You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
I love bread. I love bread so much, I gave it up for Lent one year. If my metabolism allowed, I would start every day with a basket of French rolls, butter and jam. (But I’d soon look like a French roll.) Bread is the staff of life, but not the Life Jesus invites us into.
In this week’s story, the people looking for Jesus want this “bread from heaven” he talks about, and they think Jesus just might have access. But they want a guarantee before they trust him. So when he says they are to believe in him as sent by God, they reply, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”
You’d think the miracle of the loaves and fishes would have been sign enough, but they wanted God to do what God had done before. It’s often our tendency to look for blessing in the last place we found it, and in the same form. In my experience, God rarely goes back over the same ground. The trajectory of the Life of God is forward, to new life.
So Jesus tells them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
They were more interested in the temporal bread than the eternal. In fairness, having enough to eat is an urgent matter for an occupied, oppressed, over-taxed populace. Yet feeding the hungry was not what Jesus was up to. He told his followers to do that. He came to nourish souls starved for the presence of the Living God. He came to invite everyone to God’s banqueting table, and to clear the obstacles that kept people away. His priority was to proclaim the reign of God in which generosity and justice flourish so broadly, everyone will be welcome at the table and fed in abundance.
We too are called to proclaim the bread that gives life. It's great that so many churches are involved in sharing food with those who hunger; that is part of the Gospel life. Yet the invitation to us as Christ followers is to be as much or more involved in sharing Jesus, who called himself the Bread of Life – introducing people to Jesus as we know him, feeding thirsty spirits and broken hearts, inviting people to feast on him in Word and sacrament. Who can you think of who is hungry for the bread of Life? How might you offer it to that person?
That is the bread we will feast on in eternity. It will never run out, and it will never make us fat, only full.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Showing posts with label bread. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bread. Show all posts
4-20-23 - Breaking Bread
You can listen to this reflection here.
“Lord Jesus, stay with us, for evening is at hand and the day is past…” So begins a well-loved prayer from the Episcopal service of Compline, or “night prayer.” It comes from this week’s Gospel story. The two disciples do not recognize Jesus, despite his insight and authority on sacred history, but they want to continue conversation with him, to remain in his presence. Even as they reach their destination, and he is preparing to walk on, they urge him to stay:
As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him…
Something about Jesus’ resurrection body must have been different – in nearly every post-Easter appearance we read in the Gospels, people who knew and loved Jesus did not recognize him until he did or said something familiar. At the supper table that night in Emmaus, when Jesus took the bread, blessed, broke and gave it to them, they suddenly saw who it was they’d spent the afternoon with. How often had they seen him bless and break bread – when they fed 5,000 people on a hillside with five loaves and two fish; when they’d gathered only a few nights earlier for the Passover feast. Such strange words had accompanied that action: “Take, eat. This is my body, given for you. Whenever you eat this bread, do it in remembrance of me.” The familiar action made manifest the holy.
Breaking bread is a universal rite of community, whether at meal time, to celebrate a special occasion, to reconvene family or reconcile the estranged. It became a central act for Christian communities, not only the Eucharistic blessing, breaking and sharing, but also as a common meal celebrating the people gathered.
At our Eucharistic feast, the bread is a symbol of Christ’s body. It is broken so as to be shared, given away, as his life was. So, too, the community (also the Body of Christ) is broken apart after worship to feed the world. As a friend once described the eucharist: “You give us this little piece of bread, and we give it away all week, and come back for more.” Yes. And when next the Body comes back together, reconstituted, there is a new loaf of bread to be broken. And on it goes, this breaking and making whole in Jesus’ name.
With what do you associate the breaking of bread? What are the holy feasts in your life? They may not be centered around worship, but around family or holidays or celebrations – picnics, banquets. Do you think of Jesus when the bread in those feasts is broken and shared? Such moments can become a quotidian reminder that his presence is a promise to us, a daily invitation to enter his brokenness and his wholeness.
Maybe you would like to make that Compline prayer part of your end-of-day practice:
“Lord Jesus, stay with us, for evening is at hand and the day is past…” So begins a well-loved prayer from the Episcopal service of Compline, or “night prayer.” It comes from this week’s Gospel story. The two disciples do not recognize Jesus, despite his insight and authority on sacred history, but they want to continue conversation with him, to remain in his presence. Even as they reach their destination, and he is preparing to walk on, they urge him to stay:
As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him…
Something about Jesus’ resurrection body must have been different – in nearly every post-Easter appearance we read in the Gospels, people who knew and loved Jesus did not recognize him until he did or said something familiar. At the supper table that night in Emmaus, when Jesus took the bread, blessed, broke and gave it to them, they suddenly saw who it was they’d spent the afternoon with. How often had they seen him bless and break bread – when they fed 5,000 people on a hillside with five loaves and two fish; when they’d gathered only a few nights earlier for the Passover feast. Such strange words had accompanied that action: “Take, eat. This is my body, given for you. Whenever you eat this bread, do it in remembrance of me.” The familiar action made manifest the holy.
Breaking bread is a universal rite of community, whether at meal time, to celebrate a special occasion, to reconvene family or reconcile the estranged. It became a central act for Christian communities, not only the Eucharistic blessing, breaking and sharing, but also as a common meal celebrating the people gathered.
At our Eucharistic feast, the bread is a symbol of Christ’s body. It is broken so as to be shared, given away, as his life was. So, too, the community (also the Body of Christ) is broken apart after worship to feed the world. As a friend once described the eucharist: “You give us this little piece of bread, and we give it away all week, and come back for more.” Yes. And when next the Body comes back together, reconstituted, there is a new loaf of bread to be broken. And on it goes, this breaking and making whole in Jesus’ name.
With what do you associate the breaking of bread? What are the holy feasts in your life? They may not be centered around worship, but around family or holidays or celebrations – picnics, banquets. Do you think of Jesus when the bread in those feasts is broken and shared? Such moments can become a quotidian reminder that his presence is a promise to us, a daily invitation to enter his brokenness and his wholeness.
Maybe you would like to make that Compline prayer part of your end-of-day practice:
Lord Jesus, stay with us, for evening is at hand and the day is past; be our companion in the way, kindle our hearts, and awaken hope, that we may know you as you are revealed in Scripture and the breaking of bread. Grant this for the sake of your love. Amen.
For the sake of his love, he has already granted that prayer. That way is ready for us to walk in.
For the sake of his love, he has already granted that prayer. That way is ready for us to walk in.
7-28-21 - The Bread That Gives Life
You can listen to this reflection here.
I love bread. I love bread so much, I gave it up for Lent one year. If my metabolism allowed, I would start every day with a basket of French rolls, butter and jam, and work bread into lunch and dinner too. (But I’d soon look like a French roll.) Bread is the staff of life, but not the Life Jesus invites us into.
In this week’s story, the people looking for Jesus want bread from heaven, and they think Jesus might just have access. But they want a guarantee before they trust him. So when he says they are to believe in him as sent by God, they reply, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”
You’d think the miracle of the loaves and fishes would have been sign enough, but they wanted God to do what God had done before. It’s often our tendency, when we’ve been blessed, to look for blessing in the last place we found it, and in the same form. In my experience, God rarely goes back over the same ground. The trajectory of the Life of God is forward, to new life.
So Jesus tells them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
They were more interested in the temporal bread than the eternal. In fairness, having enough to eat is an urgent matter for an occupied, oppressed, over-taxed populace. Yet feeding the hungry was not what Jesus was up to. He told his followers to do that. He came to nourish souls starved for the presence of the Living God. He came to invite everyone to God’s banqueting table, and to clear the obstacles that kept people away. His priority was to proclaim the reign of God in which generosity and justice flourish so broadly, everyone will be welcome at the table and fed in abundance.
We too are called to proclaim the bread that gives life. It's great that so many churches are involved in the sharing of food with those who hunger; that is part of the Gospel life. Yet the invitation to us as Christ followers is to be as much or more involved in sharing Jesus, who called himself the Bread of Life – introducing people to Jesus as we know him, feeding thirsty spirits and broken hearts, inviting people to feast on him in Word and sacrament. Who can you think of who is hungry for the bread of Life? How might you offer it to that person?
That is the bread we will feast on in eternity. It will never run out, and it will never make us fat, only full.
I love bread. I love bread so much, I gave it up for Lent one year. If my metabolism allowed, I would start every day with a basket of French rolls, butter and jam, and work bread into lunch and dinner too. (But I’d soon look like a French roll.) Bread is the staff of life, but not the Life Jesus invites us into.
In this week’s story, the people looking for Jesus want bread from heaven, and they think Jesus might just have access. But they want a guarantee before they trust him. So when he says they are to believe in him as sent by God, they reply, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”
You’d think the miracle of the loaves and fishes would have been sign enough, but they wanted God to do what God had done before. It’s often our tendency, when we’ve been blessed, to look for blessing in the last place we found it, and in the same form. In my experience, God rarely goes back over the same ground. The trajectory of the Life of God is forward, to new life.
So Jesus tells them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
They were more interested in the temporal bread than the eternal. In fairness, having enough to eat is an urgent matter for an occupied, oppressed, over-taxed populace. Yet feeding the hungry was not what Jesus was up to. He told his followers to do that. He came to nourish souls starved for the presence of the Living God. He came to invite everyone to God’s banqueting table, and to clear the obstacles that kept people away. His priority was to proclaim the reign of God in which generosity and justice flourish so broadly, everyone will be welcome at the table and fed in abundance.
We too are called to proclaim the bread that gives life. It's great that so many churches are involved in the sharing of food with those who hunger; that is part of the Gospel life. Yet the invitation to us as Christ followers is to be as much or more involved in sharing Jesus, who called himself the Bread of Life – introducing people to Jesus as we know him, feeding thirsty spirits and broken hearts, inviting people to feast on him in Word and sacrament. Who can you think of who is hungry for the bread of Life? How might you offer it to that person?
That is the bread we will feast on in eternity. It will never run out, and it will never make us fat, only full.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)