Bread is a miracle: Lori's reflection

In case you want to read our Lenten reflections by members of our congregation, you can see each day's meditation by clicking HERE. And it so happens that Lori wrote the reflection for today -- on bread (how appropriate).

In case you are wondering, we are using the lectionary readings for Morning Prayer for the Lenten reflections, and so the biblical readings for today's reflection are different than the readings we heard in church this morning for the Holy Eucharist.

Here is Lori's reflection, with links to the biblical readings for Morning Prayer that go with her reflection:

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Psalm 66 • Genesis 48:8-22 • Romans 8:11-25 • John 6:27-40

It is said that John is the most mystical of the Gospel writers, yet he has Jesus telling his disciples: “I am the bread of life.” What can be mystical about bread?

Bread has sustained humankind since before the written record of history. It can be made a number of different ways, with many kinds of grain, but it depends on a living organism, yeast, to make it what it is. The yeast takes the dense flour, feeds on its sugars, multiplies, raises the mass into a bubbling sponge, full of air pockets that will make the inside of the loaf soft and cloudlike while the outside, the crust, contains it and absorbs the direct heat, turning brown and stiff in the process. The process is somewhat of a miracle.

Bread has about 60 percent of the amino acids we need to sustain life. (Add cheese and mushrooms and you get as much protein as a chicken breast. Or look for Ezekiel bread; it has all eight essential amino acids in it.)

Yet as good as bread is, it can still go bad. Molds love to grow on bread, an excellent food source for them. Some molds are beneficial, such as penicillin; ergot, another bread mold, causes hallucinations. Some are just toxic.

But Jesus told them of a bread that held no such perils: “The bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” No wonder the disciples said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

A hymn I often find myself humming is based on this passage:

I am the bread of life
He who comes to me shall not hunger
He who believes in me shall not thirst
No one can come to me
Unless the Father beckons
And I will raise you up 
And I will raise you up 
And I will raise you up 
On the last day.

— Lori Korleski Richardson

What if it is all about the steps?

“For you have rescued my soul from death and my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living.”

Psalm 56:12

The Daily Office readings lately are filled with people walking places. We’ve been hearing the saga of Abraham as he answers God’s call to leave his land of Ur and walk to places he does not know. He goes.

Today in Genesis 21:1-21 Abraham sends Hagar and their son, Ishmael, away because his wife, Sarah is jealous. Abraham, with a heavy heart, complies, and Hagar walks into the desert. Seeing her son nearly die, and angel rescues them, and they walk onward.

In the gospel lessons of late, Jesus is walking all over the countryside and beckoning people to “believe” in him. His invitations raise a question for me: What if we substituted the word “walk” for “believe”? How would that change our understanding of faith?

That is precisely what the Letter to the Hebrews is getting at. Today’s reading from Hebrews 11:13-22 draws on the Abraham story to tell us that faith requires going somewhere, doing something, taking steps. Walking.

“If they had been thinking of the land they left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is a heavenly one.”

In the mystical Gospel of John 6:27-40 on Monday, and again today in John 6:41-51, we’ve been treated to a series of sayings by Jesus about believing:

“Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty…”

“All who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life…”

“Whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life…”

What does Jesus mean by “believe”? Does he mean making an intellectual assent to a series of propositions or abstract philosophical constructions? That might be how Christians church of the 2nd century onward would view this, especially given the influence of Greek philosophy. It is also how many modern Christians would view this.

But Jesus wasn’t Greek and he wasn’t modern. He was Jewish. What if Jesus is getting at a Hebrew idea that is more in keeping with the saga of Abraham? What if he is talking about walking? Here the sayings again this way:

“Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever walks with me will never be thirsty…”

“All who see the Son and walk with him may have eternal life…”

“Whoever walks with me has eternal life. I am the bread of life…”

Maybe it is all about the steps each of us takes. One step at a time. What steps are each of us called to take today? Where are we called to walk?

Art: "Abraham Walking with Isaac" by Marc Chagall, 1931.