Fourth Sunday in Lent
Gracious Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down
from heaven to be the true bread which gives life to the world:
Evermore give us this bread, that he may live in us, and we in
him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one
God, now and for ever. Amen.

I love food and I love to cook. Bread is something that I don't bake much because of the time that it takes but that I'm hoping to make more and more in my new lifestyle. I've always loved the process of baking bread...the feel of the dough as you mix it...it's living elasticity in the kneading process...the light an airy texture after the first rise and the way it deflates gently like a hot air balloon when you punch it down. And the smell when it bakes takes me back to early morning communion Sundays in my UCC church, when my mother would bake the symbolic loaf that would sit on the altar along with the cup of grape juice, while the congregation itself got little tiny glasses of juice and cubes of wonder bread. I knew that the real loaf was destined for our dinner table after church...along with the left over grape juice.

My images of bread are not, I'm sure, the images of the first Christians. Not for them the white, pale, and almost tasteless commercial product which passes for bread for most of us. Certainly bread in biblical times was not white. At best it was nutty and full of stone ground kernels of ancient wheat...perhaps more like Spelt than our modern versions. Barley might have been the flour...or perhaps even ancient grains like kamut or emmer... and either leavened or unleavened. Matzhot was probably not used...as, like much of the current Jewish Seder it's origins are in the diaspora. Whatever it's actual appearance or ingredients, it is clear that this simple food is of immense import to Jesus. The images of bread abound all over the Bible...from the manna in the wilderness of the Pentateuch to the loaves and fishes of Christ's miracles...and finally of course the Eucharistic meal.

Bread it fascinating to me. Unless it is unleavened, bread is a living thing until it is baked. The leaven itself is deeply suggestive. A small amount transforms grains that could remain dense and almost inedible into a magnificent light and airy substance. No wonder Christ compares leaven to the Kingdom of Heaven...both have pretty remarkable transformational properties. The other thing is that the process takes a while. Yeast as you first see it is as dead looking as anything could be. Soaking it in warm water wakes it up but it takes a couple of hours to perform it's magic on a loaf of bread. It resonates symbolically with so much in Christianity. The "dead" yeast rising again...in fact we speak of the rising loaf almost as if it took is coming back to life. And yeast also functions as spirit does to us...taking the dead matter of our bodies and enlivening it with a mysterious force. Some days I can almost feel my spirit working on my in just this manner.

So it is no wonder that Jesus, and other biblical figures stress bread as a symbol so much. It is a potent but everyday object. However, as our collect makes clear, Jesus' identity as bread is quite different from our every day loaves.

This collect marks the turning point in Lent. There is a distinct lightening of the mood in the readings for this Sunday, which, though they are still focused on repentance, are much more infused with God's mercy. And this collect itself is more focused on the positive side of God than the other side. We ask that Jesus come down and be the true bread from heaven. This bread is what is meant by "daily bread' in the Lord's Prayer. It is the visitation of Christ to us. Most concretely it happens in the Eucharist, where we ask Christ to become bread for us...and indeed in this collect you can hear some resonances of Eucharistic theology. But sacraments are just a visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, and as meaningful as they are, they only point to the moon...they are not the moon itself.

I am a Eucharistic Christian. I'm Anglican precisely because of the power of Eucharistic experiences I've had. And yet...as powerful as the sacrament is, I'm aware that my relationship with God is not contained only in that moment. Christ is present eucharistically present in more than just the bread and wine. He is present in the prayerful reading of scripture, in prayer itself, and in every person we meet. Teilhard de Chardin in his brilliant and beautiful meditation, The Mass of the World even proposes that Christ is eucharistically present in Nature...not that God is nature, but that in some deep and mysterious way, God fills nature, much as he fills the bread and wine in communion.

People get scared of this thinking. It smacks of pantheism to some...panenthienism to others. But Christianity, at least as held by the early Church, is panentheist. Church fathers talk of the spirit filling all things...St. Augustine speaks of God being closer to us than our own breath. And the book of John is full of those identity images...I am the Vine, you are the Branches....Abide in me....be one as I and the Father are one. And this version of panenthienism is acknowledged in our collect as well. We feed on Christ "in our hearts by faith" in the beautiful words of the Eucharistic Prayer, so that he may live in us and we in him. We do not actually become God in any of these communions...Christianity is pretty explicit about that (and honestly I don't want to be God...too much responsibility and I'm way too imperfect). But in some mysterious way Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, lives in us...leavens us...rises us as bread dough rises...until we are transformed from the beings we are to the beings we were meant to be...or at least closer. I don't think this transformation ever ends in our lifetimes.

Remember the saying...you are what you eat. Jesus means it literally I think....bon appetite.