“They broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts,
praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.” ~Acts 2:46-47
Earthly Elements:
Raising Bread and Community in a Church Kitchen
The first lesson for this 4th Sunday of Easter (Year A) comes from Acts chapter 2, in which we witness the early days of the church. Just what were those first followers of Jesus up to anyway? What did they devote themselves to? Teaching, worshipping and eating bread together – all for the goodwill of others!
This spring, I had a wild idea that our 5th graders should bake the bread for their first communion. How hard can that be, right? Little did I know that it would become a wonderfully chaotic scene as they took over the church kitchen, rolled up their sleeves, and the flour began to fly! Thank God for our youth director, who helped to rally the troops: “How many teaspoons do I need?” “Yes, you can just mix it all together!” “Try not to get too much on the floor!” “Will I get to take a loaf home?”
We had just finished teaching a class about how the sacraments in the church (Baptism and Holy Communion) always have a physical element attached when Jesus commands us to observe them: water for baptism, and wheat and grapes for communion. So, I reminded them of the stained-glass image of this on our bell tower and why that’s significant to us as we gather in worship to receive Christ’s body and blood for the forgiveness of sins. In this sacrament Jesus becomes The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
How intimately this sacrament links us theologically to the Earth! Yes, there’s eating and gladness with generous hearts. And yet, that doesn’t come without some tilling and planting and harvesting of said wheat and grapes. That festive feast of fellowship cannot be fathomed until the miller has first ground, the baker then kneaded, and the winery has thus fermented (and the church kitchen thoroughly inhabited by a cadre of new break bakers, then cleaned up afterwards!)
Look how Creation itself, these earthly elements, creates community, ignites community! The 5th graders making the bread for Communion became a messy, chaotic community in the church kitchen, joining the people who worked intimately with Earth’s gifts of soil, sun, seed, and water, to grow the wheat and the grapes; who were likewise joined by the people who milled the flour and fermented the grapes, and by the people who transported these earthly gifts to the community of Our Redeemer, Pine City. Before the worshiping community comes to the altar to receive Christ in the earth’s bread and wine, a whole chain of community has brought these gifts t to them.
For many, this has been a long winter marked by war and national strife. Honestly, at times it’s easy to fall into cynicism and despair, wondering how long can this go on? What we need in these perilous, deeply disturbing times is to become community together for the sake of our shared wellbeing with other humans and with all life on Earth. Instead, it often it feels that we are being ripped apart.
And yet, now it’s Springtime. Moreover, this fourth Sunday of Easter places us in the very center of celebrating Resurrection and its unstoppable presence! As a result, I am constantly reminded of the persistence of new life – in spite of the griefs that we bear and the death that we share. Snows will melt, rains will fall, and new life will stubbornly emerge, with or without us. Will we be ready, when it’s time to harvest and share our bread for the goodwill of all people and the flourishing of life on this planet?
The Resurrection Road of the Easter season is a road we do not travel alone or our own strength. We have Bread for the wilderness and wine for the journey. We travel it as members of one another, of the Christian family, of the whole human family, and as members of Creation. Christ’s resurrection raises us to live and demonstrate that New Life!
As stewards of God’s creation, let us commit ourselves this week to the simple task of mindfulness for the bread and wine that we share, of the community of Creation that we receive, and the communities of people who bring it to us (including that 5th grade class in the church kitchen!) As recipients of these gifts of the Earth and many human hands, may we rise from every table, not only in worship, invigorated to act for God’s beloved children and God’s precious planet!
Let us pray: O God, you set a table before us that many hands have made possible. Thank you for our food and drink. Make our tables places where gladness, generous hearts and praises rise up for the goodwill of all. Amen.
