Gluten Morgen, Baby

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.”

---

Some of you have heard me mention one of my new, favorite theologians, writers, and poets, Pádraig Ó Tuama. A few years ago, maybe in response to the Covid Quarantine craze of sourdough-bread-starters, I’m not really sure why, but he shared a favorite bread recipe online. And because he’s a poet and a theologian, his recipe for bread hits a bit differently than most cook books I’ve seen.

First of all, he calls it “Irish Wheaten Bread (aka: Gluten Morgen Baby),” and he acknowledges that it came to him by way of a friend who got it from someone else who learned it from the TV chef, Delia Smith, and that the details of it all might have changed along the way. After listing the ingredients, which I will share with anyone who actually wants to give this a go (I’m looking at you Joyce Ammerman/Sue Weisenbarger/Linda Michealis), Ó Tuama, offers up the following instructions, among others:

First, he suggests that every bread-baking session should begin with a reading of “All Bread” by Margaret Atwood. “It’s the rule,” he says.

Then he says to “mix the whole meal and plain flour together with the bicarbonate of soda – and sieve them. It helps the bread rise while it’s cooking.

Then add in the pinhead oatmeal, wheat germ, salt and buttermilk. Mix it up.

He says, “I throw in some nice sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds, too. Whatever feels good. Apart from fish-sauce. Don’t put fish sauce in there, even if it feels good.

“At this stage,” he says, “you can put in the egg. Or, if you’re feeling very adventurous, you can separate the yolk from the white, and add in the yolk. Whisk the egg white and then fold that in. If you do that, you need to do some dancing to prove what a badass you are.

“Grease the tin.

“If you want, you can put poppy and sesame seeds on the bottom and side of the tin as this will make the crust be ‘seed-infused-crust’ and there’s no home-made-organic-authentically-handcrafted-bread like ‘seed-infused-crust-home-made-organic-authentically-handcrafted bread.’ If you do this, you’ll need to read Jericho Brown’s “Psalm 150” aloud, with joy, for the sheer brilliance of its language, as well as all its other glories.

At this point, he says, “The whole mix should look like a thick porridge. Pour it into the greased tin. Often I put fresh oats on the top too. And, please don’t forget to say a blessing for the bread. Without it the bread won’t do its work. Choose a blessing of your choice, or make it up. That’s where they all come from anyway.

“Normally,” he says, “I put tinfoil over the greased tins, so that the oats don’t burn, but also to make sure the tins generate a lot of heat. That might be because I’ve got a temperamental oven though.

“Put it all into the oven, and read Margaret Atwood’s poem again. It’ll convince the bread that its purpose is to feed the body and soul.”

And of course there are instructions for bake time and temperature and whatnot. …

I like Pádraig’s recipe because I don’t consider myself a cook, or a chef, or a baker by any stretch. And I’ve always been under the impression – especially when it comes to baking bread – that there’s a right and wrong way to do it; that bread can be finicky; that if you don’t get it all measured or mixed or leavened or greased or timed just right, it won’t turn out. That it will be flat or doughy or ugly or taste terribly – or all of the above. And some of this may, indeed, be true.

But Pádraig O’ Tuama’s recipe reminds me of Jesus and this morning’s Gospel story. Yet another bit in this series of Gospels about his identity as – and his affinity for – God’s “bread from heaven.”

Now, it’s worth knowing –if you didn’t catch it – that Jesus is mad today … that 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 “zip it,” “shut up,” “pipe down,” “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 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.

My point is, I kind of think Jesus is just trying to get the people in this morning’s Gospel to quit fussing and fretting over the recipe. And I imagine he was so frustrated and angry, and sad, too, that they still didn’t get it, or want it, or understand him, just yet.

Because what matters in all of this back and forth between Jesus and those people so hungry for 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. Just before this morning’s reading (or last week if you were here) we heard about how the people complained to Jesus for not giving them signs like the ones their ancestors received in the wilderness back in the days of Moses – after some grumbling of their own. They complained that their ancestors got that miraculous manna in the wilderness – actual bread from heaven – and they thought they deserved 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 bake or deliver this bread from heaven they were looking for, but that somehow he was … that he would be … that he is, this bread – this miracle – that would do more than just fill their bellies, but that would give life and hope and salvation to the world.

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. He was changing the rules and messing with the recipe, if you will, of everything their faith had always told them. And he was inviting them to live and believe something altogether different because of it. He was replacing their bread and that lamb with his very own body and blood.

Jesus was inviting people to see and to receive – God is calling us, still – 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 – we get tied to the recipe and to our own rules too much of the time. Just like the Jews of Jesus’ day, Christian people are notorious for “complaining against each other” about too many rules, and too many recipes, and more.

So we get this bread from heaven, in Jesus Christ, 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 with the world. 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.

We get this bread from heaven, in Jesus, and we’re called to share the goodness of it all like Pádraig Ó Tuama, and any good friend would share their favorite recipe, with no strings attached – generously, like poetry and so many seeds … with psalms and blessings included … by example … and with invitation and room to be fed and nourished by a grace that comes through the very life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, breaking every rule along the way, and wherever necessary.

It is something altogether new and better and different. It can be difficult to believe, this bread from heaven. For some, this kind of grace is hard to swallow, for sure. But this Jesus, this bread come down from heaven, this forgiveness, grace, and mercy, is for us and for all people. It feeds and fills every body. It saves and redeems all things – and all of us – by God’s grace, for the sake of the world.

Gluten Morgen, Baby.

Amen

Pádraig Ó Tuama’s Bread Recipe

A Gathering of Losers

John 6:1-14

After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples.

Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming towards him, Jesus said to Philip, ‘Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?’ He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, ‘Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.’ One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, ‘There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?’ Jesus said, ‘Make the people sit down.’ Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all.

Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, ‘Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.’ So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, ‘This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.’

---

As many of you know, Pastor Cogan and I, along with Angi Johnson, spent the week before last, in New Orleans, at the ELCA National Youth Gathering … with a bunch of losers. And I’m not just talking about John Reece and Jacob Kleine, who affectionately become known as “the Freshmen” over the course of our time together. Or Jack Anderson who we called “Water Boy,” for some reason. Or Max Havel, who garnered a new name that isn’t exactly appropriate for Sunday morning worship.

But I mean we all spent the week with a bunch of losers, because you should have seen and heard the people who were chosen to speak to the over 16,000 young people that showed up for the The Gathering, over the course of those five days. I won’t tell you about all of them, but…

One was Drew Tucker, the proverbial fat kid growing up, who lived in the shadow of his athletic brother as a boy and throughout high school and into young adulthood – never measuring up, he believed, so that he struggled with eating disorders and his body image and all the low self-esteem and struggle that comes along with that. He felt like a loser. But Drew became a Pastor at, among other places, Capital University, my alma mater, and now he’s the head of camps and outdoor ministries in the great state of Ohio.

We heard from young man named Johnson, too, who graduated from high school this year after immigrating to the US from El Salvador when he was just 10 years old. He was a loser, too. Didn’t speak English. Didn’t have friends or finances. Was moved around in surprising ways even after landing at his first home – so much so and so quickly that he didn’t have time to say goodbye to the one friend or two he had made along the way. But Johnson put a face and a story and some humility, courage, and hope to “issue” of immigration that isn’t shared often enough by the politicians, pundits, and our 24 hour news cycle. He reminded me that God’s children are never “illegal” or “aliens” in the eyes of their creator, no matter where they live. And that maybe we shouldn’t consider them that way, either.

Another was Rebekah, a young girl who used to be a boy. At a really young age Rebekah realized the male gender assigned to her at birth wasn’t quite what she was feeling like on the inside. When she revealed all of this on the second or third day of the Gathering, after she’d already emceed the other mass gatherings we’d shared with joy and grace and abilities beyond her years, the adult leader sitting next to our group got up and left in protest, it seemed – because Rebekah was such a loser, I suppose. But she has become an outspoken, prolific advocate for kids of all kinds, writing books, speaking before legislatures, sharing herself and her experiences with churches (her dad is a Lutheran pastor, the poor thing), and living her best, beautiful life, at 17, with the loving support of her family, friends, congregation – and about 16,000 new friends from New Orleans, too.

Another woman, Jacqueline Bussie, was a loser, too. She literally lost everything, on a trip to Iceland with her new husband, the love of her life. He died suddenly on a hike and she was left there, alone in every way, in a foreign land, as a suspect even in her husband’s death, with nothing but his ashes to keep her company when they finally released her to fly home. The shock, grief, and despair she suffered afterward was debilitating. She was utterly lost. But, Jacqueline learned to dance and love and speak and write and teach and live again, anyways.

And there were others, too – losers, I mean …

Lori Fuller, a deaf woman became the pastor of her own congregation, ministering deliberately to children of God who can’t hear. And she reminded us that her deafness didn’t make her a mistake, and that none of us are mistakes, either.

Pastor Sally Azar, became the first female Palestinian to be ordained in the Holy Land. And she reminded us that our identity as God’s children is greater than our identity as Americans, Israelis, or Palestinians, too.

But the overall, abiding message I took from all of these would-be-losers, was that all of this is exactly how the power of God works in and through, in spite of and for the sake of the world. In spite of what makes us losers in the eyes and opinions of others, God creates us to be free of that, and authentic ourselves because of it, and brave in spite of that, and to disrupt the world around us, in response to it, too.

What I experienced and celebrated over and over and over again in New Orleans – and what I read in a strange, new kind of way in this Gospel story from John about the feeding of the 5,000, because of it – is not how coincidental or surprising it is that God takes brokenness and uses it for good … broken bread, fish, or whatever the world might presume about broken people, either.

What I noticed, this time around, is that God is always about using the brokenness of God’s people to bring about wholeness and healing and hope to life. Whether it’s a loaf of bread, or the cynical sinful disciples who distribute it – or whether it’s the death of Jesus himself – God is always using what the world deems “broken” or “lost” in our lives, to teach us about redemption and wholeness and the power of resurrection and new life.

Just like the disciples did that day on the hillside when they doubted that the bread would be enough, or that their wages would be enough, or – I suspect – that their faith would be enough to do the trick, every one of those who shared their stories in New Orleans had plenty of reason to doubt that they were enough to do what God was clearly calling them to do.

By the world’s estimation, they were too sinful, or too imperfect, or too unfaithful, or too different, or too whatever to be instruments of anything good or holy or worthwhile or righteous. But their lives – by the grace and mercy, forgiveness and love of God – tell an entirely different story.

Like so many loaves of bread, they – and we – are broken and scattered for the sake of the world. Like so many loaves of bread, it’s our own broken “lostness” that resonates with this lost and broken world for the sake of mercy and love and justice for others. Like so many loaves of bread, it is our brokenness that feeds the hungry, comforts the sick, loves the lonely, welcomes the stranger, includes the outsider, forgives the sinner.

So one thing I learned in New Orleans – and that Jesus shows us today – is that maybe we should start looking not just at what we’re good at when we wonder about how God might be looking to use us. Maybe we need to start looking at – and letting God take hold of even the crumbs – what’s imperfect or hurting or broken in our lives ... all the stuff that makes us “losers” in the eyes of the world.

Because everyone of us is “less-than” or sinful or lost or different in our own beautiful ways. And if we’re willing and able to humble ourselves – to let ourselves be broken and blessed by the grace of God’s love – Jesus shows us, today, and through his life, death and resurrection from the dead, that there will be more than enough of God’s love and grace and mercy to go around, for us and through us, and for the sake of the world, in his name.

Amen