,” and it is undergoing something of a revival in our culture. In fact, I may even give it a try. I can see it now. As I cast my bread upon the waters of Quarton Lake, passersby will smile and say: “Look at that old man feeding the ducks.” Only I will know that the old man is baring his soul.
Note: For information on Jewish rituals involving bread, I am indebted to a wonderful new book by Harvey Cox entitled Common Prayers: Faith, Family, and a Christian’s Journey through the Jewish Year. For Colin Morris’ story on the starving Zambian, find an out-of-print copy of Include Me Out. For a better introduction to the wonderful body of Colin Morris’ work, read either The Hammer of the Lord or Mankind, My Church.
This sermon was occasioned by the return of 100 persons from First Church’s Choir Camp, the theme of which was “Bread.” As a part of the 10:00 worship service, Choir Camp participants sang a number of bread-related songs. During their week at Camp Lael, they read bread stories, built a bread oven and actually baked some of their own loaves for personal and sacramental consumption.
