Ephesians 4.1-16, John 6.24-35
Sutton Montis, Weston Bampfylde, Ninth Sunday after Trinity, 2 August 2015 [a]
Some time ago my friend Barbara, then Methodist minister in Liverpool city centre, was called to a meeting where the Superintendent told her that regretfully they were going to have to sell off the Methodist church building which was her base. It would not be replaced. However, they wanted her to continue her ministry in the city. So Barbara became a minister without a building, and without a congregation to start with.
Commuting into the city from her suburban home, for two years Barbara spent each day walking the streets getting to know the homeless people, sitting in coffee shops getting to know the office workers there on their breaks, popping into the university refectories to get alongside students and staff, spending not money, but time with people in the city centre shops, chatting with taxi drivers waiting at their ranks.
Then one day the word ‘bread’ popped into Barbara’s head. She wasn’t sure what it meant at first, but she knew where it had come from. And so she kept it there in her head, this image of this bread, and she let her encounters with the city’s people moisten and stir the idea, in prayer she kneaded it, through contemplation and consideration of the scriptures she leavened it; and so this image of bread in her heart and her head rose, until the day when the opportunity came for Barbara to rent a room - a room which, she was sure by then, she would bake bread in.
The room was offered to Barbara by a feminist cooperative, a group of women who ran a radical bookshop and who were unlikely allies, having before Barbara came along, tended to associate Christianity with such things as patriarchy and homophobia, but who embraced her and her bread idea warmly.
Funding to install a catering-size kitchen came along with the miraculous discovery that almost the exact amount she needed had been left in a legacy for Methodism in the city centre.
And so was born what soon became known as ‘The Bread Church’.
Who came along to The Bread Church? The people Barbara had got to know on the streets, in the coffee bars and cafeterias, at the shop counters, over the preceding years.
And what did they do at The Bread Church? Coming and going as their lifestyles and timetables led them, through every day of the week they baked bread together. Sitting down around a large central table, each lunchtime they shared in a moveable feast, of the bread they’d baked together and the soup they had prepared.
And what did they talk about as they sat alongside each other, homeless man and college professor, shop girl and business lawyer, transgendered musician and Catholic nun? Anything and everything, finding common ground. [1]
And for those who wanted it, at a certain point in the ever-shifting day, there would be very simple prayers or reflections which drew all their disparate conversations together and blessed them even more.
Barbara has since moved on to another role in the Methodist Church; but the Bread Church - which is actually named ‘Somewhere Else’ - continues as a fellowship “reaching across cultural and social divides and enabling those who knead and shape the bread each day to explore their experience. Each day they are encouraged to bake two loaves: one for themselves and one to share with someone else as they feel led, to take away and give away to another person of their choice. [2]
I came across a prayer this week which I’d like to share here. I don’t know if they’ve ever prayed it in The Bread Church but it reminded me of them; it describes them very well:
God of all humanity,
make the roof of our house
wide enough for all opinions;
oil the door of our house
so it opens easily to friend and stranger;
and set such a table in our house
that all may speak kindly and freely around it. Amen. [3]
Where there is bread at the centre of the table, it is possible to have such a house.
“I am the bread of life,” Jesus said. “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
Aren’t you glad that - when faith sometimes feels like launching a moon-shot into the void, unsure if there’s anything there, God is tangible and real; he chooses to explain himself not through abstract ideas but in flesh and blood - and bread.
Aren’t you glad that - when hope sometimes feels like no more than wishful thinking, an emission of longing into a vacuum, a form of resignation, Jesus brings the kingdom to us in physical acts of healing, in tangible acts of casting out evil spirits, in sharing bread and fish, and explains it to us in teaching which uses everyday terms like mustard seeds and lost coins and treasure hidden in a field.
And aren’t you glad that - when love feels more like a huge demand on your will to continue to think positively of, and act kindly towards, others - and especially your enemies, whoever they may be, Jesus simply calls you to a table to share bread with them, together.
Christian faith is no more than this - and no less - realising that God is to be found in the everyday physical stuff of life - like bread - and that all you need to do is keep a lookout for him fleshing himself out on this earth;
Christian hope is no more than this - and no less - realising that all along you’ve been given gifts from God, and that life is now about living into the inheritance which is yours, as it unfolds before you slowly like a mustard seed, as it reveals itself to you like a lost coin, as you regard God’s gifts to you as your very own treasure hidden in a field; as you break and eat bread, day by day, week by week.
Christian love is no more than this - and no less - coming to table to share bread with people unlike you, where, in listening and learning from each other you will find common ground, and blessing. [4]
We find all of this summed up in the simplest of expressions, “I am the bread of life”.
Paul writes to the Ephesians about what it takes for us to mature in Christ. Essentially, I would say, maturing in Christ is about using your loaf. Living a life ‘worthy of the calling to which you have been called’ is about receiving the gift of life he offers us.
“I am the bread of life” - he is the loaf who generates aliveness in us. In Jesus, life becomes about receiving the gift of life he offers us; life becomes about using your loaf.
How does that work? Well, when you find yourself becoming more and more persuaded by God that God loves you as you are; when you find yourself increasingly relaxing over time into “being known by God as you are with love”, relaxing into trusting him, permitting the One who overcame death to let you put away your fear of death, these are all signs that you've used your loaf to rediscover what faith means to you. Your 'faith' now means the stability the Bread of Life has brought into your life. It is a faith marked by relaxation - like with trusted friends around a table.
And when you find yourself becoming more and more persuaded by God that he has given you the gift of eternal life; when you find yourself increasingly conscious of the knowledge of the inheritance which is yours in Christ, and thus begin to live like anyone lives who is certain that they are coming into a great inheritance: these are all signs that you've used your loaf to rediscover what hope means to you. Your 'hope' now means the ability the Bread of Life has brought you to live in the excitement of the adventure you find yourself on with him. It is a hope marked by a rejuvenating zest for life.
And finally, when you find yourself becoming more and more persuaded by God that you can know yourself through joyfully giving yourself away; trusting in Jesus the Crucified and Risen one who fully received himself through giving himself away, so that you can live in the joy this self-offering life brings, a life of mutual blessing: these are all signs that you've used your loaf to rediscover what love means to you. Your 'love' now means the ability the Bread of Life has brought you to give yourself away to others, like opening yourself to strangers beside you at a table, who thus become your friends. It is a love marked by a true, deep, tangible joy.
“I work with an image of God as a baker rather than a boss,” says Barbara Glasson of The Bread Church. [5] It is a model which we might embrace for ourselves and our community.
For after all, Jesus said “I am the bread of life.” He is the loaf who generates aliveness in us.
As Barbara used her loaf, so he invites us to use our loaf. To receive the gift of life he offers us.
Notes
[a] The sad news that Cilla Black had died came through on this afternoon, and so in the evening I preambled this sermon with a mention of her, as one of Merseyside's (other, besides Barbara) remarkable and much-loved women, and ended the service playing a recording of Cilla's "You're my World"[https://itun.es/gb/59JoP?i=691683604]. There were tears.
[1] Barbara Glasson, I Am Somewhere Else, tells the story of the beginnings of ‘The Bread Church’; I’ve written about it from memory and so some of the characterisations here are my inventions rather than her statements. Buy your books from News from Nowhere, Radical & Community Bookshop, Liverpool, may all-time favourite bookshop….
[2] Barbara is currently Team Leader at Touchstone, an interfaith 'listening community' in the heart of Bradford, sponsored by the Methodist Church in Britain and open to all. Details of the current activities of ‘The Bread Church, Somewhere Else, can be found on their website.
[3] Prayer passed on to me by my friend and ex-colleague Ann Stein, ‘from an unknown Hawaiian source’.
[4] James Alison, Taking Cinderella to the Ball: How a mimetic anthropology restores the theological virtue of hope, Presentation for the 2015 Colloquium on Violence & Religion at SLU, St Louis, Missouri (8 July 2015) - James’s characteristically playful and provoking presentation massively influences my treatment of the Christian Virtues: faith, hope and love, in this sermon, and I draw on it directly in a number of places. Direct quotes from James, and paraphrases, here are in italics.
[5] Barbara Glasson, The Baker is Somewhere Else [pdf], Re:Source Issue 6: July 2006
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