Bread: for Famished Imaginations and Malnourished Dreams

 Earlier this summer I picked up and read the most beautiful book.

It was a neatly bound book, soft and velvety to the touch. Black in colour with the bold title “Black.” The book of poems were poems of George Elliot Clarke served as courses that opened like casserole dishes under lids of black paper, words scattered like salt on pages. The book was a feast for the eyes, filled with an aroma of words, the poetry food for the soul. I ate it up!

This said, although the poetry was edible, each mouthful tasty--- it did not necessarily mean each morsel was comprehendible. I tasted it – experienced it- felt it as part of me, but couldn’t explain all of it with reason or intellect, or statements.

 

Do you understand what I am talking about? Have you read or heard a poem or a hymn where it speaks to you, or it makes you feel something but you can not translate or explain what it means?

 

A few weeks ago, the Psalm for the day was Psalm 34. In that Psalm there is a line: Taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him. Consider for a moment what this line of poetry means. It is a morsel that has been shared through the centuries, incorporated into hymns, repeated in liturgies, and yet it is not easy to literally explain, for instance, what does it mean to taste God?

 

For a number of weeks, we have been hearing about Jesus’ miracles and teachings on bread as written in the Gospel of John. “I Am the bread of life,” Jesus says. At the end of the teaching, which we hear this morning, referencing eating and drinking Jesus’ flesh and blood, some of those following Jesus were offended saying, This teaching is difficult who can accept it? The offended left the group.

 

Really?!

We heard the line from Psalm 34: 8 Taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him?

Those who were following Jesus, those who found Jesus’ teaching difficult, those who were offended and left, knew this Psalm. They had heard and sung these ancient words. Taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him.

Are Jesus’ words not the same poem, an alternative verse, an interpretation, a continuation of the original poem? Like many phrases from the Psalms, like much of the rest of John’s gospel the statements are symbolic, metaphoric, poetic. What was it that was offensive?

 

Cindy S. Lee in her book, “Our Un-forming: De-Westernizing Spiritual Formation,” writes:

BIPOC communities may avoid imagination because we don’t want to be disappointed by a false hope. We have been disappointed and disillusioned so many times in our continual experiences of racism that a spiritual posture of imagination cannot be based on an empty hope (p69).

Perhaps the hearers of Jesus’ teaching (the followers of the Law, the Hebrew people, the Jews of 1^st century Judea) had been disappointed and disillusioned so many times that they had given up on imagining the coming of God’s kindom; they had lost hope. The oppressive Roman system had choked the people and charred hope. The people no longer cared to cook, to taste and see that the Lord is good, and rather chose to simply accept the tasteless gruel of Roman oppression and injustice. For Jesus to speak of God, kindom, and  covenant through an abundance of bread, with hope, and promise was too much; it was beyond famished imaginations and malnourished dreams.  

 

Do you ever find yourself bored with food, bored with figuring out what to cook? Do you find that you fall into a routine of a few dishes that you serve over and over – eating the same thing again and again? What do you do when you get stuck continually throwing together something simply because you have to eat?

Recently I heard a radio segment talking about the popularity of baking competition shows and channels like the Food Network. The guests talked about filling empty imaginations and building malnourished skills in the kitchen. The art of curating tastes and sharing recipes has awakened a movement of people, particularly young people to bake and to host dinner parties and gatherings around food. The radio guest suggested that in sharing and gathering, there is growing hope and connection and joy. There is abundance.

 

Bakers and chefs, poets and other artists imagine what can be. Their creations are much needed food, offered to hungry people and a famished world. I appreciate the recollection in the Gospel of John of Jesus’ teaching about bread. I am doubly appreciative that it is difficult. There is an abundance of bread, substance, to chew on and to continue to digest. Jesus continues to create – to imagine what can be- by interpreting the words of old, anew. Jesus plates the words by saying, The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.

 

Peter, having eaten what Jesus is serving, and committed to receiving ongoing bread, responds to Jesus: To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Peter has experienced Jesus’ poetry, Jesus as the bread. Peter has been fed. Peter has come to believe – imagining more- through the experience of walking with Jesus the Holy One of God. Through the Gospel of John, we know that Peter doesn’t fully understand it all and doesn’t yet get what is to happen to Jesus. Regardless, Peter feels full and understands there is abundance to share; and so, he asks to whom shall we go?

 

Most of us have been well fed. We have digested God’s word, feasted on sacrament, tasted community, nibbled on hymns, and stretched our palates with challenging teachings. We are well fed and realizing that our prayer give us this day our daily bread, is answered we pray in a communion prayer, help us to give ourselves away as bread for the hungry. That is the “to whom shall we go.’ The hungry - those whose imaginations are famished, whose hopes and dreams are malnourished; those who have not tasted that the Lord is good.

 

How shall we go? The Letter to the Ephesians suggests the putting on of the armour of God. In a world inundated with unhealthy fast-food chains of war and violence, armour may not be the most wholesome of foods. If we taste and see around us, popping up in our community are small eating places with curated menus, local produce, craft breweries. In our community we can feast our eyes on murals and public art, hear the poets, song writers, and spoken word artists. The community – our neigbourhood- is hungry and is creating and searching for carefully curated experiences with meaning and purpose; nourishing imaginations, cultivating hope, sustaining dreams and possibilities.  

How shall we go? As chefs, bakers, poets, and artists! Creators! Wearing a chef’s hat of truth, mixing bowl of righteousness, paintbrushes and paints of the gospel of peace, an apron of faith, the rolling pin of salvation; pen, ink, and journal of the Spirit; and a personal outfit of prayer.

However it is that we can share our experience of the Holy One of God that is how we are to go. Not with answers or statements of fact, or reason; but with the experience of being full, of tasting and seeing that the Lord is good, that there is abundance and that there is bread that brings life! Bread that nourishes imaginations, fuels hopes and dreams, and satisfies the hungry heart.

 

May we be expressions of the Bread of Life, nourishing imaginations, fueling hope, satisfying the hungry heart- through us may our neighbours and the world experience and be filled with God’s abundant kindom.

Taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in God.