Easter 3A: They Recognized Him in the Breaking of the Bread
When I was in the Diocese of Connecticut, the officer for
Stewardship was Roger Alling. In addition to developing a financial stewardship
program for the diocese, Roger encouraged us all to give even more attention to
stewardship of the earth, of the environment – “this fragile Earth our island
home.” The bishop, unhappy with what some of the larger parishes were giving to
the diocese, insisted that environmental stewardship was a distraction from the
important work of God in Christ that needed funding. Sadly, Roger did not last
long as Chief Stewardship Officer. Tragically, he was correct. No amount of
money in diocesan budgets can overcome the damage we, humans, have done to the
environment in the decades since Roger issued the warning. It is in this
context that we have heard the Song of the Three Young Men:
Let the people of
God glorify the Lord, sing praise and give honor for ever.
Their captor, Nebuchadnezzar the Warrior King, gave them
Babylonian names: Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Their real names were
Annanias, Azarias, and Misael. These three young Jewish men refused to worship
Babylonian idols, so the king threw them into a furnace to burn. But an angel
of the Lord came down into the furnace, drove the firey flame out of the
furnace, “and made the inside of the furnace as though a moist wind were
whistling through it.” With one voice the three young men praised and glorified
and blessed God singing of all the wonders of creation. They called upon all of
us to glorify the Lord! As we gather on this Earth Day 2023, we take time
together to renew our commitment to glorify the Lord by caring for the creation
about which the three young men sang so gloriously from the depths of their
captivity. [i]
Perhaps their singing can inspire us as we look at the
central element of our Gospel from Luke 24:13-35. That would be bread. We read
that after walking home with two followers of Jesus, the Risen Christ sat down
at their table. He took, blessed, broke and gave it to them. “Then their eyes were opened, and they
recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.” They recognized him in the
breaking of the bread. Just what is bread.
Thich Nhat Hanh, or Thay as he is known by his followers, is
the late Vietnamese Zen master, poet and peace activist, nominated in 1967 for
the Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King, Jr., helps us see that a loaf of
bread, or even one communion wafer, can represent the presence of the whole
world, the whole cosmos. [ii]
We can, as Buddhists and Christian Mystics have, see the oneness of all
creation: the total interconnectedness and interdependence of all people, all
creatures, and all living things in a loaf of bread. When we look at a loaf of
bread, we see a combination of grain and water. When we look deeper with the
eyes of our hearts, we can see a cloud floating in our loaf of bread. Without
the cloud there would be no water; without water the grain cannot grow; and
without grain and water we cannot make bread. The existence of our bread is
dependent on the existence of a cloud. Bread and cloud are so close, says Thay.
And we can see sunshine. Sunshine is very important because the grain cannot
grow without sunshine, and we humans cannot grow without sunshine. So, the
farmer needs sunshine in order to plant, grow and harvest the grain, just as
the grain needs sunshine to grow. Looking ever more deeply, we can see bees
flying around in our bread. Bees are essential to pollinating the plants that
become the grain that becomes bread. Therefore, we can see that clouds, water, sunshine,
bees, and the farmer, and those who harvest the grain in our loaf of bread.
When we look more deeply, with the eyes of those who are awake, we can see that
everything is here: those who mill the grain, those who mix the dough, those
who deliver the bread, those who put it on the shelf in the store, those who
check us out of the store, the oil reserves that powered the vehicles that
bring the bread and us together – everything is in our loaf of bread! Without
all of these non-bread elements, without so many many people, the bread would
be empty. There would be no bread.
Bread is not a separate thing, just as we are not separate
selves. Like bread, we depend on non-self-elements and people! Is it any wonder
that Jesus says, when we take, bless, break and give bread away we do this in
memory of him? The bread he takes, blesses, breaks and gives away that night
before he died and was raised from the dead, contained the presence of the
whole cosmos. It was the bread he took, blessed, broke and gave to thousands of
people to eat. That bread contained the manna that appeared every morning for
40 years in the wilderness to sustain a wandering and homeless people. That
bread he took, blessed, broke and gave contained the unleavened bread the
slaves in Egypt made to sustain them in their great escape to freedom and to
become God’s people. The bread he takes, blesses, breaks and gives to those two
people in Emmaus contains the bread that the Priest King Melchizedek gave to
Abraham outside the city of Shalem, the city of Peace, Jerusalem, as the
journey from Ur to a land of promise was under way.
The bread Jesus takes, blesses, breaks and gives contains
the entire history of God’s people as recorded in the Bible. When see what is
contained in our bread, we begin to understand the interconnectedness and
interdependence we share with the whole world and everything therein! And when
we see our total interconnectedness and interdependence on all these non-self-elements
in our loaf of bread, we join with the three young Jewish prisoners of Babylon
and begin to sing and to glorify God in all of creation as we now see how all
of creation is present in our loaf of bread that Jesus teaches us to take,
bless, break and give it away to all, to everyone and anyone who needs to be
fed with the life of the entire cosmos! The world, the entire cosmos is One.
Like the bread, we are One with the entire cosmos. Everything is One.
Many of us became aware of our Oneness with one another and
the entire cosmos when that first photo from space of our fragile island home,
planet Earth appeared on the cover of the aptly named Whole Earth Catalog. That
one image made clear the necessity of caring for the Earth was just as
important as caring for one another.
It turns out that my friend Roger Alling was right all
along. If stewardship means anything at all, it must begin with our stewardship
of creation itself. Genesis chapter 1 announces that we are created in the
image of God to have dominion over all of creation. The Hebrew word, rada,
can mean to rule or have dominion, but one Hebrew scholar takes it to mean, “to
actively partner with God to take the world forward.” Earth Day means to
remind us that to be human we are to partner with God to take the world forward
– to sustain its fruitfulness – for it is the very fruitfulness of creation
that sustains us. We are especially fortunate that our Lord Jesus chose bread
as a reminder – for every time we look at this bread, we can see not only the
entire history of God’s saving mercy and justice, but the entire cosmos itself.
If we are to survive at all on this, our fragile island home, we must take this
partnership to take the world forward with utmost seriousness. It is the most
important way that we can join with the three young men to glorify and praise
the Lord and all creation with our active involvement to care for the
environment.
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