Untitled Sermon

For the Life of the World

Lets talk about bread.

Have you ever made bread?

I learned how to make bread after we found out that our daughter has Celiac and all of the sudden, we needed to be gluten free.

So, I learned to make gluten free bread before learning to make regular bread, although I have always liked to bake. Part of the reason I have always liked baking is because it is chemistry, it is science in which you have to be fairly precise with your ingredients in order to create a chemical reaction which gives you the desired results.

Clement of Alexandria called this the mystery of the bread, that has risen through fire, as the wheat springs up from decay and germination. What he does in pointing this out, is he ties the bread to the life cycle of the wheat, the life cycle of the ingredient, and I believe he is also drawing our memory to the parables of the seeds, the sower, and the wheat and the weeds.

But we have to ask ourselves, what then is the wheat and the other ingrediants, if Jesus is the bread of life, risen from the fire. If you think about it, Jesus, in this current state in the Gospel, God incarnate, is more like the dough, the ingredients all mixed together, flour, water, salt, yeast. He is being Proofed, that is when the chemical reaction begins to happen in the dough and yeast consumes sugars, giving off gas and causing the dough to rise, Its where all those holes in the final product, the bread, come from.

Depending on the bread you have may have to proof it a couple of times, and in between proofing, you knead the dough to get rid of some of those bubbles and this in turn gives you a denser loaf. As noted last week, some scholars divide Jesus’ ministry into those three parts, inauguration, popular, and opposition.

In my interpretation, and this is just one way of looking at all of this, In the inauguration phase which is everything up to Jesus’ Baptism and Temptation, The wheat, which is the divine, God, is made into flour, humanity, a creature made in the image of God, made of the stuff of God, yet, The wheat in this interpretation, somehow, is that which gives life, it germinates, as Clement points out, Being fully divine, it is the seed of life given for the life of the world.

The inauguration phase of the Gospel sets up our understanding, that though Jesus looks like a normal ordinary person born as a baby in Bethlehem, though he is fully human, flour like any of us, his substance is fully divine, the wheat is of God.

Then in the popular phase we see the dough being made. we mix that wheat that flour with Waters, in the river Jordan, John the Baptizer gets to do this part, even though he feels he is not worthy, then we add some saltiness with parables, and teachings, and the yeast of miracles, healing and casting out demons.

All activity of God in the world is kneaded together and that pungent odor fills the air. Its fun to knead dough, you might even say that it is the popular part of making a loaf, and then we let it proof, Now proof of course has two meanings, The proof of a bread which makes it rise, and the proof of evidence or mathematical equations. All through the popular phase of Jesus’ ministy, the proof is adding up, rising, pointing to Peters confession that Jesus is the Messiah, and the transfiguration on the mountaintop.

But now we are at the opposition phase. We see the Pharisees and the leaders of the temple plotting against him. They want to take that proofed Dough, and knock the air out of it, deflate it so that it does not rise again. but doing that will just make the bread dense, Jesus is at the height of his rise in popularity now he says that the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. He knows that this will turn people against him, he knows that this will deflate his popularity, and is showing that the bread of life is dense, with meaning, and purpose, with life and love and hope.

So no matter what they do, it only brings the dough to the right time. The time in any bread making process when things really begin to change. When you add fire and heat. It is through the fire of death and Resurrection that Jesus becomes the bread of life. When the fullness of what God is doing begins to shine through.

but it is through the fire of death and Resurrection that Jesus becomes the bread of life.

Ante-Nicene Fathers 2: Fathers of the Second Century: Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and Clement of Alexandria (Entire) (Catholic Edition) Chap. VI

Here is to be noted the mystery of the bread, inasmuch as He speaks of it as flesh, and as flesh, consequently, that has risen through fire, as the wheat springs up from decay and germination; and, in truth, it has risen through fire for the joy of the Church, as bread baked.

Moving towards the sacrament