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St. Andrew's Church
An Anglican Church • Grimsby, Ontario, Canada
Preached by
Stuart Pike
Rector
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Proper 19 B - The Bread of Life
2 Samuel 18: 5-9, 15, 31-33
John 6: 35, 41-51
St. Andrew's Church, Grimsby
13 August, 2006
A week and a day ago my family and I went to a community breakfast at the Pioneer Days Festival in our previous parish in Gaspé, Quebec. We knew that it would be the best way to see many of our previous parishioners and we certainly were not disappointed. We met many of them there including a dear, gentle widow named Edna who makes the best bread in the world. I'm sure that most of us have had the heavenly experience of smelling real home-made bread baking in the oven. It is an experience which bypasses the cerebral cortex and makes a direct connection with the soul. For many it is the smell of home.
I remember the first time that I ever set foot in Edna's kitchen many years ago. Like in many of the country homes in Gaspé, it was a large kitchen - it is the place where the life of the family was really lived, after all. It had a big old electric stove on the eastern wall and an even larger and much older wood stove on the western wall. It was in the wood stove that Edna baked her bread. There was no thermostat in that stove: after building the fire on one side of the stove she would know it was ready by just opening the door of the stove and placing her hand in the oven for a moment.
Real, old-fashioned bread-making is about as basic as it gets. Simple ingredients, the miracle of yeast, mixing and kneading the dough, giving it time to rise, hands-on - punching down and kneading again: it's a creative act which gives life. It's elemental - like the first principle of fire which bakes Edna's bread and makes the aroma in her kitchen unlike any other I have ever experienced. It is home and health and life and family: it is bread. And it is always shared.
In Jesus' time bread really was a staple: it was a whole meal. Bread sustained you. And it is the image which Jesus uses to describe himself and his purpose. "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty."
At the same time that we were visiting last week with Edna and my other parishioners in Gaspé, in the Middle East, not that far from where Jesus spoke these words, people were dying in renewed violence which has caught up Jews and Christians and Muslims in Israel and Lebanon. They are still dying now.
It is incredible the stark contrast between Jesus' words of life and love and relationship, and the bitter hatred which currently exists in the so-called holy land.
The seeds of that hatred have been fed by the violence handed down from generation to generation. People's attention has been focussed on revenge and not on peace. And all of this despite the fact that the focus of all of those religions is on peace and right relationship among people and between people and God.
I think that a large part of the violence that has become a reality in our world has to do with the fact that many people are hungering. They hunger for dignity, where they feel no dignity. They hunger for possessions and simply the place to exist in the midst of physical poverty They hunger for life in the midst of death.
We in the west, with all of our wealth, are still hungering for more. We have even come to believe the heartless message of our culture: that we are simply consumers and not really people at all - with souls and creativity, with a purpose whose lives are supposed to be filled with meaning.
And so, whether we live in the East or the Middle East or the West: whether we are rich or poor, living in relative peace or violence: we hunger.
We have forgotten about the basics of life. We have forgotten to be thankful for what we have. We have forgotten Jesus' message that only spiritual things will fill our deepest hunger and that the best things in life aren't things - but relationships. We have forgotten that life is about bread and about sharing. How can we remember all these simple truths which we have forgotten? How can we follow Jesus' example and be bread for this sorry and hungry world?
"Edna", I asked her, "Are you still making bread in that wood stove of yours?" And she smiled her gentle smile and said, "Oh yes." And I think she might just have wondered why I would have asked her this question which had such an obvious answer. Amen.
