Can you read between the lines?
The fast is behind us now, and the Easter feast is bef
ore us; so let’s talk about food. Food was a critical element in the ministry of Jesus. In fact, the overarching complaint of the opposition was that Jesus welcomed sinners and ate with them. He ate with them!
But the two lines I would like you to read between occur in the first pages of the Bible, in an episode we remember right at the beginning of Lent: the penalty Adam incurred for his sin found in the third chapter of Genesis. Remember than when God first settled Adam in Paradise he told him, “You may eat the fruit of any tree in the garden.” Any tree, with no mention of vegetables. Whenever Adam would eat, he would have to look up and, more than that, reach up. But when God confirmed the sentence Adam brought upon himself, in verse 18, he says, “the ground is cursed, and will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the wild vegetation.” Now Adam will forage, he will graze on the ground, as cattle do. But the very next verse (19) says, “You will eat your bread (Greek: arton) in the sweat of your brow.” Long before we Christians had to deal with these verses, the Jewish theologians did and they proposed an answer. When Adam heard that now he would forage like the cattle, that he would be facing the ground to eat like them, he began to cry and God was moved with tender pity for him and relented. He made a concession, God intervened and mitigated the severity of the punishment by giving man bread—the first cooked food mentioned in the whole Bible.
Of course, just three days ago we remembered the tremendous role Jesus assigned to bread in the great work of salvation, how he took bread and gave it to us, telling us to eat it as his body. God had once intervened to mitigate the sorry state of humanity by giving us bread, and now Jesus completes that redemption by making bread the vehicle of his divine presence among us.
But the story of bread and food in the marvelous tale of redemption does not end there. Most of us never realize the role bread and food played after the resurrection. In fact, it is key. In a few days we will retell the story of two disciples leaving Jerusalem for a village not too far away called Emmaus. Jesus begins to walk along with them and the three get into a discussion of what has happened in Jerusalem. Why couldn’t they recognize Jesus? The Scripture says simply that “they were prevented.” By what, by something Jesus did to blind them, or was it something within them? Where they looking only with their minds and not properly with their hearts? When the disciples apparently arrive at their destination, they invite Jesus to spend the night. It is when he sits with them at the table and breaks the bread that they realize just who he is. The bread, and not the discussion, allows them to recognize Jesus with them.
On that same Easter evening Jesus comes to his disciples in the Upper Room. They think they are seeing a ghost. He says, “Have you anything to eat?” They give him a piece of fish and honeycomb, which he takes and eat in from of them. Once more, the food makes the disciples realize that Jesus is indeed alive and right there with them.
Let us go a bit further, into the Acts of the Apostles which we shall being to read at dawn. In chapter 10 Peter is speaking with Cornelius, the Roman military man, and says that Jesus ate and drank with the disciples after he rose from the dead; after he rose. Some manuscripts of the Acts actually have such a reference in the very beginning of the book, in verse 4: “For forty days after his death he appeared to them . . . and talked to them about the kingdom of God while he ate with them.” Jesus did not simply give us the holy bread as his substitute, so to speak, he gave it to us as the very vehicle of his continued presence. It makes his presence real to us.
So let us ask the hard question, then why don’t we see Jesus the way we see each other? It is a question not of God and the mind and God, but of human being and the heart. If we buried someone and then later saw an individual who looked just like him or her, would we first presume our loved one was back from the dead, or would we simply say he or she looks like that departed person? The human mind works that way. It is the human heart that works the other way. To prove this point, at the end of the letter to the Hebrews the author makes a comparison between the terrifying volcanic display which accompanied the Theophany on Sinai and the gentle and intimate reality of Zion. Sinai—when the Jews saw things physically—was so frightening that even Moses said he was trembling with terror. But “you have come to Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, with its thousands of angels. You have come to the joyful gathering of God’s first-born children who are enlisted in heaven. You have come to God, who judges all people, and to the spirit of good people made perfect. You have come to Jesus who inaugurated a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks more eloquently than the blood of Abel.” It is the eating of bread in this company that we call the Church that reveals Jesus to us. If we don’t recognize Jesus present and teaching us, what prevents it? Is Jesus deliberately hiding, or is it something within us? Are we looking to see only with our physical eyes and not properly with our hearts?
The stories of the risen Jesus are a comfort because they show us that even those who knew him personally according to the flesh had to process the fact of his resurrection, and that this took a little time. It will take time for us, too, but it also requires effort. When we return home, to the wonderful array of Easter food, let us keep in mind that God, who gave us bread in the beginning, gives it to us now as well. More than that, God has given us Jesus as bread. Jesus said so, “I am the living bread come down from heaven.” As you eat your share of bread this day the fact is that Jesus might be standing right behind you!