Soda Bread Scones from Heaven

John 6:56-69

[Jesus said,] “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.

When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, “Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But among you there are some who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him. And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.”

Because of this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

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So, this is our last Sunday in the very well-worn series of Gospel readings about bread. I lamented enough about that last week, so I won’t go down that road again. Suffice it to say it’s been 6 weeks of Jesus talking about himself as the Bread of Life, the Bread from Heaven, Bread for the sake of the world, and whatnot. And I’m kind of over it. I was out of gas and out of ideas and on the verge of a nothing-burger of a sermon for this morning when I heard a story about scones – scones! – that felt like bread from heaven in its own way; manna in the wilderness for this preacher, if you will.

And I say “bread from heaven” not just because I needed a sermon and this one landed in my lap – or rather, I heard it on the radio – when I thought I was out of luck. This felt like “manna in the wilderness” because I’m feeling as tired and as sad and as scared and as angry and as out of sorts and as exhausted and all the rest by all the things these days. I don’t mean to dodge the despair in Afghanistan. I’m not pretending away the suffering in Haiti. I can’t avoid the continued concern over COVID in our country. But I just wanted to be fed and to feed you all with some good news and nourishment for the journey of whatever lies ahead for us in the coming days. And it’s a story about some soda bread scones.

But, before the scones, a thing about a guy and a website, a couple of books and a heck of a social media presence. His name is Brandon Stanton and his photography project called “Humans of New York” started back in 2010. He had a pretty simple but ambitious idea to photograph 10,000 random, everyday New Yorkers, going about their daily lives, and compiling an exhaustive photographic catalogue of the inhabitants of one of the largest, greatest, most diverse cities on the planet.

Along the way, his photography shoots turned into conversations – from which stories and quotations would become blog posts, which grew in popularity enough to glean millions of followers on social media, of which my wife has been one for quite some time. Brandon Stanton has since turned it all into a couple of books, too, and branched out to include the same from other cities around the world.

Now, back to the bread – the soda bread scones, to be more specific.

Mary O’Halloran and her husband own an Irish pub in the East Village of New York City that, impacted by the economic mess of a worldwide pandemic, had to shut down in March of 2020. With her husband working as a longshoreman up near Alaska for nine months, Mary was home with six kids to home-school and a bar she couldn’t keep afloat. She moved her kids into the bar and started catering meals to relief workers, which kept her busy and made some money, but not enough to pay the bills.

So a friend – from the band that played in the bar on Thursdays – helped her set up an online store so she could sell these soda bread scones smothered in blackberry jam, which was a simple recipe of her mother’s from back in Ireland. And it was something. Not enough to pay all the bills, or catch up with the rent, but enough to get the attention of a local news outlet who did a story on Mary, the kids, the bar, and all she was doing to survive. And people started ordering her scones.

Which is when Brandon Stanton showed up – the Humans of New York photographer, blogger, social media star. When he heard about Mary and her scones he posted the following to his Facebook page, which I invite you to hear with a healthy dose of snark, sarcasm, and sense of humor:

“I know there’s a volcano of big scone hype that’s about to erupt, so here’s our plan.

Mary normally charges $18 for an order of scones, but as she explained there’s barely any money in it for her.

I do know that there’s a lot of bargain hunting scone fanatics out there.

But I also know that many of you are ‘scone curious,’ and would love to support Mary.

If you fall in the second category, I’ve put together a special offer for you.

For $30 you can get an order of scones, and a limited-edition drawing from Mary’s daughter Erinn. (Depending on the amount of orders, the drawing might not be highly intricate. A lassie’s gotta do her homework.)

Each box will also include an invisible Irish blessing that will be passed down through the generations to all of your descendants until the end of the time. …

Mary started crying when I suggested raising prices, because she says other people are hurting more than her.

So if you are also in a tough spot, but want to try the scones, do not worry.

The $18 non-magical scones are still available through her website.

If you are in the city go visit Mary O’s at 32 Avenue A.

Every Thursday night is Irish Music night.

May the road rise to meet you.”

Twenty-four hours later, Mary had $1,000,000 in soda bread scone orders – something like 25,000 orders for 150,000 scones. She also had no small amount of worry about how, if, and when she would be able to fill those orders all by herself, with only the pub’s kitchen and her staff of six kids and regular patrons from the bar who often stepped up to help. Which is where I found the Gospel in all of this. Because when Mary heard the news about all of those orders, she asked Brandon Stanton, “I can do this, right?” And he promised her she could.

“Because,” he wrote to his followers, “every one of those orders came from people who want the best for her. And I felt confident that we’d all be patient while she figured out a new process for making scones.

Mary has a great team around her. She refers to them as ‘The Regulars’ as if they’re a squad of superheroes, but they’re actually longtime customers who transform into volunteers at a moment’s notice.

Clint was serving food last night. Steve and Shelly were bartending. Liz and Deb were watching the kids.

Alexia … dropped everything to manage Mary’s online ordering.

Caitlin, Rogan, TJ, Sara, Mimi, Bob. The list goes on and on…

With this support group, and her own business experience, Mary has all she needs to deliver 25,000 boxes of delicious, blackberry-jam-smothered, blessing-infused scones. It’s just going to take some planning.

And some time.

Our goal was always to help with Mary’s burdens, not add to them.

She will deliver the scones as fast as she can. And things may fall into place rather quickly.

But if you absolutely need your scones in the coming days, or even weeks, feel free to request a refund.

For everyone else, your scones will drop from the sky like a pleasant Irish rain. (Or like manna from heaven, perhaps.)

And when the box is opened, your descendants will be blessed for a minimum of ninety generations. Thanks to all of you, and may the road rise to meet you.”

Our world – and more of God’s children than not, it seems – are hurting and broken and scared and lost and exhausted and all the rest right now. We are hungry for some measure of hope, some sense of peace, some evidence that there is an end in sight to whatever is scaring or threatening us most right now.

And Jesus showed up to be the promise for us that grace and mercy and peace are worth it, that we can do this, that God’s love wins in the end. That the ones who eat the bread we get in Jesus will live forever, in spite of it all.

And this teaching is difficult. This good news is hard to believe when you see the scope of the suffering that surrounds us these days. Who can accept it? Some don’t. Many cannot. How could you, why would you, why should you, considering…?

I hope it’s because, as believers, we see ourselves and each other as “The Regulars” in Mary’s bar – the children of God and followers of Jesus – who can do no other. “Lord to whom can we go? Where else is there?”

We are called to do justice and love kindness and walk humbly, you and I; called to make, break, be, and share the Bread of Life that comes in Jesus Christ because there is no better way, not greater blessing, no deeper hope, for the sake of the world: for the Humans of New York … Afghanistan … Haiti … and the ones around the corner, too.

Amen

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I gleaned the information and inspiration for this sermon from this bit on NPR’s/WFYI’s Weekend Edition and from the following piece in TheIrishPost.com.

You can order your own box of scones and/or support Mary and her family by visiting Mary O’s Irish Soda Bread Shop if you’re so inclined.

Eat Your Vegetables

John 6:35, 41-51

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”

Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’  Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

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It’s worth knowing – or remembering, if you’ve learned this before – that Jesus is mad today. It’s hard to tell from here – sitting like we do, in this time and place – so far removed from that moment with him, but it matters that he’s angry.

We’re listening in on a hard conversation – an argument, even, some might say – between Jesus and the crowds who have been following him, and challenging him, and questioning him for quite awhile now. Someone smarter than me, has even suggested that when Jesus says, “do not complain among yourselves,” that what he really means is “shut up;” maybe, “quit your whining.”

And that side of Jesus matters to me – the human, frustrate-able side of Jesus, I mean, who must have gotten mad more often than we hear about. Mad, here, because he’s trying to “bring the kingdom” to the people around him and they just don’t see it or get it or want it or know what that means. Mad because he’s been having this same conversation for at least, like, 6 chapters and 51 verses, if the Gospel text is any kind of measuring stick for that sort of thing. And after all this time, they’re still just bickering over the details and not believing or receiving what they’ve seen or experienced or heard about Jesus.

So, I’ll come back to the Gospel in a minute but first, I hope we can have a little laugh.

I can’t decide if that dog is really smart, or very well-trained – BOTH, maybe – or just really likes cheese. None of this really matters.

Because, my point is that I kind of think Jesus is just trying to get the people in this morning’s Gospel to eat their theological vegetables. And more than vegetables, or cheese, even – but “the bread that came down from heaven.” And he had to be so frustrated and angry, and sad, I imagine, that they just didn’t get it, or want it, or understand it, or whatever.

Because what matters in all of this back and forth between Jesus and those people of faith is that it took place very near to the festival of the Passover, the great national and religious holiday for the Jewish people. The Passover was where they celebrated their release from slavery, their Exodus from Egypt, their journey toward the Promised Land. We heard last week about how the people of Jesus’ day complained to him for not giving them signs like the ones their ancestors had received in the wilderness back in the days of Moses – after some grumbling of their own. They complained, remember, that their ancestors got that miraculous manna in the wilderness – actual bread from heaven – and they thought they deserved – and so were looking for – something like that kind of a miraculous sign, too; to feed them, to fill them, to fix them, to SAVE them.

And now, along comes Jesus, claiming to be that bread from heaven. He’s claiming, not just that he was there to deliver the bread from heaven they were looking for, but that somehow he was, that he would be, that he is, this bread from heaven – this miracle – that gives life and hope and salvation to the world. Which would sound ridiculous, you have to admit, since to so many of them, Jesus really was just the son of Joseph and Mary, from down street, or that kid from the other side of the lake, or that carpenter from Capernaum.

And since most of us know the rest of the story, we know how this ends – with Jesus crucified and raised to new life. And we can read this little bit of it all as a preview of sorts. Jesus was really hinting, if not declaring outright for those who could read between the lines – that he was the new Passover Lamb, with that national holiday just around the corner, come to take away the sin of the world.

Jesus … from Nazareth … this son of a carpenter, this boy born of a peasant girl – this neighbor kid whose parents they knew – was claiming to have come down from heaven with this monumental, holy task of giving up his life, in the flesh, for the sake of the world.

Which means, Jesus was messing with their tradition. Jesus was undoing what they expected. Jesus was replacing the old with something new. And he was inviting them to live and believe something altogether different because of it. He was like Elijah in that first reading, who had challenged everything the people believed could be true about their God. He was moving their cheese and replacing it with broccoli. He was replacing their bread with his body.

That what Jesus was up to with all of his talk about the bread of life and the bread from heaven; about eternal life and about giving his flesh for the sake of the world. He was undoing everyone’s expectations for who God was, for how God could be, for what God might be up to in the world and for how their relationship with God was about to be utterly changed from anything they had ever known and everything they were used to.

Everything old was becoming new. Everything they were familiar with was changing. The very kingdom of God was, all of a sudden, alive and well and under their feet in a way they had never expected, experienced, or believed was even possible. And what woulda, coulda, shoulda been a feast of beautiful, hope-filled, life-changing news was, unfortunately, all being received with as much joy and gratitude as a plate full of boiled brussels sprouts.

And whether it’s eating our vegetables or doing our homework… whether it’s ending a bad relationship or putting down the bottle… whether it’s showing up for worship, giving our offering, reading more Scripture, or saying our prayers… whether it’s finally forgiving that someone, extending that grace, or making that sacrifice for the sake of the greater good… haven’t we all tried to convince someone – or be convinced, ourselves – to do or believe or behave in some way that we knew to be good and faithful and righteous, but that was also really hard to make happen?

What Jesus was inviting people to see and to receive – what God is calling us to, still – is to open ourselves to the new ways of God’s kingdom among us: things like grace and forgiveness; things like humility and generosity; things like peace and love for the “other” and love of our enemies, too. But we’re just not always so great at that, if we’re honest. Our necks are stiff and our hearts are hard and we are stuck in our ways, too much of the time. Just like the Jews of Jesus’ day, the Church as we know it is notorious for “complaining against each other.”

So we get this bread from heaven, in Jesus, who offers us forgiveness, who fills our hearts and minds and lives with the same kind of mercy, love and promise we’re meant to share. We get this bread from heaven, in Jesus, broken and shared with such abundance that our hands and our hearts can’t hold it all.

And this bread from heaven, like Jesus says, isn’t really bread – or brussels sprouts – or broccoli – after all. It is the very life and death and resurrection of God, in Jesus Christ, broken and shared for you and for me. It is something altogether new and better and different. It can be hard to believe, this bread from heaven. For some this kind of grace is hard to swallow. For too many, it’s difficult to share.

But this bread from heaven, in Jesus Christ, is for all people. It is meant to feed and fill every body. It saves and redeems all things – and all of us – by God’s grace, for the sake of the world.

And it changes everything – and will us, too – if we let it.

Amen