In Back of the Bread
I Kings 17:8-16; John 6:1-14
Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark
May 8, 2016
The Bible calls her the widow of Zarephath, in keeping with the way women were defined in her time–by their relationship with a man. In naming her as a widow, the Bible tells us something about her social status: without a husband, she is invisible and vulnerable.
The Bible identifies her as a widow, but her initial response to Elijah’s request reveals how she identifies herself. She is a mother, and her child is her first priority.
Elijah’s request is an outrageous one. He knows she is a widow, and so he knows she lives on the edge, probably barely surviving. Still, he asks her to bring him bread. Her response seems utterly reasonable: I don’t even have enough for my son; I can’t possibly feed you as well.
Elijah persists. The promise he makes is as outrageous as his original request. Feed me first, he says, and God will make sure you will never run out of food.
Elijah’s outrageous request and equally outrageous promise force the widow to confront a core spiritual dilemma, one every human being faces, one that is faced with particular intensity by mothers and fathers.
Our human capacity for love is born and nurtured in our intimate relationships–often through the bond between a mother or a father and a newborn child who is utterly dependent on them. It is a natural, deeply rooted instinct to care first for the people who are closest to us–our children, our parents, our siblings, our families. Of course the widow’s first response to Elijah is no, my son comes first.
Just as Elijah challenges the widow’s response, so our faith challenges that natural human instinct. It may well be, in most cases, that we learn to love first in our families. If our love remains stuck there, though, our lives become small and narrow. In her initial refusal, the widow herself acknowledges that truth: I am collecting wood, she says, to cook one more meal for my child and me, and then we will shrivel up and die. Elijah promises something more: if she expands her caring beyond her immediate family, their lives will also expand.
In this story, and throughout the Bible, our faith calls us to celebrate the love we learn in our families and then to expand our definition of family–even to share our bread with a strange man at the gate of the town. We are called to risk losing what is most precious to us in order to bring that precious gift of love to fulfillment.
The widow–the mother–makes a risky choice. She dares to trust Elijah’s outrageous promise. She expands her circle of caring. She shares her bread, and there is more than enough.
In our second bread story, there is no mention of a mother. I suspect, though, there is one involved. We hear about a large crowd. We hear about Jesus, who is quite confident everyone will be fed. We hear about two disciples, Philip and Andrew, who can’t imagine how that can happen. And we hear about a young boy, who offers his lunch of five loaves and two fish.
Usually, when we hear this story, we focus on what comes next–the miracle of the loaves and the fishes multiplying. Today, I want to focus on what happened before. Where did the boy get the loaves and the fish? What inspired him to offer them to Andrew? Who prepared his lunch? Who baked the bread? Who taught him to share?
I used this gospel text this week at our monthly nursing home worship services, and I asked the congregations these questions. At Countryside, an all-female nursing home, there was unanimous agreement: it must have been his mother. At Homestead, one woman who had proudly told me about her grandchildren suggested that it was the boy’s grandmother who baked the bread. In the mixed group at Oak Knoll we expanded our thinking a bit–maybe his mother, maybe his grandmother–or it could have been an aunt or a sister. Certainly, we all agreed, his father or grandfather or brother might have been involved in teaching him to share. Or maybe his own family was in crisis and his lunch was prepared by a kind neighbor.
Whoever it was, we know that someone who loved him kneaded the barley flour into loaves. Someone who loved him packed his lunch. Someone who loved him showed him by example that there is enough love to share with others.
I wonder whether that person–maybe his mother–was there in the crowd with him. I wonder if she struggled for just a moment with the widow of Zarephath’s dilemma. Was she at all tempted to tell her son to hold back–to make sure her own child would have enough? Was there, for her, a mixture of worry and pride as her son lived out what she had taught him about sharing? The Bible doesn’t tell us; we can only imagine.
What I imagine is that the dramatic miracle described in the gospel built on the seemingly ordinary, everyday act of a mother–or grandmother or aunt or even uncle–baking bread for her child.
Years ago, at a potluck supper, my friend Rebecca offered this table grace: “Back of the bread is the flour, back of the flour is the mill, back of the mill is the sun and the rain and the maker.” The words stuck with me, because the truth it lifts up about bread point us to truth about gifts from God.
Behind every loaf of bread is a long, elaborate process. Rebecca’s song reminds us that the process begins with our Creator. The sun and the rain enable the grain to grow–a gift from God no human effort can replace. This gift, though, requires multiple human efforts to become a loaf of bread. Farmers plant and harvest. Millers turn the grain into flour. Bakers shape the dough into loaves. Whether a loaf comes from Stop and Shop or is lovingly made in someone’s kitchen, bread is a profound expression of human-divine partnership.
The bread the widow shares with Elijah, the barley loaves the young boy offers to Andrew, the bread we break today–each loaf offers a powerful reminder that God calls us into holy partnership. Honoring God as creator, we work with God in on-going co-creation of our world. God nourishes us, and God needs our hearts and our hands to nourish one another.
When I serve communion at the nursing homes, I begin my invitation by saying that the sacrament of communion has many layers of meaning–a meal shared with friends, a reminder of Jesus’ sacrifice, a promise of spiritual nourishment. Today, since we have the rare opportunity to celebrate communion on Mother’s Day, I invite you to focus on two layers of meaning we don’t typically pay attention to.
The first layer highlights the holy partnership that led to our loaf of bread. Sun and rain, farmer and miller, baker and deacon, God’s creative energy together with human hearts and hands. In choosing a loaf of bread to represent his body, I wonder if Jesus was calling attention to that divine-human partnership in his own life. As you taste the bread today, honor and celebrate it as a gift from God; honor and celebrate it as a human expression of our God-given capacity for love.
Let today’s meal be an opportunity to celebrate the people whose hands and hearts have nourished your life. Who made you a lunch? Who taught you to share? It might be your mother–or grandmother or aunt or father or uncle. It might be a teacher or a coach, a neighbor or even a confirmation mentor. Honor them as you receive this bread. And maybe, when you go home, find another way to honor them today as well.
The second layer of meaning I lift up brings us back to the widow of Zarephath’s spiritual dilemma. Most of the time, we share our meals with a small, defined group–family, a group of close friends, a specific set of colleagues. The dinner table solidifies pre-existing relationships–a shared concern for each other’s well-being, a mutual giving and receiving.
At our communion table, we broaden the invitation: this table is for everyone, friend and foe, neighbor and stranger. We enlarge the circle. We redefine family. We take a poor widow’s care for her child and expand it to include a strange man at the city gates. We take a lunch packed by grandma and share it with 5000 strangers-turned-family. With a symbolic piece of bread lightly dipped into a cup of juice, we claim our faith in God’s abundance and we pray for strength to live that faith.
Back of the bread is the flour, the mill, the sun and the rain and the maker. Back of the bread is a farmer’s calloused hands, a truck driver’s late-night travel, an aunt’s caring, God’s gift of human love. Back of the bread we share today is a challenge: to broaden the circle, to share with a stranger, to trust the promise of abundance. Amen.