So one thing I used to do in seminary was make bread. All sorts of different kinds, but mainly the kind we used for communion at the Chapel of All Saints where seminarians worshipped. I actually got quite good at it, especially my buttermilk biscuits and French rolls.
So, given that we are in the midst of Jesus' “Bread of Life Discourse,” I thought that if I made some bread for today while meditating on all of his “Bread of Life” statements, I would be inspired and be able to stand up here and tell you all about the ingredients coming from God and the kneading and folding of the dough and the rising to new life, and the oven being the place where God keeps us warm, and how we are each taking in Jesus when we eat... well, you get the point. I was even going to hold up, as a visual aid, a perfect loaf of French bread, made by my own two hands.
You will notice I don't have that bread here with me today. And not because I ate it.
No, you see, things didn't go as planned.
Now bread making is not like cake baking, you don't have to get every ingredient measured out exactly and follow the recipe exactly and exactly time the oven which is at the exact temperature. Bread making is a bit more forgiving. And while you do need a recipe, for the most part it's more of an art form. You have to use your eyes to watch for changes in the dough, and you have to use your nose to smell for subtle changes in the sponge, that yeasty, glueteny mixture that you ad the flour to. And you have to use your fingers to judge springiness or wetness. Even the ears come into play when you let a lump of dough hit the working surface and see how it sounds: thud or splat or when you deflate the dough, was it a long hiss or a little burp?
Well, I got started, had my sponge going and was adding the flour to it, and I turned out the mixture to the table, and started kneading. And I was going along and something wasn't feeling quite right, so I added some more flour, and the dough started cracking, so I added water, and the dough started forming into a big giant dumpling. This is not how this is supposed to go, and I've done this a hundred times, more or less the same way. But I thought, well, I'm this far in, let's see what happens.
So I set it to rise. And I waited, and I waited, and I waited. Usually, in the bowl I use, covered in a towel, I can tell when it's ready because the towel puffs out with the risen dough pressing on it. But this time, nothing.
And I turned the dough out and “Thunk!” It just sat there, looking all sad like some kid's try at making a clay ashtray, though they probably don't make ashtrays anymore.
And I realized that the thing that was bugging me the whole time, the thing in the back of my head, was that the yeast had died. My jar of yeast had been in the fridge for a long time, long before the Catos and I stopped with the gluten. And I suppose it have finally given up the ghost. It was not doing what yeast does; it was not giving life to the bread.
We don't think about yeast much in our lives. Most of the time we aren't working with it, and we mostly depend on others to keep our bread needs met with light fluffy Wonder Bread happiness or all those sad Ezekiel loaves of despair, that I'm convinced have tiny bits of gravel in them. But yeast is important . Especially if you are living in ancient Israel.
They used a sort of sourdough yeasty mixture. And they had to feed it constantly to keep the yeasts in it alive. When were in Israel, Brooks and I found a bread shop in the old city where an Arab family had used and fed the same yeast mixture for over three centuries.
And the knowledge and the yeast were handed down from generation to generation.
And I stared down at that pitiful, miserable lump of gummy, gluteny, indiscribable mess on my counter, I began to think the whole concept of yeast gets lost in the Bread of Life discourse. We spend all our time focusing on how John's Jesus is telling us about what we've come to understand as Eucharist, and how so many of the Jews at the time were taking what Jesus said about eating his flesh and drinking his blood literally. And how they were letting what they literally heard get in way of a new way of thinking about liberation and the Kingdom of God.
But there's more to this whole bread thing than just a freeing Eucharist versus a complete misunderstandig. If Jesus is the bread then maybe it is the Spirit of God moving through him that gives rise, like yeast, to those changes that make flour change to life-giving food. And if we are all members of the Body of Christ, then maybe that yeasty Spirit works within us, too, to make us change and give life to others. Maybe it is that yeast, when it is fresh and living, that gives us the ability to discern what a true relationship with God really entails.
And like the soupy yeasty mixture used in the middle east, we need to keep feeding it, we need to care for it, to watch over it, to nurture it. We need to turn to God, like Solomon, and say, “Lord, help me care for this thing you have given me, for it is truly wisdom. The wisdom that comes from living in you and you in me. Wisdom that comes from using all our senses to knead and fold and shape our lives. Wisdom that comes from prayer and trust in God. Wisdom that comes from book learning and school leaning, yes, but by letting that learning mix with the Spirit of God within us, so that we know how to use what we know to serve others we know... and others we don't know. A wisdom that looks at the word around us and sees Creation. A wisdom that looks at people around us and sees the image of God. A wisdom that looks at children around us and sees a pathway to the Eternal Kingdom.
My first year up here, I got a call from a person I didn't know, completely out of the blue and random. And this person had a relative who had been convicted of a crime. And they wanted to know if I would go up to Rome to visit the prisoner because they didn't have a church and didn't know anyone. Sure, I said, and I did just that. It was a long drive for something that probably wasn't going to benefit anyone, I thought. And man, was it confusing trying to get where I needed to be and do what I needed to do and stand where I needed to stand. But eventually, a long time later, there we were, just talking. And when it was over I said a prayer and left. And, to this day, I have no idea what's happened to that person since. But I feel like maybe I sprinkled his life with a tiny bit of spiritual yeast. And maybe someone else, some other pastor or some other inmate, will feed it. And maybe something good will eventually occur.
I don't know. That's how it is with yeast. You have to wait and see.
But that's ok. So, be that yeast, let that love rise. Go out of here feeding that life-giving Spirit in others and renewing the Spirit in ourselves. We are all the body of Christ, we are all the Bread of Life. Let us fill the lives of others with that Bread, so that they will never be hungry again.
Amen.