Skip to main content

Daily Bread

No Saturday supplement today as most of the stories that caught my eye this week were anything but edifying or encouraging, many of them marking out the church at its most divisive and toxic, and while I have put my lenten discipline of "whatever is good" behind me, I don't want to spread vitriol, animosity and shame on the name of Christ on a sunny Saturday morning. Instead I thought I would pass on my find of the week (with a hat-tip to my wonderful wife who pointed me towards it). It is a short series of 15 minute documentaries about bread on Radio 4... It is available here on BBC iplayer and, so far as I see it isn't on a timed self-destruct fuse. It looks at the role of bread in the history of society, culture, religion and science.
Although every nation has a different cuisine, with different emphases, nearly every nation has a form of bread as a basic. It may be a Mexican tortilla, Italian foccacia, pitta bread or nan bread, it may be German ryebrot, or French baguette, it may be a soda farl or a sliced white, it may be Nutty Crust or Mother’s Pride. Bread is available almost everywhere. And that is one of the reasons that Jesus used bread on a number of occasions as a metaphor: the request for "daily bread" in the Lord's Prayer that gave this series its title, and stood as shorthand for all our daily needs (bread, not cake); his claim to be the bread of life, the universal source of eternal life; and the use of bread to represent his broken body in the last supper.
This is Pentecost weekend, the time when we celebrate the "birthday" of the church through the coming of the Holy Spirit, and sadly, the use of bread in the sacrament of communion, which should be a unifying focus in the church and a powerful metaphor to the wider world, has been the single most divisive factor in church history; whether it be debates about frequency of celebration or who is welcome at the table, the huge schism between the Roman Catholic and Protestant traditions over "transubstantiation" or, the schism between east and western churches, which ultimately came down to whether the bread should be leavened or not! It is this last schism which is latched onto in the first of this series, where the commentator rightly points out that really these, and other theological debates of the time were really flags of convenience, or smokescreens for what were effectively political power struggles. I would argue the same today - whether the issue be the evolution-creation culture wars, the debate over same-sex-marriage, or the role of women... Whilst Bible verses are wielded as weapons, and there are people of integrity on both sides of every debate, often at the core of the clashes are people using the issues to gain power and influence... In the midst of whatever battle we find ourselves in we need to remember that the church should be defined by what lies at the centre, not what is on its periphery... In the light of that, let me finish with a quote by Jonathan Kent from the first episode of this superb short series:
"It never fails to amaze me the capacity of religious people to disagree about things you'd thought they have in common."
Shalom
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Woman of no Distinction

Don't often post other people's stuff here... But I found this so powerful that I thought I should. It's a performance poem based on John 4: 4-30, and I have attached the original YouTube video below. A word for women, and men, everywhere... "to be known is to be loved, and to be loved is to be known." I am a woman of no distinction of little importance. I am a women of no reputation save that which is bad. You whisper as I pass by and cast judgmental glances, Though you don’t really take the time to look at me, Or even get to know me. For to be known is to be loved, And to be loved is to be known. Otherwise what’s the point in doing either one of them in the first place? I WANT TO BE KNOWN. I want someone to look at my face And not just see two eyes, a nose, a mouth and two ears; But to see all that I am, and could be all my hopes, loves and fears. But that’s too much to hope for, to wish for, or pray for So I don’t, not anymore. Now I keep to myself And by that
2 comments
Read more

Psalm for Harvest Sunday

A short responsive psalm for us as a call to worship on Harvest Thanksgiving Sunday, and given that it was pouring with rain as I headed into church this morning the first line is an important remembrance that the rain we moan about is an important component of the fruitfulness of the land we live in: You tend the land and water it And the earth produces its abundance. You crown each year with your bounty, and our storehouses overflow with your goodness. The mountain meadows are covered with flocks and the valleys are filled with corn; Your people celebrate your boundless grace They shout for joy and sing. from Psalm 65
3 comments
Read more

Anointed

There has been a lot of chatter on social media among some of my colleagues and others about the liturgical and socio-political niceties of Saturday's coronation and attendant festivities, especially the shielding of the anointing with the pictured spoon - the oldest and perhaps strangest of the coronation artefacts. Personally I thought that was at least an improvement on the cloth of gold canopy used in the previous coronation, but (pointless) debates are raging as to whether this is an ancient practice or was simply introduced in the previous service to shield the Queen from the TV cameras, not for purposes of sacredness, but understandable coyness, if she actually had to bare her breast bone in puritan 1950s Britain. But as any church leader knows, anything performed twice in a church becomes a tradition. All this goes to show that I did actually watch it, while doing other things - the whole shooting match from the pre-service concert with yer wumman in that lemon-
2 comments
Read more