Bread For The Journey
Sermon
The Feasts Of The Kingdom
Sermons On Holy Communion And Other Sacred Meals
It was a wonderful sight, right out of ancient history. I'll never forget it. We had just visited the hilltop ruins in ancient Pergamum in Turkey. Pergamum, famous for its 200,000-volume library 100 years before Christ, and famous for its invention of parchment, was also infamous for its worship of Caesar and its persecution of Christians who would not worship Caesar as a god.
Pergamum, center of Caesar worship, boasting a huge theater, an altar to Zeus, and a temple complex devoted to the god of healing, Asklepios, was the location of one of the famous seven churches of the book of Revelation. John writes to them to resist worshiping Caesar, a temporal king, so as to remain faithful to Christ, their eternal king. And then he promises the threatened Christians with Christ's own words: "To him who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna," the "bread from heaven" (Revelation 2:17).
So it was quite a sight and coincidence, coming down from Pergamum, to have our guide stop our bus in Bergama, the contemporary Turkish city, right in front of an old bakery. From our window I could see inside an ancient stone and brick oven with the fire blazing underneath. Our guide, a charming Turkish woman, went in and bought some bread for us, steaming hot, fresh from the oven. It was bread for the journey, like manna from heaven.
Of course the ancient Israelites escaping from Egypt were on a much more significant journey or pilgrimage than were we. And now, in the desert wilderness away from the ready food supplies of Egypt, they long for the security of three square meals a day. Encountering the hardships and uncertainty of the desert, they idealize their past slavery and long for the fleshpots of Egypt. They complain to Moses and Aaron that they are not being given enough bread for the journey to the promised land.
In response, God provides manna for them to eat. Manna is the honey-like substance secreted by an insect after it feeds on the juice of the desert tamarisk shrub. During the night it falls to the ground, hardens, and must be gathered before the desert sun melts it. Certain Arab tribes still enjoy manna and call it the "bread of heaven."
Referring to this experience, the writer of Deuteronomy says that God was testing his people in the wilderness, to see what was in their hearts. As he put it: "And (God) humbled you and fed you with manna; ... that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but that man lives by everything that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord" (Deuteronomy 8:3).
It is highly significant that Jesus himself, undergoing his temptation experiences at the beginning of his spiritual journey, quoted this very scripture. Tempted to make stones to bread, he said we do not live by bread alone, but by everything which proceeds from the mouth of the Lord. But he also taught his disciples to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread...."
Bread for the journey? We need daily physical bread and eternal spiritual bread.
I.
Consider first the daily, physical bread.
At the beginning of his ministry, it must have been greatly tempting to Jesus to succumb to the devil's suggestion that he make stones into bread. Of course, the story seems to suggest that Jesus might miraculously turn the stones into bread to feed not only his own famished body, but also the famished bodies of many of his countrymen. Later in his ministry Jesus did feed miraculously the 5,000 and 4,000 with the loaves and fishes.
Miraculous or not, Jesus could well have devoted his life to economic and agricultural reform so as to feed adequately the hungry people of the world. He literally could have changed stones into bread by helping farmers devise ways to break up the rocky ground into productive soil. When you think of it, bread does come from stones -- stones pulverized into soil to grow the cereal grains. And when you think of it, that whole process is miracle enough -- the growing of our daily bread.
Daily, physical bread for the daily, physical journey? Yes indeed. Jesus prayed for it and we desperately need it, especially when there are so many hungry people in the world. For example, at a recent United Nations World Summit for Children, it was noted that 150 million children under the age of five suffer from malnutrition, thirty million are living in the streets, and seven million have been driven from their homes by war and famine (Time Magazine, October 8, 1990, p. 41).
Daily bread for the desperately hungry of the world? You bet, we need it badly, and Christians will want to rise to the challenge to provide it. But noble as food baskets and soup kitchens may be for short term, emergency relief, the long-term solution for daily bread shall have to be more creative and all-encompassing and productive. And, thank God, just such a thing is happening in the world right now.
One of the finest examples of creative, intelligent love of neighbor in providing daily bread is Dr. Norman Borlaug, a Nobel prize-winning scientist and agronomist. A native of Iowa, Borlaug won a wrestling scholarship to the University of Minnesota where he earned a degree in forestry.
Soon Borlaug was wrestling with problems of world hunger. Emergency feeding programs wouldn't do it. So he set out to develop new kinds of grain which would be productive in Asian countries suffering from chronic food shortages. Almost single-handedly he developed the Green Revolution in Pakistan and India. He was able to increase their grain output by five times in twenty years.
His biggest miracle occurred in China. Mao invited Borlaug to China to help introduce new grains and new ways of farming. Though suffering great set-backs by Mao's Great Leap Forward (1958-60) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), China now leads the world in wheat, rice, and total grain production. And in many areas, China gets higher yields per acre than do Americans (World Monitor, October 1990, p. 44ff).
All the emergency food collections and food lifts in the world cannot compare with the revolution in food production made possible by the genius and persistence of one man -- Norman Borlaug. Thank God for the daily bread he and others help provide.
II.
If we need bread for the physical journey, perhaps we need even more spiritual bread for the spiritual journey.
In our tour of Greece and Turkey, the stop at Pergamum was of great interest to me. I can still smell and taste that hot, fresh bread from the ancient oven.
But the next day, we were vividly reminded of the hunger for spiritual bread as we sailed into Istanbul. Several of us were up on deck early that morning, to watch as we steamed toward the famous straits of Bosporus, separating Europe and Asia.
Gradually, the famous city came into view in the beautiful sunrise -- the famous city, Istanbul, or Constantinople as Emperor Constantine named it in 326 A.D., or Byzantium as it was called before that. Constantine had decided to move the capital from Rome to this strategic site, more central to the Empire. It soon became a magnificent city, with art and architectural treasures from everywhere.
A little earlier, in 313 A.D., Constantine had issued his famous Edict of Toleration, allowing Christianity to be "tolerated" as a legal religion for the first time in its history. And then in the neighboring town of Nicea, Constantine called the famous Council of Nicea in 325 A.D., from which we have the standard Nicene Creed. Soon after that, the Emperor authorized the construction of a Christian church, the Hagia Sophia, the Church of the Holy Wisdom.
On deck early that August morning, we gradually saw it come into view -- the Hagia Sophia, high on the hill overlooking the Bosporus, glowing in its pink, dusty-rose exterior in the rising sun. The Hagia Sophia -- how I had longed for years to see it, this famous, huge Church of Christendom, where emperors had been crowned and millions had worshiped over the centuries. No, it was not the structure Constantine had built. That was destroyed. But this Hagia Sophia, now a Turkish museum, dated from 537 A.D. Think of it, over 1,400 years old, standing as a magnificent witness of our need for spiritual bread.
As if that famous site were not enough, close by was the towering magnificence of the famous Blue Mosque, named for the beautiful blue tiles on the interior walls. Here for centuries, thousands upon thousands of Muslims have gathered to pray and to hear the word of Allah preached to them. Another magnificent testimony to our need for spiritual bread for our spiritual pilgrimage.
Despite those magnificent structures in Istanbul and, despite the completion of the majestic National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., there is growing evidence of spiritual famine in the world and especially in our country. We are spiritually gaunt, ethically malnourished and starving for real, life-sustaining values and principles.
Consider, for example, the plight of American children. Here is a day's worth of destiny for them. "Every eight seconds of the school day, a child drops out. Every 26 seconds a child runs away from home. Every 47 seconds, a child is abused or neglected. Every 67 seconds, a teenager has a baby. Every seven minutes, a child is arrested for a drug offense. Every 36 minutes, a child is killed or injured by a gun. Every day 135,000 children bring guns to school" (Time, op cit., p. 42).
Our education system is in real trouble. Former Education Secretary, Lauro Cavazos, calls our student performance "dreadfully inadequate." And from both the inner-city and affluent suburbs comes, says one writer, "a drumbeat of stories about tin-pot principals who cannot be fired, beleaguered teachers with unmanageable work-loads and illiterate graduates with abysmal test scores" (ibid., p. 44).
And lest we delude ourselves, the problems extend to the affluent families of city and suburb. If we are not present with our children we try to substitute with money. "We supply kids with things in the absence of family," says a school administrator. "We used to build dreams for them, but now we buy Nintendo toys, and Reebok sneakers" (ibid., p. 45). And in affluent areas we have drug and alcohol use, eating disorders, suicide attempts, and general despair and apathy.
If adults lament the absence of values, we are to be reminded that our children reflect what they learn from us and our principles and priorities. As one writer put it: "A society whose values are entirely material is not likely to breed a generation of poets; anti-intellectualism and indifference to education do not inspire rocket scientists." And the writer asks, "Where is the leader who will seize the opportunity to do what is both smart and worthy, and begin returning policy to focus on children and intercept trouble before it breeds?" (ibid., p. 40).
Who indeed? Well for one, the Church ought to step up again to its leadership roles in education, ethics, morals, families, and lasting values. The Church, often so anemic and drowsy, needs to revisit the Hagia Sophia, the "holy wisdom," to wake up to its historic leadership task.
So we must ask, are your children in church and church school, in youth and education programs? Are they really learning spiritual truths and ethical values? From whom? You?
And have you read the Bible lately or read a responsible book on ethics or morals or wrestled lately with some of the great ideas of history? Or are you wasting away from spiritual malnutrition?
Daily bread and physical bread? How desperately we need it. We pray for the Norman Borlaugs of the world and rouse ourselves from simplistic, romantic, Band-Aid solutions to world agricultural and economic reform.
Spiritual bread, eternal bread, giving nourishment to mind and soul? How desperately we need it. Let us pray for our schools and churches and families that they might wake up before it is too late and our civilization dies from spiritual emptiness.
Prayer
Eternal God, who has made the world in grandeur and majesty, and who has set in motion the mysterious processes of life, seed bearing seed, bringing forth after its own kind, we praise you for wonders beyond our knowing, and thank you for the gift of life beyond our fathoming.
Loving Father, who dwells beyond the limits of all space and time, who yet has willed to express yourself in the world in human image, you have made us for space and time and have placed us within the vicissitudes of history. From conception to birth, from childhood to adolescence, through adulthood to old age, we are caught up in gaining and getting, growing and developing, and then in sighing and dying.
In our pilgrimage, feed us, O Lord, our daily bread. The amber fields of waving grain, the golden corn in harvest moon, the fruit of the vine flowing robust red -- all remind us of the providence and intricacy of your creative power. You make us with the complex abilities of smelling and touching, tasting and digesting, and then create the world in a riot of color and taste and smell and give us a body and mind to see and digest and appropriate it all for our growth and enjoyment. Praise be to you, O Lord, for all our daily breads which truly are manna from heaven.
If you have made us with bodies craving food for growth and development, you have made us with minds and souls craving spiritual bread for hungers and longings deeper than physical.
Look mercifully upon our frequent emptiness of soul and vacancy of mind. Anxious in our getting and spending, we too easily lay waste our powers, coming to the close of the day still spiritually famished.
But in Jesus, your word of life, the true bread for the soul, come down from heaven, you have promised to feed us, to satisfy us, and fulfill us with the life which is eternal. Help us to be open to you to receive this heavenly manna so as to be nourished for the steadfast pilgrimage of faith, hope, and love. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
Pergamum, center of Caesar worship, boasting a huge theater, an altar to Zeus, and a temple complex devoted to the god of healing, Asklepios, was the location of one of the famous seven churches of the book of Revelation. John writes to them to resist worshiping Caesar, a temporal king, so as to remain faithful to Christ, their eternal king. And then he promises the threatened Christians with Christ's own words: "To him who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna," the "bread from heaven" (Revelation 2:17).
So it was quite a sight and coincidence, coming down from Pergamum, to have our guide stop our bus in Bergama, the contemporary Turkish city, right in front of an old bakery. From our window I could see inside an ancient stone and brick oven with the fire blazing underneath. Our guide, a charming Turkish woman, went in and bought some bread for us, steaming hot, fresh from the oven. It was bread for the journey, like manna from heaven.
Of course the ancient Israelites escaping from Egypt were on a much more significant journey or pilgrimage than were we. And now, in the desert wilderness away from the ready food supplies of Egypt, they long for the security of three square meals a day. Encountering the hardships and uncertainty of the desert, they idealize their past slavery and long for the fleshpots of Egypt. They complain to Moses and Aaron that they are not being given enough bread for the journey to the promised land.
In response, God provides manna for them to eat. Manna is the honey-like substance secreted by an insect after it feeds on the juice of the desert tamarisk shrub. During the night it falls to the ground, hardens, and must be gathered before the desert sun melts it. Certain Arab tribes still enjoy manna and call it the "bread of heaven."
Referring to this experience, the writer of Deuteronomy says that God was testing his people in the wilderness, to see what was in their hearts. As he put it: "And (God) humbled you and fed you with manna; ... that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but that man lives by everything that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord" (Deuteronomy 8:3).
It is highly significant that Jesus himself, undergoing his temptation experiences at the beginning of his spiritual journey, quoted this very scripture. Tempted to make stones to bread, he said we do not live by bread alone, but by everything which proceeds from the mouth of the Lord. But he also taught his disciples to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread...."
Bread for the journey? We need daily physical bread and eternal spiritual bread.
I.
Consider first the daily, physical bread.
At the beginning of his ministry, it must have been greatly tempting to Jesus to succumb to the devil's suggestion that he make stones into bread. Of course, the story seems to suggest that Jesus might miraculously turn the stones into bread to feed not only his own famished body, but also the famished bodies of many of his countrymen. Later in his ministry Jesus did feed miraculously the 5,000 and 4,000 with the loaves and fishes.
Miraculous or not, Jesus could well have devoted his life to economic and agricultural reform so as to feed adequately the hungry people of the world. He literally could have changed stones into bread by helping farmers devise ways to break up the rocky ground into productive soil. When you think of it, bread does come from stones -- stones pulverized into soil to grow the cereal grains. And when you think of it, that whole process is miracle enough -- the growing of our daily bread.
Daily, physical bread for the daily, physical journey? Yes indeed. Jesus prayed for it and we desperately need it, especially when there are so many hungry people in the world. For example, at a recent United Nations World Summit for Children, it was noted that 150 million children under the age of five suffer from malnutrition, thirty million are living in the streets, and seven million have been driven from their homes by war and famine (Time Magazine, October 8, 1990, p. 41).
Daily bread for the desperately hungry of the world? You bet, we need it badly, and Christians will want to rise to the challenge to provide it. But noble as food baskets and soup kitchens may be for short term, emergency relief, the long-term solution for daily bread shall have to be more creative and all-encompassing and productive. And, thank God, just such a thing is happening in the world right now.
One of the finest examples of creative, intelligent love of neighbor in providing daily bread is Dr. Norman Borlaug, a Nobel prize-winning scientist and agronomist. A native of Iowa, Borlaug won a wrestling scholarship to the University of Minnesota where he earned a degree in forestry.
Soon Borlaug was wrestling with problems of world hunger. Emergency feeding programs wouldn't do it. So he set out to develop new kinds of grain which would be productive in Asian countries suffering from chronic food shortages. Almost single-handedly he developed the Green Revolution in Pakistan and India. He was able to increase their grain output by five times in twenty years.
His biggest miracle occurred in China. Mao invited Borlaug to China to help introduce new grains and new ways of farming. Though suffering great set-backs by Mao's Great Leap Forward (1958-60) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), China now leads the world in wheat, rice, and total grain production. And in many areas, China gets higher yields per acre than do Americans (World Monitor, October 1990, p. 44ff).
All the emergency food collections and food lifts in the world cannot compare with the revolution in food production made possible by the genius and persistence of one man -- Norman Borlaug. Thank God for the daily bread he and others help provide.
II.
If we need bread for the physical journey, perhaps we need even more spiritual bread for the spiritual journey.
In our tour of Greece and Turkey, the stop at Pergamum was of great interest to me. I can still smell and taste that hot, fresh bread from the ancient oven.
But the next day, we were vividly reminded of the hunger for spiritual bread as we sailed into Istanbul. Several of us were up on deck early that morning, to watch as we steamed toward the famous straits of Bosporus, separating Europe and Asia.
Gradually, the famous city came into view in the beautiful sunrise -- the famous city, Istanbul, or Constantinople as Emperor Constantine named it in 326 A.D., or Byzantium as it was called before that. Constantine had decided to move the capital from Rome to this strategic site, more central to the Empire. It soon became a magnificent city, with art and architectural treasures from everywhere.
A little earlier, in 313 A.D., Constantine had issued his famous Edict of Toleration, allowing Christianity to be "tolerated" as a legal religion for the first time in its history. And then in the neighboring town of Nicea, Constantine called the famous Council of Nicea in 325 A.D., from which we have the standard Nicene Creed. Soon after that, the Emperor authorized the construction of a Christian church, the Hagia Sophia, the Church of the Holy Wisdom.
On deck early that August morning, we gradually saw it come into view -- the Hagia Sophia, high on the hill overlooking the Bosporus, glowing in its pink, dusty-rose exterior in the rising sun. The Hagia Sophia -- how I had longed for years to see it, this famous, huge Church of Christendom, where emperors had been crowned and millions had worshiped over the centuries. No, it was not the structure Constantine had built. That was destroyed. But this Hagia Sophia, now a Turkish museum, dated from 537 A.D. Think of it, over 1,400 years old, standing as a magnificent witness of our need for spiritual bread.
As if that famous site were not enough, close by was the towering magnificence of the famous Blue Mosque, named for the beautiful blue tiles on the interior walls. Here for centuries, thousands upon thousands of Muslims have gathered to pray and to hear the word of Allah preached to them. Another magnificent testimony to our need for spiritual bread for our spiritual pilgrimage.
Despite those magnificent structures in Istanbul and, despite the completion of the majestic National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., there is growing evidence of spiritual famine in the world and especially in our country. We are spiritually gaunt, ethically malnourished and starving for real, life-sustaining values and principles.
Consider, for example, the plight of American children. Here is a day's worth of destiny for them. "Every eight seconds of the school day, a child drops out. Every 26 seconds a child runs away from home. Every 47 seconds, a child is abused or neglected. Every 67 seconds, a teenager has a baby. Every seven minutes, a child is arrested for a drug offense. Every 36 minutes, a child is killed or injured by a gun. Every day 135,000 children bring guns to school" (Time, op cit., p. 42).
Our education system is in real trouble. Former Education Secretary, Lauro Cavazos, calls our student performance "dreadfully inadequate." And from both the inner-city and affluent suburbs comes, says one writer, "a drumbeat of stories about tin-pot principals who cannot be fired, beleaguered teachers with unmanageable work-loads and illiterate graduates with abysmal test scores" (ibid., p. 44).
And lest we delude ourselves, the problems extend to the affluent families of city and suburb. If we are not present with our children we try to substitute with money. "We supply kids with things in the absence of family," says a school administrator. "We used to build dreams for them, but now we buy Nintendo toys, and Reebok sneakers" (ibid., p. 45). And in affluent areas we have drug and alcohol use, eating disorders, suicide attempts, and general despair and apathy.
If adults lament the absence of values, we are to be reminded that our children reflect what they learn from us and our principles and priorities. As one writer put it: "A society whose values are entirely material is not likely to breed a generation of poets; anti-intellectualism and indifference to education do not inspire rocket scientists." And the writer asks, "Where is the leader who will seize the opportunity to do what is both smart and worthy, and begin returning policy to focus on children and intercept trouble before it breeds?" (ibid., p. 40).
Who indeed? Well for one, the Church ought to step up again to its leadership roles in education, ethics, morals, families, and lasting values. The Church, often so anemic and drowsy, needs to revisit the Hagia Sophia, the "holy wisdom," to wake up to its historic leadership task.
So we must ask, are your children in church and church school, in youth and education programs? Are they really learning spiritual truths and ethical values? From whom? You?
And have you read the Bible lately or read a responsible book on ethics or morals or wrestled lately with some of the great ideas of history? Or are you wasting away from spiritual malnutrition?
Daily bread and physical bread? How desperately we need it. We pray for the Norman Borlaugs of the world and rouse ourselves from simplistic, romantic, Band-Aid solutions to world agricultural and economic reform.
Spiritual bread, eternal bread, giving nourishment to mind and soul? How desperately we need it. Let us pray for our schools and churches and families that they might wake up before it is too late and our civilization dies from spiritual emptiness.
Prayer
Eternal God, who has made the world in grandeur and majesty, and who has set in motion the mysterious processes of life, seed bearing seed, bringing forth after its own kind, we praise you for wonders beyond our knowing, and thank you for the gift of life beyond our fathoming.
Loving Father, who dwells beyond the limits of all space and time, who yet has willed to express yourself in the world in human image, you have made us for space and time and have placed us within the vicissitudes of history. From conception to birth, from childhood to adolescence, through adulthood to old age, we are caught up in gaining and getting, growing and developing, and then in sighing and dying.
In our pilgrimage, feed us, O Lord, our daily bread. The amber fields of waving grain, the golden corn in harvest moon, the fruit of the vine flowing robust red -- all remind us of the providence and intricacy of your creative power. You make us with the complex abilities of smelling and touching, tasting and digesting, and then create the world in a riot of color and taste and smell and give us a body and mind to see and digest and appropriate it all for our growth and enjoyment. Praise be to you, O Lord, for all our daily breads which truly are manna from heaven.
If you have made us with bodies craving food for growth and development, you have made us with minds and souls craving spiritual bread for hungers and longings deeper than physical.
Look mercifully upon our frequent emptiness of soul and vacancy of mind. Anxious in our getting and spending, we too easily lay waste our powers, coming to the close of the day still spiritually famished.
But in Jesus, your word of life, the true bread for the soul, come down from heaven, you have promised to feed us, to satisfy us, and fulfill us with the life which is eternal. Help us to be open to you to receive this heavenly manna so as to be nourished for the steadfast pilgrimage of faith, hope, and love. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
