Broken Bread and Vanishing Saviors

Several weeks ago I wrote about an amazing trip to Colorado with my friend Sam Vaugh. In the post I mentioned that each night after dinner, in the blissful absence of television and Internet, we both read for several hours. Sam was reading an unfinished manuscript that a local Southern Colorado author had let him preview. I was reading a book recommended by my friend Bob Carlton, "Take This Bread", by Sara Miles. Sara Miles grew up in a home where her parents, partly as a reaction to devout missionary parents, partly a response to the lack of relevance of the mainstream church to the pressing social causes and needs of the 1950's, raised their children as practicing agnostics. When Sara reached adulthood she spent time as a chef in New York City, and then as a respected writer and reporter who spent much of the 1960's living and reporting in Latin America during that incredibly volatile, but culture revolutionizing decade. She gave birth to little girl while she was in Latin America, then when the violence became too risky for her daughter she moved back to the US settling in the San Francisco area. One day while walking down the street in her neighborhood, she passed the open doors of an Episcopal Church, a particularly intriguing one architecturally, and she decided to go inside to see more. When she entered she found that they were observing Communion, the Eucharist, The Lord's Supper. She was somewhat familiar from readings about religion, but she had never experienced it personally. She got in line and curiously, and apprehensively approached the ministers who were serving. One of them broke off a piece of bread, whispered to her that this bread was the "body of Christ". She watched as the person in front of her dipped the bread in the chalice of wine as the next minister said, "and this wine is the blood of Christ shed for you". Sara Miles says that in that moment of hearing and tasting, she was transformed. She didn't know anything about what had happened or what it meant, she just knew that when she left that room...she was a different woman. Because she had no frame of reference for what this was supposed to mean she began to ask herself, and in a desperate need for some answers, this God that she had always assumed did not exist, for help. The only thing she could come up with was that, her experience as a cook taught her that food has a deep, primal, and spiritual connection to the soul. She thought that this experience was telling her, God or no
God, she was supposed to feed people...so she began a food pantry for the homeless and the working poor out of that same Episcopal church. I won't ruin the rest of the fascinating story...you should read it yourself...but the other thing Sara Miles discovered was that just when you get a handle on what God wants from you, he seems to get a little harder to box up and pin down.

I'm reminded of the post-resurrection story in Luke 24 that tells of the now-you-see-him-now-you-don't nature of keeping up with Jesus. He appears to two fringe believers (Cleopas and his companion)early Easter morning. They see him and don't recognize him, hear him speak and don't recognize him, listen to him exegete the entire of Hebrew scripture that has to do with the coming of the Messiah, and don't recognize him. Now my hunch is that they are crazy numb with grief and are in the throes of emotional shock. They even say that they had so pinned their hopes on Jesus being the promised Messiah, only to watch him die and be be buried. Loss will do that to you...disappointment with do that to you...betrayal will do that to you...fear will do that to you...the crush of failure will send you to a place where you wall yourself off from anything that has the slightest potential of dealing out more pain. It is also significant to me that according to my less than stellar mathematical abilities, Jesus made five appearances after his resurrection (not counting the ascension). They were all to people who already believed. If I had been put in charge of the post resurrection public relations campaign of the Messiah...I do things a little differently. I get him on Larry King and Oprah. I get him to throw out the first pitch at the World Series and I get him to be a contestant on Dancing With the Stars. Oh...and he is in both an iPod and a Geico commercial. But I was not in charge and God chose not to scare, frighten, or overpower our human will or our ignorance...you have to come to faith with your head, your heart and your willing volition.

So... Jesus has walked the several hours-long trek to their home village and they still are clueless, and yet...they have enough sensitivity to the needs of a stranger to invite Jesus in to eat and spend the night. They sit down to eat, asking Jesus to bless the food and when he prays and breaks the bread...they suddenly recognize him. Now what was it in the breaking of bread that revealed his identity when seeing him face to face, hearing his voice and hearing him teach failed to do the trick? I don't know but I think my friend, chef Milton (Don't Eat Alone), and Sara Miles, have it right. The power of breaking bread and sharing a meal together opens doors to the soul that stay slammed shut and resist the most adept lock pickers. Then, of course, just when you are ready to systematize and quantify the magical experience you had with God he vanishes, and you are left with a holy heartburn ("didn't our hearts burn within us as he explained the scriptures to us along the road") and not even a Polaroid snapshot for the scrapbook. He is illusive and untameable...you don't put him in a choker collar and leash, get him to roll over and play dead, and follow obediently at your heels. That's not the God of Creation... that's Lassie...

So take a bite outta that...


Pling...Pling...

dg