Mmmmm, I'm getting hungry! Well, not hungry really, since I ate a nice breakfast this morning. But my mouth sure is watering. I'm afraid that my mouth waters more readily for fresh-baked bread than it does for God. What would it be like, I wonder, to tremble for God's sweetness? What would it be like to drool over the bread that gives life to the world? Jewish Midrash tells us that the manna God gave to the Israelites in the desert might have tasted like whatever each person wanted it to taste like. Remember, in the Exodus story, the Israelites were lost and fearful out in the desert. They were hungry and wishing that they'd never left home. They bickered and whined. So God graciously rained down flakes of manna for them, just enough for each day, and it sustained them. According to the later rabbis, then, if someone had a hankering for a juicy steak, that's what they tasted in God's gift. If someone else preferred a salad, then the manna flakes tasted to them like the freshest greens. For the rabbis, God didn't just nourish the unhappy travelers—God delighted them with God's deep and abundant goodness. In our Gospel today, Jesus compares himself to this manna—the bread from heaven, the generous gift of God. Jesus compares himself to food that not only nourishes but delights. Food that satisfies our deepest, truest desires.
The difference, of course, between a croissant au chocolat and the bread of life, is that Jesus' bread doesn't go stale. Manna only lasted for the day, and if you tried to hoard it, then it would turn bad and sprout worms. Croissants get dry, cake gets stale, and real baguettes get so hard after a half-day on the counter that you can use them for baseball bats. The same thing goes for the other worldly delights with which we try to nourish ourselves in God's stead. Many years ago, at a difficult time in my life, I had a recurring dream. I was in a dark, empty room filled only with a mini-fridge right in the center. It was the kind of small fridge that you put in a college dorm room. I was hungry in my dream—really hungry--and there was no food in the house at all. Hoping to find something to eat, I knelt down in front of the little fridge. As I opened the door, bright light from inside the fridge poured out into the darkness of the room. And yet, inside, the shelves were empty, except for a couple of unappetizing containers of moldy leftovers. It was at that point—hungry and dejected, but unwilling to close the refrigerator door—that I would wake up.
It doesn’t take an expert to explain that dream: In the busy distress of my daily life, I was spiritually starving. Whatever stores of joy and meaning that I had previously packed into Tupperware containers and saved in my spiritual refrigerator, they had sat for too long uneaten and untended. I had gathered up only the food that perishes: possessions, acclaim, dreams of perfection. What I hungered for was the bread that endures—the bread of life that Jesus offers us: the food of love, forgiveness, and grace.
The Good News is that this bread of life isn't hard to find, once our mouths are watering and our eyes are open. Not only do we receive it in our hands every Sunday at the altar, we find it hidden in the most ordinary places. The kind of bread that Jesus knew—the kind of bread that Jesus used to feed the multitude in last week's Gospel—is plain peasant food. I had some once in Europe, the kind of bread that shepherds stick in their pockets to take up into the mountains for weeks while they pasture the cows. A small chunk of this bread is heavy enough to use as a paperweight. It scratches your throat going down, and when you cut it, you have to saw it like a piece of wood. It's a gray-brown color, the color of earth, the color of humble things, the color of the wooden cross. This bread might not always delight, but it can be counted on to withstand any hardship. It is, as Lauren Winner says, "bread that sustains oppressed people on their journey through dangerous terrain."[2] We need this kind of Jesus bread, too.
Yes, Jesus is both daily sustenance and extraordinary delight. But I'd like to close with just one more bread image. One year, I gathered two preschoolers and a first-grader on a Saturday morning at church to prepare them for their first Eucharist. As part of the lesson, I decided that we would make bread together to use that Sunday. I looked up a recipe and gathered the ingredients, and we got to work. The children took their task seriously. They scooped and measured flour; they tirelessly stirred and poked, shaped, and patted. And patted. And patted. The dough got dry, so I added some water. It was sticky, so I added some oil. Then it was still sticky, so I added more flour. When we finished, we had flour and doughy fingerprints everywhere. But we also had six small flat loaves of communion bread, each carefully marked with a cross right at the center. I breathed a sigh of relief.
The bakers among us can probably guess what happened during the Eucharist the next day. That bread was as hard and dry as a hockey puck. Parishioners chewed valiantly on Jesus. Even worse, when we broke it and gave it out, that bread crumbled everywhere. It went in the chalice, on the fair linen, on the kneelers, on the floor, even down the front of people's shirts and in children's hair. Everywhere! Little crumbs of eternal life, Christ's body broken to bits, scattered in messy abundance all over the sanctuary. I probably won't try that recipe again. But it did look like we'd had a party up at the Altar rail that Sunday, a party in which love was thrown around joyfully like confetti, falling from the plump hands of children into our mouths, down our shirts, and out into the world.
Can you smell the bread baking right
now? You’re not imagining it. There really are some rolls in the oven for you
to eat at coffee hour. But now, I want you to take a good whiff of this bread,
close your eyes, and imagine what kind of bread you most desire Jesus to
be…… What would delight your heart and enliven your mind? What would sustain
you in the wilderness? What aroma would set you forth on a wild search for God?
For what kind of bread would you exclaim, like the disciples, "Sir, give
us this bread always"? If you’d like to share, shout it out! If not, tuck the
image away in your heart. I think that I’m hungry for a big pot-luck of varieties
of bread, a tasting table that comes from other kitchens than my own. I want to
share what others have to offer, without worrying about getting viruses. What kind of bread do you long for? PAUSE FOR THEIR RESPONSES.
When you come forward to the altar at the Eucharist, hold out your hands for the bread that you most desire from God. Taste and see, trust and delight, in the goodness of the Lord.
