Bread From Earth
Sermon
BIBLICAL PICTURES OF BREAD
MESSAGES FOR LENT
And to Adam God said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Genesis 3:17-19
Have you read the Genesis creation story lately? What a fascinating story it is!
Genesis tells the truth about God and the truth about us. That God created this world and everything in it is true. That he created us special, that he made us male and female and gave us everything is also true. But the crust we must always chew on the hardest is the truth of Eden, the story of how Adam and Eve lost Utopia, how they lost the good place to live and the good way to live - and because of that loss they had to struggle, work, and sweat for daily bread.
The story of Adam and Eve in Eden is the story of everyone who has ever lived since. It is the story of you and me. It is the story of living in paradise and losing it because "almost all" wasn't enough. Adam and Eve were given almost everything, but they had to have it all, down to the very last apple. Human greed, human selfishness, yes, even human curiosity won't take "no" tor an answer, even from God. Our human perversity apparently believes that even God's rules are made to be broken: "Don't eat of the tree," says God. "Why not?" says Adam. "What could it hurt?" says Eve. They blew it. They lost the garden; they lost paradise because they had to have it all.
The creation story may be the oldest legend in the history of God's chosen people. As a spoken legend it goes back hundreds and thousands of years before the first books of the Bible were ever written down. There is a much newer story that tells the same sad tale. It was told many thousands of years later by a traveling preacher who claimed to be the Son of God. It is the story of the foolish farmer. (Luke 12:16-20)
The foolish farmer also lost it because he too had to have it all. Having bread enough and to spare wasn't satisfying to him. He had to have it all. He tore down his barns and built new; he expanded his operation; he diversified, multiplied, intensified - and then he absolutely died. He had sent his soul on an extended vacation and it wasn't around when he needed it. "Fool," the story ends, "tonight your soul is required of you, and all the things you have accumulated, whose will they be?"
Well, you and I can answer that one. Who gets the barns and the granaries and the livestock and the fields and the machinery when Grandpa dies? The kids do, that's who. And what do they do with that million dollar estate? They fight over it, that's what - at least they fight over what's left after the government and the lawyers take their cut. It is Adam and Eve all over again. They want to have it all.
When Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden, things changed. We call it Adam's curse. Eve was cursed too, but hers was a different kind of labor. Adam's curse was just plain work:
In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground.
What the story insists on is that working for bread outside the Garden is a whole lot different from enjoying God's fifty-seven varieties on the inside. Our vision of Eden is when Adam and Eve got hungry, they simply plucked a plum or picked a persimmon - like in those lush orchards and truck gardens of California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia.
But bread is different. Bread doesn't grow on trees. The struggle to eat bread is an agricultural struggle out in the field and a culinary struggle in the kitchen. To get bread a husband and wife must plow, plant, cultivate, harvest, thrash, grind, mix, leaven, bake - and even then they may not be ready to sit down and eat until they have churned butter. Bread doesn't grow on trees. It is worked for; it is earned, in the kitchen as well as in the field. No wonder the hippies of the '60s called their money "Bread."
The people who told the story of Eden for all those thousands of years thought bread was Adam's curse. The people who later wrote that story for us to read thought Adam was cursed too, and so do many of us who read the story today. We still think Adam was cursed because he had to go out and sweat his bread out of the dust. God knew better. God knew the man and the woman could never really grow into his image if they simply lived off the fat of the land, if they merely plucked and ate in absolute leisure. God knew work was not Adam's curse. God knew the need to work was going to be Adam's blessing. We call it the work ethic - from Greek ethos, a good custom or habit.
Work is natural to human beings. Sure we grumble that we have to work; sure many of us abuse work; sure some of us tend to be workaholics, but work is natural; work ought to be good. I couldn't even count the number of times I've seen persons or couples reach that "envious position" of not having to work - and then discovering complete leisure to be a curse. If I were to ask you if you actually knew someone who had retired from a busy working life and then quickly withered up and died, wouldn't you have to answer yes? Haven't we all known someone like that?
Maybe you know people like the couple in Texas who, even though they were very wealthy, seemed to enjoy living in a middle-class neighborhood. But then they engaged architects and began to build this fantastic $250,000 house on the river. Everything about it was special. She even flew to France to pick out provincial furniture for it. And just when the house was all built and the furniture had come to Houston by boat and the rest of the way by truck, just when everything was in place, just when she seemed to have everything a woman could even dream of - just then they were divorced.
Another couple in Oregon moved there from California right after World War II. When they arrived in town, they had $12, his plasterer's tools, an old pickup truck, a tent, and two little kids. They camped in the city park for three months while he earned enough to save some rent money. They rented for a year or so and then bought a little cabin on an acreage just out of town. There they lived and there they ran his business. From then on they expanded the business and added on to the house until you couldn't even remember what the original cabin looked like. Everything seemed fine. They were soon grossing over a half million, then a million dollars in contracts each year. He supervised the crews; she kept the books and answered the phone. Everything was fine until he discovered that he didn't really need to work anymore. He hired a foreman. He also hired a secretary-bookkeeper to replace his wife. Then they were divorced.
Now surely you and I know that staying married or getting divorced is much more complicated than simply working together or not working together. But that's a big part of it. The minute Adam and Eve were out of the garden, out on their own, working together, all of a sudden they began to feel a sense of family. The very next chapter after Adam's so-called curse begins with these words:
Then Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain ...
Now right here we could enoy a small joke about raising Cain, but what's obvious is that work creates a sense of family. Adam and Eve needed someone to work for, and someone to work with, and someone to carry on the work after they were gone. Knowing they would someday be gone was part of the curse. The loss of Eden was also the loss of eternity. When Adam and Eve stepped out of Eden, they began to hoe that long furrow toward death. There had been another special tree in the Garden, the tree of life. They couldn't have both the knowledge of good and evil and eternal life. Adam's curse was not the curse of work, but rather the curse of sin and death - and the loss of eternity.
Many people today live in the same mucky curse. Their lives are a miserable curse of sin and death with no hope for eternity, no vision of anything but that long furrow which becomes a rut,
which becomes a valley, which becomes a canyon - a furrow, a rut, a canyon which end in dusty death: the valley of the shadow.
The struggle for bread is the human struggle. We learn from that struggle that we do not live by bread alone. Sure, we need the struggle; sure, the work ethic comes from God; sure, we need to work, but we need more than work. A life-long working career, either in the home or out of it, reminds us that we are mortal, that youth passed to middle age and then to old age. Work reminds us of the truth in the old gospel song, "work for the night is coming." We learn that even if we invest a whole lifetime in work and do very well at it, the night still comes. There is no real profit in gaining the whole world if we lose our own souls.
The message of the church from Genesis and from Jesus' story of the foolish farmer is that although there can be great joy in earning our own bread, there is another joy and another bread. There is a king of Joy who says, "I am the bread of life," and there is also a suffering servant who says, "This bread is my body."
This king and this servant are one in the same man. This God, this man called Jesus, offers himself to us as the bread of life. In him we find strength for work, strength for worship, strength for marriage, strength for the family - strength and hope and joy and fulfillment, now and forever.
Extending the Message in the Church Community
Print or insert this idea in the worship folder on the day or evening that the first "bread sermon" is shared at church:
Do a "whole-loaf checkbook check"
Our teenagers sometimes speak of "bread" when talking about money. In the modern world our "bread" is something we receive through energy and effort. Why not do a "whole-loaf checkbook check" sometime this week. Sit down with your checkbook. Divide all the items for which money was disbursed, including each in one of several categories. When you're finished, calculate percentages: what percent was spent last month for food? for shelter? for security? for recreation? for benevolence?
Now, with your findings jotted on a slip of paper, sit down as a family, with a loaf of bread. Divide the loaf into stacks approximately the size of the percentages. How many slices are there in your "food" stack? In your "clothing" stack? Your "transportation" stack?
Does love of God - benevolence and gifts - show up enough to be significant?
Discuss your learnings. Talk about priorities. Give thanks to God for giving you the energy, skill, opportunity and imagination to earn the bread which keeps you and your family going.
Then eat at least some of the bread together.
Have you read the Genesis creation story lately? What a fascinating story it is!
Genesis tells the truth about God and the truth about us. That God created this world and everything in it is true. That he created us special, that he made us male and female and gave us everything is also true. But the crust we must always chew on the hardest is the truth of Eden, the story of how Adam and Eve lost Utopia, how they lost the good place to live and the good way to live - and because of that loss they had to struggle, work, and sweat for daily bread.
The story of Adam and Eve in Eden is the story of everyone who has ever lived since. It is the story of you and me. It is the story of living in paradise and losing it because "almost all" wasn't enough. Adam and Eve were given almost everything, but they had to have it all, down to the very last apple. Human greed, human selfishness, yes, even human curiosity won't take "no" tor an answer, even from God. Our human perversity apparently believes that even God's rules are made to be broken: "Don't eat of the tree," says God. "Why not?" says Adam. "What could it hurt?" says Eve. They blew it. They lost the garden; they lost paradise because they had to have it all.
The creation story may be the oldest legend in the history of God's chosen people. As a spoken legend it goes back hundreds and thousands of years before the first books of the Bible were ever written down. There is a much newer story that tells the same sad tale. It was told many thousands of years later by a traveling preacher who claimed to be the Son of God. It is the story of the foolish farmer. (Luke 12:16-20)
The foolish farmer also lost it because he too had to have it all. Having bread enough and to spare wasn't satisfying to him. He had to have it all. He tore down his barns and built new; he expanded his operation; he diversified, multiplied, intensified - and then he absolutely died. He had sent his soul on an extended vacation and it wasn't around when he needed it. "Fool," the story ends, "tonight your soul is required of you, and all the things you have accumulated, whose will they be?"
Well, you and I can answer that one. Who gets the barns and the granaries and the livestock and the fields and the machinery when Grandpa dies? The kids do, that's who. And what do they do with that million dollar estate? They fight over it, that's what - at least they fight over what's left after the government and the lawyers take their cut. It is Adam and Eve all over again. They want to have it all.
When Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden, things changed. We call it Adam's curse. Eve was cursed too, but hers was a different kind of labor. Adam's curse was just plain work:
In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground.
What the story insists on is that working for bread outside the Garden is a whole lot different from enjoying God's fifty-seven varieties on the inside. Our vision of Eden is when Adam and Eve got hungry, they simply plucked a plum or picked a persimmon - like in those lush orchards and truck gardens of California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia.
But bread is different. Bread doesn't grow on trees. The struggle to eat bread is an agricultural struggle out in the field and a culinary struggle in the kitchen. To get bread a husband and wife must plow, plant, cultivate, harvest, thrash, grind, mix, leaven, bake - and even then they may not be ready to sit down and eat until they have churned butter. Bread doesn't grow on trees. It is worked for; it is earned, in the kitchen as well as in the field. No wonder the hippies of the '60s called their money "Bread."
The people who told the story of Eden for all those thousands of years thought bread was Adam's curse. The people who later wrote that story for us to read thought Adam was cursed too, and so do many of us who read the story today. We still think Adam was cursed because he had to go out and sweat his bread out of the dust. God knew better. God knew the man and the woman could never really grow into his image if they simply lived off the fat of the land, if they merely plucked and ate in absolute leisure. God knew work was not Adam's curse. God knew the need to work was going to be Adam's blessing. We call it the work ethic - from Greek ethos, a good custom or habit.
Work is natural to human beings. Sure we grumble that we have to work; sure many of us abuse work; sure some of us tend to be workaholics, but work is natural; work ought to be good. I couldn't even count the number of times I've seen persons or couples reach that "envious position" of not having to work - and then discovering complete leisure to be a curse. If I were to ask you if you actually knew someone who had retired from a busy working life and then quickly withered up and died, wouldn't you have to answer yes? Haven't we all known someone like that?
Maybe you know people like the couple in Texas who, even though they were very wealthy, seemed to enjoy living in a middle-class neighborhood. But then they engaged architects and began to build this fantastic $250,000 house on the river. Everything about it was special. She even flew to France to pick out provincial furniture for it. And just when the house was all built and the furniture had come to Houston by boat and the rest of the way by truck, just when everything was in place, just when she seemed to have everything a woman could even dream of - just then they were divorced.
Another couple in Oregon moved there from California right after World War II. When they arrived in town, they had $12, his plasterer's tools, an old pickup truck, a tent, and two little kids. They camped in the city park for three months while he earned enough to save some rent money. They rented for a year or so and then bought a little cabin on an acreage just out of town. There they lived and there they ran his business. From then on they expanded the business and added on to the house until you couldn't even remember what the original cabin looked like. Everything seemed fine. They were soon grossing over a half million, then a million dollars in contracts each year. He supervised the crews; she kept the books and answered the phone. Everything was fine until he discovered that he didn't really need to work anymore. He hired a foreman. He also hired a secretary-bookkeeper to replace his wife. Then they were divorced.
Now surely you and I know that staying married or getting divorced is much more complicated than simply working together or not working together. But that's a big part of it. The minute Adam and Eve were out of the garden, out on their own, working together, all of a sudden they began to feel a sense of family. The very next chapter after Adam's so-called curse begins with these words:
Then Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain ...
Now right here we could enoy a small joke about raising Cain, but what's obvious is that work creates a sense of family. Adam and Eve needed someone to work for, and someone to work with, and someone to carry on the work after they were gone. Knowing they would someday be gone was part of the curse. The loss of Eden was also the loss of eternity. When Adam and Eve stepped out of Eden, they began to hoe that long furrow toward death. There had been another special tree in the Garden, the tree of life. They couldn't have both the knowledge of good and evil and eternal life. Adam's curse was not the curse of work, but rather the curse of sin and death - and the loss of eternity.
Many people today live in the same mucky curse. Their lives are a miserable curse of sin and death with no hope for eternity, no vision of anything but that long furrow which becomes a rut,
which becomes a valley, which becomes a canyon - a furrow, a rut, a canyon which end in dusty death: the valley of the shadow.
The struggle for bread is the human struggle. We learn from that struggle that we do not live by bread alone. Sure, we need the struggle; sure, the work ethic comes from God; sure, we need to work, but we need more than work. A life-long working career, either in the home or out of it, reminds us that we are mortal, that youth passed to middle age and then to old age. Work reminds us of the truth in the old gospel song, "work for the night is coming." We learn that even if we invest a whole lifetime in work and do very well at it, the night still comes. There is no real profit in gaining the whole world if we lose our own souls.
The message of the church from Genesis and from Jesus' story of the foolish farmer is that although there can be great joy in earning our own bread, there is another joy and another bread. There is a king of Joy who says, "I am the bread of life," and there is also a suffering servant who says, "This bread is my body."
This king and this servant are one in the same man. This God, this man called Jesus, offers himself to us as the bread of life. In him we find strength for work, strength for worship, strength for marriage, strength for the family - strength and hope and joy and fulfillment, now and forever.
Extending the Message in the Church Community
Print or insert this idea in the worship folder on the day or evening that the first "bread sermon" is shared at church:
Do a "whole-loaf checkbook check"
Our teenagers sometimes speak of "bread" when talking about money. In the modern world our "bread" is something we receive through energy and effort. Why not do a "whole-loaf checkbook check" sometime this week. Sit down with your checkbook. Divide all the items for which money was disbursed, including each in one of several categories. When you're finished, calculate percentages: what percent was spent last month for food? for shelter? for security? for recreation? for benevolence?
Now, with your findings jotted on a slip of paper, sit down as a family, with a loaf of bread. Divide the loaf into stacks approximately the size of the percentages. How many slices are there in your "food" stack? In your "clothing" stack? Your "transportation" stack?
Does love of God - benevolence and gifts - show up enough to be significant?
Discuss your learnings. Talk about priorities. Give thanks to God for giving you the energy, skill, opportunity and imagination to earn the bread which keeps you and your family going.
Then eat at least some of the bread together.
