there's something about pastors and bread

Hello, friends - 

I turned off the oven at work one day, its loud hum and whirring finally coming to a stop. It was quiet, after four hours of baking. My fellow baker and I worked in silence for a few moments, enjoying the calm.

She was getting muffins ready to be put out on the tables. Loaves of bread sat cooling, and cookies were getting ready to be baked because next week it’s going to be a buy-one-get-one-free deal and it’s going to be crazy.

We were talking about our jobs, I think. She works as a cook at school, where she gets to see my little brother every day. I’m a seminarian, getting ready to go on internship this next year.

If I wasn’t supposed to be a pastor, I’d be a baker. I said, getting ready to assemble garlic bread.

She stopped, setting some pumpkin muffins down, and said, thoughtfully, you know, there’s something about pastors and bread.

There’s something about pastors and bread.

I let that phrase sit – it was so articulated, yet left shrouded in the unknown. I mean, beyond communion – beyond this is my body given for you, do this for the remembrance of me – what is it?

After I get off work at 12:30, I’ll often bake a loaf in the afternoon, for my family and I to have table bread to share at suppertime as we crowd around the kitchen island. It’s usually something simple – a plain tangy sourdough or sometimes an Italian herb round – but it’s nurturing and wholesome and from the earth and from my hands. There’s a piece of myself, and of every baker who bakes loaves, given with each loaf…in our own way, we are each saying this is my body given for you and for me and for everyone. Pieces are quickly torn and consumed and we know that others are being nourished and fed in a way that is holy and good and real. It's a micro-level feeding of the 5,000 - everyone eats and has their fill. 

It goes back to working with my hands. It’s kneading the dough and shaping and throwing flour and lifting heavy cast iron pots and holding hot, crusty, crackling loaves. It’s throwing my hands up in frustration when dough pancakes or is a complete failure, and it’s about rejoicing in those, too. It’s giving away to friends – passing into another’s hands. It’s an earthy, real joy.

One night in February, my girlfriend and I were having dinner at our pastors’ house. Homemade spaghetti and apple crisp and good bread. We don’t cut our loaves here, they said, we tear it with our hands. That way the fibers can tear and go how they want. Since then, I haven’t sliced my bread. After all, Jesus broke it with his hands. 

There’s something about bread and this pastor – about how it feeds community, and how it expresses genuine interest in the other in the name of Jesus the Christ.

Friends, as you go into this night, may you realize the Christ who comes to you in bread and wine and nourishes your faith – Amen.

Dean