The Lessons of bread:
The first
lesson of bread is: Be hungry. If we’re
full, we’re not going to want to eat. If
our every need is met, or we’re pretending our every need is met and that we
are self-sufficient to provide for our every need, we’re not going to be open
to receiving bread. The world tells us
to put up that independent, brave, satisfied, fulfilled image. Jesus shows us that its ok to be hungry.
I come to you,
Trinity Lutheran, hungry. I come with
the structures—the background, experience, and education. But I am hungry for the stories about what
makes you you. What experiences have
shaped you as a person and congregation?
I am hungry to understand your relationships with each other, with other
congregations, with the neighborhood. I
am hungry to hear your stories about your encounters with God. I am hungry for whatever tidbits you will
share with me, or big hunks of bread. I
come hungry and I can’t feed myself this information, these relationships. I pray that you will share yourselves with
me, your stories, your insights, your suggestions, and your love.
I hope you
will be hungry, too. Maybe you already
know all the stories, but I suggest you too are hungry for stories of God
working in our world and in the lives of your siblings in Christ here at
Trinity and your siblings in surrounding congregations and institutions, of
your neighbors. Our context is always
changing, so a story you thought you knew, you will perhaps hear and understand
in a different way. These times of
transitions are good times to admit we are hungry and to open ourselves to the
nourishment, to the love, to the bread that God provides in the body of
Christ. I bring some bread with me that
I will do my best to share with you. It
will take me some time to learn the recipes that you enjoy most, so I hope you
will be patient with me.
Let’s be
hungry together for the food God is feeding us.
The second
lesson of bread is: Tension is necessary.
Bread requires kneading—pushing and pulling. Church is full of tension because it is a
community of people coming together with different perspectives and ideas and
backgrounds. Without kneading the bread
doesn’t properly rise. Without tension,
the church doesn’t rise. We create
tension when we tell the truth. For
instance, in today’s Gospel Jesus tells the truth about where he comes from as
the living bread. This is not
well-received. We live in a world that
values independence, hard work, instant gratification, and being prepared. Jesus comes bringing different values that
are in tension with the values of this world.
Jesus values sharing, community relationships, generosity, and
sacrifice. When he says he comes from
above, people think he’s trying to say he’s more special than they are. But part of what Jesus means is that he is
the source of life, giving himself away so that everyone might have life. Even this is offensive, because people want
to control who has access to life, because of sin, because we want to be
god.
The Gospel
today doesn’t gloss over the human tendency to complain. Complaining is a form of tension. It displays our resistance to the Good
News. It displays our idolatry, our need
to be right, our need to say who gets fed and who doesn’t, our need to control
when and how things are done. We all
have our complaints—we might as well admit it and get them out there where we
can take a look at them. Not all
complaints are worth bringing forward to a group, but all are worth examining
because they tell us what’s important to us.
I commit to
you today to open myself to you and your ways.
I will ask questions—a lot of questions.
I will get tired and irritable sometimes. But I also commit to examining my complaints
and ask you to do the same. Sometimes
our complaints come because we are tired or hungry. This is a good time to remember how we can’t
complain with our mouths full. When we
eat the bread of life, we are at least stopped for a moment from anxiety, from
fear, from arguing. When we find
ourselves complaining, it is a good time to stop and ask ourselves which of our
needs is not being met. Are we hungry,
tired, stressed from situations at home or at work? Am I not feeling valued and why? Where are my complaints coming from? Are they about me and how I’m feeling or are
they legitimate concerns for the church or the community? Are they coming from a place of love or a
place of fear? And I don’t mind
listening to complaints to a certain extent and helping to sort out where they
are coming from. I might not feel as
passionate about them as you do, but I will likely try to understand and maybe
even try to help you figure out what to do with your complaint. A complaint can be good, especially if it spurs
us to do something about it.
The third
lesson of bread is to rest. If you bake
bread, you know how important it is to let it rise. There are times for work, tension, kneading
the bread, and there are times to let it rest.
While it is resting, work is going on with the yeast. It is work we cannot do for the yeast. We just have to let go and let it
happen. God rested on the 7th
day. God gave the people manna and commanded them that on Friday, they would
collect two day’s worth of manna so that the Sabbath day would be a day of
rest. Many times, Jesus went up on the
mountain to pray and be alone. We, too,
need to take rests. We need to let
others do their work. We need to take a
break. I commit to you to take my days
off. I ask you to consider what
activities you are called to rest from.
I ask you to take the time you need when you are sick or grieving or
anxious. I ask you to get your rest.
The final
lesson of the Living Bread is to let Jesus be Jesus. This is part of the last one about taking
rests. Jesus does not say, “You are the
bread of life.” No Jesus says, “I am the
bread of life.” We are not Jesus. We cannot do all the things. We cannot make the bread rise. We cannot do everything perfectly and we were
not meant to. I will make mistakes. Whatever the call committee told you, I am
only human. I will forget your
name. I may mix you up with someone
else. I won’t do or say or be what you
expect me to. There will be times I will
fail you. And the same is true of
you. You are human. You will make mistakes. You will not be who I expect you to be. We will cause each other pain. But it isn’t our perfection that holds us
together. It is the love of God that
binds us into the body of Christ. So we
will forgive and love each other and help each other and let Jesus be Jesus.
Since we
aren’t Jesus, we’re going to let Jesus do what Jesus does best. We’re going to let Jesus feed us. We will be nourished by Jesus’ body and blood
and teaching. We’re going to trust in
Jesus’ abundance and not fear that there won’t be enough food, members,
volunteers, money, health, or skills.
We’re going to remember that Jesus is the source of all life, not us,
and look to Jesus for help and guidance.
We’re going to thank and praise Jesus for all good things that he
willingly shares with us. And we’re
going to trust Jesus to lead us as our shepherd, follow him through times of
sorrow and pain, follow him in times of joy and abundance, share the love and
bread he shares with us, and we’re going to rise to new life every single day.
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