The Bread of Tomorrow

The Revd Dr William Lamb
The Ninth Sunday after Trinity

8.30am

Eucharist (said)

Hebrews 11.29-12.2  Luke 12.49-59

The readings in recent weeks have challenged us to reflect on a range of very different human emotions. Last week, it was fear. The week before, it was anxiety. This week it is stress: ‘I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed’.

It is perhaps illuminating to think about the context of this extended discourse in Luke 12. Jesus has set his face towards Jerusalem. He is to face his time of trial – and it is perhaps no accident that we find these meditations on fear, anxiety and stress.

We should not underestimate the kind of emotions that Jesus is describing in this passage. The Greek word συνεχομαιcan mean ‘I am under stress’… it can also mean ‘I am distressed’… even ‘depressed’. It can also mean ‘oppressed’. The passage speaks of the disintegration of families, the of civil strife, legal threats, and the collapse faced by a community when people simply refuse to read the signs of the times. The south wind blows and you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’ and it happens. We know what that feels like.

When we contemplate the reality at the heart of the gospel, the mystery of the incarnation, we sometimes forget that Jesus takes us into the very heart of human existence. He does not avoid the difficulties and challenges of life. They are part of his experience. And the Epistle to the Hebrews reminds us that these challenges and difficulties were part and parcel of human experience. We see evidence of all this in the stories of the Red Sea, the walls of Jericho, Rahab the prostitute, of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephtha, of David, Samuel and the prophets. And yet, they had faith. They had faith. Their hearts had been shaped by the promise and the hope of redemption. They recognised that in spite of the difficulties and challenges they faced, they knew in the hearts, just as Jesus knew, that the promise of salvation was nearer than when they first believed. They knew that love has an eternity to work out its promises. And it will.

And that, my brothers and sisters, is the mystery we celebrate at the heart of this eucharist. It is not about seeking solace in beautiful surroundings and singing a few hymns with nice people. The eucharist is ultimately a sign of protest. In its proclamation of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, it is an act of protest against the powers and principalities of this world. As Fr Timothy Radcliffe puts it, ‘it is an outrageous expression of hope in defiance of everything that could destroy it’.

And this is the stressful element that lies at the heart of the gospel. We live as people who are caught between worldly oppression and the hope of the kingdom. And yet in the eucharist, as we share bread in an unsharing world, we receive a foretaste of that same kingdom. As we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we pray ‘Thy Kingdom Come’. We also pray ‘Give us this day our daily bread’. The Greek word for ‘daily’ is unusual in this context. Scholars argue about its meaning. But one possibility is that it refers to the ‘Bread of Tomorrow’. Give us this day the Bread of Tomorrow. That is our hope – and that is why we come to this altar – so that our hearts may be satisfied.