Ephesians 4.1-16, John 6.24-35
The Tenth Sunday of Trinity, 4 August 2024, Eldroth, Clapham
“We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.”
During the bombing raids of World War II, thousands of children were orphaned and left to starve. The fortunate ones were rescued and placed in refugee camps where they received food and good care. But many of these children who had lost so much could not sleep at night. They feared waking up to find themselves once again homeless and without food. Nothing seemed to reassure them. Finally, someone hit upon the idea of giving each child a piece of bread to hold at bedtime. Holding their bread, these children could finally sleep in peace. All through the night the bread reminded them, ‘Today I ate and I will eat again tomorrow.’ [1]
Bread is a comforting thing. There’s nothing particularly special about bread. But there is something very blessed about it. It is bread’s very ordinariness which makes it so blessed.
Bread is one of those things which God uses to touches us in the Church most clearly. Think of how in the church we need objects like this, the most primal, elemental, basic and foundational stuff of everyday life, to help us in our worship to draw more close to God: things like water, wine, oil, bread, cloth, hands, hair, dirt, stone, language, fire, wax, wood. All of these are to be found in the sacramental, mysterious life of the Church, and it is through them that the divine presence is communicated to us. Through these things, we connect to God.
So bread, along with wine, is one of the two physical everyday things at the very centre of what it means to be Christians in communion with our God.
With a couple of exceptions in scripture like God sending Manna from heaven and Jesus feeding the five thousand, bread is always the result of the work of human people. It is baked in an oven, tended by a baker, who has formed the bread out of flour, salt, water and yeast. And the flour is from wheat, which is harvested by people. The salt is distilled from the sea or dug out of the ground, the water is drawn from its source, and the yeast is collected and propagated. At every stage, human activity is required for there to be bread.
Yet there would be no wheat without God, nor would there be water, salt or yeast. Even the strength and knowledge of the baker find their ultimate source in God, to say nothing of his very existence. And God created the physical laws according to which the matter of the universe normally operates. So it is clear that at every stage of its development, divine activity is required for there to be bread.
Bread is a sign of God and people working together. Far from solely being our Creator and our Lord, God also joins us as our co-worker, standing next to us in the most basic and ordinary moments and tasks of life.
Bread is also our nourishment. Nearly every diet in every culture in the world includes bread in some form. Even the most meagre of diets - bread and water - includes bread. Bread goes to the very heart of human life.
And - as those orphaned wartime children found, there’s something comforting, something reassuring about bread. It’s a reminder perhaps that we are loved; that whatever our circumstances, wherever we may be, we are home.
It is therefore no coincidence that when the Lord chose the means to make His Body available to us as food, as the divine Eucharist, He chose to do it through bread.
And no coincidence either that in the prayer which he taught us to use, at the start of each day, he encourages us to ask our Father to give us our daily bread.
Now, Paul encourages Christians to mature in our faith “We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.”
There are many ways in which we can grow up in Christ, through practicing different ways of Christian living and ways of praying.
One lovely idea I have heard about, and try from time to time, is the practice called Sleeping with Bread.
The idea is simple: just as you might begin the day by asking Our Father to give you your daily bread, so, at the end of the day, you might take a few moments to look back and consider two questions:
What did I receive today for which I am grateful?
What did I receive today for which I am least grateful?
- and having brought those things to mind, to offer them in prayer.
The simple idea being, that by doing this we draw closer to God and what he is doing in our lives.
And by doing that, we are growing up into him.
In the miracle we’ve heard retold to us today, maybe the greater lesson is not so much what Jesus did in turning the boy’s five barley loaves into enough for 5,000 and more, but in what the boy did - offering up these ordinary modest things of life to be used for divine purposes.
Maybe that is all that God asks us to do - to offer up to him the ordinary modest things of our lives, in faith that he will help us to see more clearly how these are part of his divine purposes.
Note
[1] Dennis Linn, Sheila Fabricant Linn, Matthew Linn, Sleeping with Bread: Holding What Gives You Life. Paulist Press 1995.
Comments