Bread For The Journey
Worship
Bread for the Journey
A High-Carb, Multisensory Lenten Worship Series
Object:
Some of the best memories I have as a child are associated with the sense of smell. I grew up living a block away from my grandparents and loved a certain cookie that Grandma would bake. Whenever I taste and smell those cookies today, the memories come flooding back. About a mile from our house was the Gardner Baking Company, and if the wind was just right, you could smell the bread baking in their ovens. It was delicious. Many children today do not have memories like that. We don't do as much baking in our homes today. This is one of the simple pleasures in life -- the smell of fresh baked bread. Cutting a slice of hot bread and smothering it with butter and honey -- it just doesn't get any better than that.
I met Tulla just after I arrived at my internship church. It was a wonderful church that took its role of training future pastors seriously. Tulla was an eighty-year-old widow of sturdy Danish stock. Being a young single man, she assumed that I really didn't know how to take care of myself; so she offered to wash my clothes for me. I didn't have the heart to refuse her. When she delivered my clothes, in the clothesbasket would be a couple loaves of homemade bread. Her bread was so delicious that after a few months I asked her to teach me how to make it. I became good at baking bread and I experimented with different recipes.
In former times, bread was not just a part of the meal. It was the meal. We're not talking about the kinds of processed bread you can buy today, but the kind of bread you sink your teeth into, that gives your jaw some exercise when you chew it. Substantial bread gives strength for a day's labor. This kind of bread was called the "staff of life," something to support and sustain us on our journey through life.
That's the kind of bread we have in our reading from Genesis 3:19. "By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return." We are on a journey, from dust to dust. God formed Adam and Eve from the dust of the ground. They died and returned to the dust of the ground. In between, it was the bread they ate that sustained them. And it sustains us. We live and love, we work and labor, we sweat to earn the money to put bread on our tables -- bread for the journey, from dust to dust.
During these forty days of Lent, we are on a journey to the cross with Jesus. Our theme is "Bread for the Journey." We will eat bread, and we will be fed the Bread of Life. We will look at what the Bible has to say about bread and see how bread was present at the most significant events of the Old and New Testaments. Bread was there at the beginning when Adam and Eve fell into sin. God cursed them and said to them, "By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return." Adam and Eve's sin is our sin that we confess this night. It is our "age old rebellion," the desire to be God, to be in control and in charge, to decide for ourselves our future and what is right and wrong, to have no other masters telling us what to do.
Tonight we confess that we are not in charge, that we are not gods in control of our own destiny. We are dust, and to dust we shall return. We are reminded of that tonight, and we are reminded of that each time we stand at a graveside and hear those words, "earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust." We are creation, not creator. We are in bondage to sin, in need of a Savior. We look at the world around us and see the impact of sin -- war and disease, hatred and violence, hunger and poverty, broken relationships and broken homes, people struggling with addictions and lifelong dysfunction. On this day we cannot wink at sin or laugh it off. Tonight we come to the cross with all our sinfulness. We return to the Lord with all our hearts.
Bread is a symbol of our lives. It has a journey of its own. It begins as a stalk of wheat, which at harvest time is cut down, its berries ripped from the stalk. The grain is crushed and ground together at the mill. The baker mixes and kneads and punches the dough. It's thrown into a hot oven and baked. These are words of violence and death, and yet through this process, wheat is transformed into something that gives life, nourishment, and strength to our bodies. Bread is a symbol of our lives. Its story is our story. We are never far from the experience of death. Its power touches our lives. Sometimes life cuts us down, rips us apart, and crushes us. But God is able to take whatever experience we have and make it into something new, like bread, something that gives us strength and hope and new life.
That is what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. The Bread of Life is the body of Christ, "wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities" (Isaiah 53:5). God took the evil and violence of the cross and transformed it into something that gives life, strength, and hope for the world. In Christ's death and resurrection, we are now offered the Bread of Life. It is bread for the journey, bread for this life and for all eternity. Thanks be to God.
"Whatever" Bread
Use whatever you find in the grab bag when making this recipe.
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups high-gluten bread flour
1 1/2 cups unbleached flour
1/2 cup wheat flour
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 Tablespoon butter
2-3 Tablespoons honey or molasses
1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt
2 Tablespoons powdered milk
2 teaspoons yeast
1 large handful oat bran
1 handful raw sunflower seeds
1 handful raw pumpkin seeds
1 1/4-1 1/3 cups liquid (water or juice)
Directions
Add some seven-grain cereal, sesame seeds, flax seeds, or "whatever."
Throw the mixture into a bread machine and bake on regular cycle for wheat bread with a light crust.
I met Tulla just after I arrived at my internship church. It was a wonderful church that took its role of training future pastors seriously. Tulla was an eighty-year-old widow of sturdy Danish stock. Being a young single man, she assumed that I really didn't know how to take care of myself; so she offered to wash my clothes for me. I didn't have the heart to refuse her. When she delivered my clothes, in the clothesbasket would be a couple loaves of homemade bread. Her bread was so delicious that after a few months I asked her to teach me how to make it. I became good at baking bread and I experimented with different recipes.
In former times, bread was not just a part of the meal. It was the meal. We're not talking about the kinds of processed bread you can buy today, but the kind of bread you sink your teeth into, that gives your jaw some exercise when you chew it. Substantial bread gives strength for a day's labor. This kind of bread was called the "staff of life," something to support and sustain us on our journey through life.
That's the kind of bread we have in our reading from Genesis 3:19. "By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return." We are on a journey, from dust to dust. God formed Adam and Eve from the dust of the ground. They died and returned to the dust of the ground. In between, it was the bread they ate that sustained them. And it sustains us. We live and love, we work and labor, we sweat to earn the money to put bread on our tables -- bread for the journey, from dust to dust.
During these forty days of Lent, we are on a journey to the cross with Jesus. Our theme is "Bread for the Journey." We will eat bread, and we will be fed the Bread of Life. We will look at what the Bible has to say about bread and see how bread was present at the most significant events of the Old and New Testaments. Bread was there at the beginning when Adam and Eve fell into sin. God cursed them and said to them, "By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return." Adam and Eve's sin is our sin that we confess this night. It is our "age old rebellion," the desire to be God, to be in control and in charge, to decide for ourselves our future and what is right and wrong, to have no other masters telling us what to do.
Tonight we confess that we are not in charge, that we are not gods in control of our own destiny. We are dust, and to dust we shall return. We are reminded of that tonight, and we are reminded of that each time we stand at a graveside and hear those words, "earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust." We are creation, not creator. We are in bondage to sin, in need of a Savior. We look at the world around us and see the impact of sin -- war and disease, hatred and violence, hunger and poverty, broken relationships and broken homes, people struggling with addictions and lifelong dysfunction. On this day we cannot wink at sin or laugh it off. Tonight we come to the cross with all our sinfulness. We return to the Lord with all our hearts.
Bread is a symbol of our lives. It has a journey of its own. It begins as a stalk of wheat, which at harvest time is cut down, its berries ripped from the stalk. The grain is crushed and ground together at the mill. The baker mixes and kneads and punches the dough. It's thrown into a hot oven and baked. These are words of violence and death, and yet through this process, wheat is transformed into something that gives life, nourishment, and strength to our bodies. Bread is a symbol of our lives. Its story is our story. We are never far from the experience of death. Its power touches our lives. Sometimes life cuts us down, rips us apart, and crushes us. But God is able to take whatever experience we have and make it into something new, like bread, something that gives us strength and hope and new life.
That is what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. The Bread of Life is the body of Christ, "wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities" (Isaiah 53:5). God took the evil and violence of the cross and transformed it into something that gives life, strength, and hope for the world. In Christ's death and resurrection, we are now offered the Bread of Life. It is bread for the journey, bread for this life and for all eternity. Thanks be to God.
"Whatever" Bread
Use whatever you find in the grab bag when making this recipe.
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups high-gluten bread flour
1 1/2 cups unbleached flour
1/2 cup wheat flour
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 Tablespoon butter
2-3 Tablespoons honey or molasses
1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt
2 Tablespoons powdered milk
2 teaspoons yeast
1 large handful oat bran
1 handful raw sunflower seeds
1 handful raw pumpkin seeds
1 1/4-1 1/3 cups liquid (water or juice)
Directions
Add some seven-grain cereal, sesame seeds, flax seeds, or "whatever."
Throw the mixture into a bread machine and bake on regular cycle for wheat bread with a light crust.
