NINETEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME B

[cappie]

What would you give someone so they could understand that we do not live by bread alone?

What God gave Elijah, and Jesus gave the crowd in John’s gospel, was bread.    Why give  the one thing that seems to prove that you can live by bread alone?

 The key to all of this is that God gave Elijah – and Jesus gave that crowd – bread in such a way that the bread was pure gift. They didn’t make it, they didn’t work for it, they couldn’t pay for it – it was just there. So, they had the chance to look at bread and to see beyond that thing, and to see that this was also a gift from God and so a sign of God’s love and of God’s call to relationship with them. Since it was so clearly a gift, they were able to see that the thing, the bread, meant more than what it was all by itself. All real gifts do.

But if the bread on the hillside is given to us, not just to keep us alive, but also to draw us to God and to life with God, then we do not, and we cannot, live by bread alone. So, the only gift that can really show us that we do not live by bread alone is free bread.   This is still going on, and even now God gives us life. We are given these as gifts, to help us realize that God, and life with God, are most important.

We see this at the altar, where the bread we receive is clearly not about itself alone; but is something much greater. We can look with awe and reverence upon something as simple as this thin, tasteless wafer, because we know it to be sign, symbol and presence of something much greater than flour and water.

But the deepest sign, symbol and presence of something much greater is not just this bread; it is everything we have.

Part of the point of this bread of the Eucharist, is to teach us that we do not live by bread alone. This bread is special so that we can understand that all bread, all that we have, all that is necessary for life, that this, too, is special. It’s all given to us as a sign, symbol and occasion of God’s love. It’s here to draw us past itself and past ourselves, so that we, seeing both the gift and the giver, will respond to the giver in love and in service.

So, it all gets jumbled up. The bread we eat every day,  and Jesus being the bread of life, and our Eucharist  all run together.

There’s an old rabbinic admonition that insists, of anything and everything, “If you don’t give thanks for it, it’s bad for you.” The food you eat, the clothes you wear, the air you breathe, the people and the things of your life, if you don’t give thanks for it, it’s bad for you.

That’s because giving thanks for something puts it in its proper place, it places the thing as part of our relationship with God and God’s relationship with us. That’s where things, all things, properly belong. Anything, especially bread, is understood properly only when it is understood in relationship to God.

On the other hand, if we do give thanks for it, then it can be good for us. If we give thanks for it, then every part of our lives can draw us toward the only source of meaning and hope that makes any sense.

It’s very easy to forget this. It’s very easy to value the things of creation and of our lives for themselves, to take them outside the context of a relationship with God. When we do this, when we see only what is right in front of us and no more, then we are impoverished, we are barely living on the surface of our lives and of our world.

That’s what it means to live by bread alone. To live by bread alone means to see no farther than the things themselves, and so to miss the presence and the love and the call of God that are really a part of every piece of bread we have. It’s to miss the gift, and the love behind the gift.

So, God gave Elijah bread, and Jesus gave the crowds on those mountainsides bread, and God gives us bread – God gives us all we need for life – so that we may be drawn beyond all of these and see more than we would see otherwise, so that we might understand that we do not live by bread alone.