by Pastor Laura Gentry
I have a confession: I love cinnamon rolls. I love them not just because they taste so good but because they remind me of childhood. My Grandma Smith used to make the best cinnamon rolls. I remember my sister, Kathy, was determined to get Grandma’s recipe so she asked her to write it down. Since Grandma never used a recipe, she thought she’d have some fun with Kathy. So Grandma and I sat down and wrote out the whole recipe with humorous ambiguity. As I recall, it went something like this: Heat some milk in a pan. Throw a bit of butter in with it. Add a dab of water and an egg or two. Then dump a whole bunch of flour into it, but not too much. Oh, but before you do that, make sure there is some yeast, sugar and salt in it. Stir it all together and kneed it for a while. Then let it rise until it’s pretty risen. Needless to say, Kathy never could quite replicate those cinnamon rolls they way Grandma did. Nevertheless, even the smell of a good cinnamon roll makes me feel happy inside.
There has been much talk in recent years about “comfort food.” In 1972 it was added to Webster’s Dictionary. The way it works is that when we are children, we associate flavors of foods with pleasant memories. In this way, certain foods become like security blankets for us.
Well, in today’s gospel lesson, Jesus is talking about bread again today. For those of you with perfect worship attendance for the lst few weeks, you know that this is the third week in a row that we’ve had a bread-centric gospel reading. We’ve heard about Jesus being the bread of life in Mark’s gospel and now we hear about it from John’s gospel. And here’re a preview of things to come: we’ve got 2 more weeks of gospels about bread. So what’s with all the bread talk? Did the people who put the lectionary readings together figure that lots of people miss church in the summer time so no one person will have to hear all 5 of these sets of readings? Did they just figure they could stick them all hear in August and nobody would notice? It seems to me that this is an extremely important point and so they keep giving us readings to help us really “get it.”
There’s something really comprehensible about bread. It is a staple in our lives. It is symbolic of all food, really. And food is so very important to us. Think about how much time and energy you put into food preparation. Perhaps you plan menus. Then you have to obtain your groceries or grow them yourself. With all the rain we’ve been having, that’s difficult. Yesterday, I found my tomato plants had crashed into my pond (tomato cages and all), which very much disturbed the little turtles who live in the pond. But back to food preparation. You’ve got to prepare your ingredients into tasty dishes and then when the whole meal is over you’ve got to clean it all up. That’s the worst part, I think. Food is a big deal.
But we have to go to all this work (or else go out to eat) because without food we will die. It’s not a luxury item. We need food for sustenance. Perhaps that is why Jesus as the bread of life is such a powerful metaphor. Without Christ, we die. Without him, we cannot have abundant life or the promise of eternal life.
And as I’ve said, we usually associate food and positive feelings. Food is our comfort. It gives us a sense of warmth, security and connection with those we are eating with. Bread is comfort. Even cinnamon rolls bring comfort.
When Jesus tells his disciples that he is the bread of life and that whoever eats of this bread will live forever, he is not just talking about some happy promise to come. He is saying that he is our comfort in the present tense. By believing in him, we are given abundant life that begins today and lasts for eternity.
Sometimes I hear people use the expression: “I’ll rest when I get to heaven.” And this always annoys me. I’m busy too, but it implies that they will just work their way through life being miserable and trust that they’ll eventually get to be happy and rested in the life to come. This seems to miss the point that Jesus is making here that the bread he brings is for NOW, not something that we have to delay enjoying. He said that he has come to bring life and life abundantly, that he has come that his joy may be in us and our joy may be complete. That’s good bread. That’s the ultimate comfort food.
And we hear about comfort food in the reading from First Kings today too. In this section of the story, Elijah has triumphantly defeated the prophets of Bael on Mount Horeb. He has won the prophet showdown. He’s the rock star of the prophet world—amazingly proving that his God is more powerful than the false gods of Bael. So is he happy? No, because now he’s running for his life. Queen Jezebel has ordered him to be killed. Now, on the run, Elijah is zapped of his strength. He cannot go on. But has been faithful and so God provides for him. An angel feeds him bread baked on a stone and gives him a jar of water as well. This supply of food lasted Elijah 40 days and 40 nights. If only my groceries would last that long!
I think this story, combined with our gospel reading, reminds us that God is our sustenance. He provides for us—he give us his very son to feast upon. Sometimes we feel empty and worn out, like Elijah before the angel arrived. The journey can often be a rocky road. As the God-become-flesh in Jesus, God is well aware of how difficult our journey is. And that’s why he gave us himself, the bread of life. And we can partake of this good bread in the word and sacrament. That’s why we show up here in worship. We know we need this bread to live. We are weary and we need to hear the gospel read and preached, we need to participate in the hymns of faith, we need to confess our sins and hear the graceful word of forgiveness, we need to be reminded of our baptisms through which we became God’s own, and we need to come forward and receive Christ’s body and blood in the bread and wine of Holy Communion. The whole service from start to finish is spiritual comfort food to keep us moving forward in this journey of faith.
To have faith means to admit we can’t do it on our own. In the same way my sister could never make Grandma’s secret cinnamon roll recipe, we cannot find the recipe to eternal life on our own. We cannot save ourselves no matter how well we attempt to behave. We are beggars to God. Like Elijah, we are lost in the wilderness and we need God to provide this bread for us. The good news is that God is eager to do so.
In the reading from Ephesians today, Paul urges us to reach out and take this bread of life—to let it change us from the inside out. We ought to let go of the old and allow God to make us new. We ought to leave the darkness behind and enter into the light of God’s glorious new day. We ought to put away our selfish, childishness and behave with the maturity the Spirit gives us. And thus, we should leave foolishness behind and live in wisdom. He says we should let go of these old ways in the same way you would take off your dirty clothes so that you could change them out for new, clean ones. Put off the old ways, he says, and put on Christ.
It is time for us to put off our pity-parties and our oh-poor-me notions that keep us from moving forward in faith. We HAVE the bread of life. We are able to feast on it through faith each and every day. And this strengthens us to be the people we were created to be. We really CAN put off bitterness, rage, anger, slander and every form of malice. We can put on kindness, compassion, and forgiveness. We can shine with the light of Christ, who is our bread!
That’s why we have such good comfort food: because we have important work to do. God wants to heal us and move us into the exciting life of faithfulness. Let’s eat our fill and put on new life! Amen.
Now may the peace of God keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
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