"Five barley loaves and two fish"-A Sermon for Proper 12, John 6:1-21
As you probably know, just this week my family and I returned from vacation, a road trip to California, all in all logging about 5500 miles in the car. To help pass the many hours of truckin’ down the interstate, Ashley and I listened, among others, to the book “Cooked,” by Michael Pollan. As an aside, I strongly recommend the book. Though Pollan’s spiritual roots are in Judaism, he speaks eloquently about Christian theology and the Eucharist in particular. Thus, as an admitted foodie and priest, the book was really fun, incredibly informative, and, at times, even moved me.
Now, in general, the book makes both a nutritional and spiritual argument for a return to home cooking. And then more particularly, Pollan chronicles his journey of learning four basic cooking techniques, each corresponding to one of the classical or mythological elements of creation: fire, water, air, and earth. As the book unfolds, each element is used to transform the ordinary stuff of nature into extraordinary foods that feed our bodies and our souls. With “fire” he apprentices under a renowned southern pit master to learn the art of whole hog barbeque. With “water” he studies under Samin Nosrat, former chef at Ches Pannise in Berkeley, to master the slow and delicate process of braising. With “air” he turns to Chad Robertson of San Francisco’s Tartine Bakery to learn about sourdough breadmaking. And with “earth” he studies under Sander Katz, Sister Noella, and a number of other fermentos, brewers and cheesemakers, to explore the down to earth world of fermentation. More than just sharing the practical knowledge gained from these experiences that make food and drink a delight, Pollan writes poetically about the powerful and mystifying transformations that take place in the kitchen…that is the ways that both the processes and the products of cooking can nourish our bodies and our spirits while, also, creating deeply formed and meaningfully connected community. If I could sum up the book in three words I would say they are: Food equals love.
Though it is hard to pin down one, at least in the context of what we gather here each week to do, the transformation that Pollan explored that most stirred my imagination was his chapter on sourdough bread making. The manifestation of a steaming loaf of bread from nothing more than flour and water seems nothing short of a miracle to me. As Pollan says, “The spiritual dimension of bread is one that you can’t really grab a hold of.”
Though the advent of microbiology and the identification of yeasts and bacteria at work in the dough has helped us to explain some of the magic that takes place in breadmaking, I still, like Pollan, find it to be a beautiful sort of alchemy, particularly in the case of wild-yeast breads like sourdough that are wonderfully unpredictable. These are breads begun from what is called a starter dough rather than using processed yeast bought from the store. It takes time to create the starter…but it can last more than a life-time…and from it countless loaves of bread can be baked. And to create this starter, all the baker provides are some basic elements, flour and water, followed by some time and patience…and then nature takes over…invisible yeast floating in the air enters the mix and brings it to life…the process of fermentation begins…some microbes die…others are born…the starter begins to gurgle and bubble and comes alive…and then, once a little of it is mixed with more dough, life-giving bread can be baked to fill us humans all the way up. As Pollan describes this process, he gets at the heart of what I love about cooking…that it indeed requires something from us…we have to work at it…bring some basic elements, a bit of wisdom and experience, some time and patience to the table…but it also requires some faith in unseen forces to transform what was once ordinary into something extraordinary.
Which brings me to our lesson from John’s Gospel, perhaps one of the most recognizable of all of Jesus’ miracle stories, in fact it is included in all four gospels, the feeding of the 5000. And a little bible study note here…if all four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, include a particular story in each of their gospels…that likely means it’s pretty important and we should likely pay attention. So…doing so…in this story we encounter Jesus and his disciples on a hillside next to the Sea of Galilea, surrounded by a growing crowd of thousands of hungry people…hungry in a spiritual sense for Jesus’ teaching…his words and promises of love and healing and hope, but also hungry in a literal sense, as the sun is beginning to set and dinner time is thus upon them. And when Jesus points this out…that it is, in fact, dinner time…and there are no food court in the vicinity, Philip, one of the twelve, responds, “6 months wages would not buy enough for each of them to get a little.” In other words, feeding the crowd is surely an impossible feat. Or, perhaps, just perhaps, something unseen, like yeast, is floating in the air…something that might bring with it the possibility of transformation. And just then, as if on cue, Andrew brings forward a boy who has 5 barley loaves and two fish, a meager amount of food, but still, something, a starter, if you will, something ordinary that could, with a little bit of faith in the power and potential of things still unseen, be transformed and multiplied into something extraordinary. Jesus asks the crowds to sit down in circles on the fresh green grass, says a blessing over the loaves and the fish, and then has the disciples pass the baskets, full of both, throughout that great crowd. And all ate…and ate…and ate until they were full…and still there was some leftover.
The miracle that took place that evening was about more than the creation of lots and lots of bread and fish…about filling empty tummies. Indeed, that is what transpired physically…but spiritually what we are seeing is the miracle of people’s hearts and souls being filled with love…the love that is manifest and experienced in life-filling, life-giving ways...when friends, families, and strangers are gathered together around a shared meal…lovingly prepared and generously shared. For the only thing that will ever fill our hungry hearts is God’s love…a love that I feed to you and you feed to me…around all the tables we share…the lives we live together…God’s own love that is baked, with great intentionality, right here…in our spirits, in our hearts, and then fed to one another. The miracle that took place that evening was, as John would have described it, a sign pointing to the fact that when God’s love, God’s own Spirit, that Holy and mysterious Spirit, mixes with the simple elements of our own heart and goodwill and hard work and time…that which we ourselves bring to the table…when that holy stirring happens…God’s Spirit with us…our ordinary lives become something of the extraordinary, a miraculous picnic of epic proportions, that can feed all the hungry hearts that cross our paths….no matter how many…all can be filled with some love left over.
In this miracle, Jesus calls us once again to have faith that God is at work, in us and through us and around us, in ways that we cannot always see or understand…nourishing and transforming the elements of this world, most especially the elements that make up our lives…into heavenly food that feeds hungry hearts and nourishes weary souls. And as I think about this miracle of transformation and multiplication, I can’t help but think of that sourdough starter that Pollan described in his book. For all sourdough breads come from a few tablespoons of flour and water that are mixed together and left for several days to collect that unseen natural yeast that is all around it. But there is something important I didn’t note earlier. That starter must also be fed daily with fresh flour and water, and after a few weeks, when it is bubbly and teeming with life, it is then ready to use. The baker only needs a few tablespoons of starter to inoculate a whole bowl of dough, and the rest is left for future loaves of bread. If kept alive through intentional attention and regular feeding a starter can live for months, or even years. I read about a lady in Canada named Lucille who has a 120-year-old heirloom sourdough starter in her fridge, and the famous Boudin Bakery in San Francisco claims that their starter is 160 years old. It’s amazing to think about the potential and possibility in that tiny jar of starter, to think that, if kept alive by regular feeding and attention, it can bring life to infinite loaves of bread…that can feed countless people.
And, so it is with God’s love that dwells in us, which, as Paul reminds us in his letter to the Ephesians, has the power working in us to accomplish greater than we could possibly imagine…the power to feed the 5000 with some left over. God’s Holy Spirit, like natural yeast floating in the air unseen, is always around us ready to bring life, to bring nourishing power, to the simple things, our simple lives, that we bring to the flower strewn kitchen table, that we might become living bread for a world full of hungry hearts.
Thus, our work is to constantly, courageously and vulnerably expose to God’s empowering Spirit our ordinary lives that hopefully we are feeding each day…fresh flower and water intentionally added to our starter. And, this daily feeding looks like our time, patiently given to someone who needs to be heard…our hard work, diligently binding up the broken hearted…our love filled hearts, generously shared with those whose souls seek deep nourishment…and regular prayer, rooting us deeply in the wisdom of God. These are among the simple elements, time…hard work…open hearts…and prayer, that make up our God given lives. Elements intentionally and continuously nurtured by us, that when inoculated by the Holy Spirit, begins to bubble and gurgle and come to life…a starter that can bake us into living bread…as many loaves as are needed…with some always left over. The ordinary is transformed into the extraordinary…delicious, complex, and rich lives that bring flavor, delight, nourishment, and wholeness to all those with whom we are blessed to share a place at God’s own table. Amen.