Redirected Vision: Bread of Life Pt. 3

Imagine a society where, instead of baking bread for hungry people, they produced mass quantities of pictures of bread and posted ads for them at every corner, and handbills were given out with pictures of different types of bread, hundreds of different types of bread. Pictures of wheat bread, pumpernickel, Jewish rye, banana bread, croissants, sheepherders bread, bread sticks, garlic bread…heck, even melba toast.

Now imagine that these images of bread not only became the dominant mode of exchange (some hoarding these pictures, others spending them as fast as they could get them), but were actually consumed on a daily basis despite the fact that they had no nutritional value whatsoever.

Imagine that, besides the handbills, posters and billboards which depicted the pictures of bread, the evening television news consisted of discussions and international debates over which of these pictures of bread were worth the most, and which were declining in value or had become disreputable as a true picture of bread. Imagine witnessing special interest groups arguing and protesting the advantages and disadvantages of consuming their particular type of bread-pictures. And, of course, in such a world, litigation would be intense over who had the actual rights to each type of bread picture, and there would often be disputes over counterfeit pictures or poor foreign copies had infiltrated the market.

And the entire time that men and women were viewing these billboards, wheat was growing up around the posts. And wherever they stapled posters, streams gurgled by with yeast cultures forming in the shallows and the sun.

What would you make of such a society?

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Have you noticed that despite the boom in communications technology, people are less and less likely to talk with each other? They talk at each other. They posture, hold their opinions, do their business, but people no longer meet at the city gate and talk with each other. They stay in their darkened apartments and houses and stare at one of the 63 channels on their viewscreen. Their real needs for life are appeased and deflected as they are vicariously run through basic emotional experiences by what they view. And all the while, as they attempt to feed on these empty images, the wheat grows up around the posts, and the streams gurgle by with yeast cultures forming in the shallows and the sun.

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Much of the modern church would feed us pictures of bread instead of inviting us to meet the Bread of Life Himself.

Let’s disappoint them, shall we?

Redirected Vision: Bread of Life Pt. 1

Unleavened bread. Image courtesy of the Cook Almost Anything blog.

Bread is both the most ordinary substance and sustenance; and the most sublime symbol and sign of the ineffable. As God’s own heart and way is perfectly revealed in His Son there is no separation between the sacred and the secular. All is sacred, from the worship of high church, to the eating of simple bread.

It was after traveling with Jesus along the road to Emmaus, and not recognizing him, that two men discussed with Him the days events including all matters concerning one Jesus of Nazareth. After careful explanation (there would be no talk of “that’s just your interpretation…”) of how the Moses and the Prophets pointed to this Messiah, the two men urged Jesus to stay with them.

In the blessing of the simple bread their “eyes were opened and they recognized Him.”

“Recognizing” is literally “re-cognition”…a “re-knowing”. They already knew Jesus but were unable to see that it was Him until the bread was broken. Then they spoke after he left them about how their hearts burned inside of them as “He was speaking to us on the road.”

So it can be in the breaking of Bread. Far from our once-monthly and even weekly communion services, it seems Jesus had something more organic and daily in mind when He promised to be our Bread, laid the only request for provison in His prayer for bread, used it as the symbol for His body and fed the crowd on Passover with five barley loaves and two small fish.

More instructive was the fact that St. John makes note that they are made of barley, the “meanest” of all breads, often used to feed animals or used as an offering for the sins of prostitutes.

As it was the Passover, the bread would be unleaven (made without yeast to make it rise and multiply in it’s simple fashion). Such bread was eaten for seven days and was called the “bread of affliction” because it was a tangible reminder of the Jews fleeing the slavery of Egypt into the desert because they had not had the time to grab the leaven (yeast). They had only so much time to plunder the Egyptians. In the wilderness they ate unleavened bread for 40 years, and also manna, a daily bread provided from God that could not be stored.

It was with these notions of bread that 5,000 Jews came to Jesus during the Passover and where He broke the bread, gave thanks and began to distribute it. More than any leaven, this miracle not only fed the 5,000, there were twelve baskets of leftovers from the original five barley loaves.

Jesus leaves after the people get excited and wish to make Him the Bread King.

Once on the other side of the Sea of Galilee (in Capernaum) Jesus finds that many have races around the rim of the Sea to meet him.

Is it because they have realized He is their Passover lamb? Is it because they realize He is their Manna come down from heaven?

No. They want more bread.

Like the woman who wanted the living water so she would not have to come daily and draw from Jacob’s Well, they want bread on demand…not the One to Whom the sign points to as the “the bread of life” Himself.

I doubt we would have done any better, or do.

The key issue is believing in Him. That is the invitation of John 6 and also the promise that all can “do with the works of God” because the worlk of God is simply to believe.

Part 2 to come.