Hello Friends -
We are entering a season of the liturgical calendar known, semi-sarcastically, as “bread season.” Last Sunday we read the feeding of the 5,000 from the Gospel of John, and now for four Sundays in August we hear Jesus’ reflections on the bread of life. Over and over again.
For preachers, it can feel monotonous. I’m not saying I planned my summer vacation around this… but I’m not saying that.
However, since I am departing Memorial the last Sunday of “Bread Season” - and because I will miss you all, I thought I would leave you with a series of reflections on Bread For… I mean Faith Formation.
There are four basic steps to breadmaking just as there are four steps to growing our Faith with Jesus.
Mix
Rest
Stretch and Fold
Bake
Today we focus on the hardest part of bread making: rest. Like Tom Petty said, the waiting is the hardest part. When we let the dough rest we allow for multiple things to happen. We allow for flavors to blend, we allow for the water to soak into the flour, and we allow the yeast to begin eating away at the gluten in the flour and release carbon dioxide, producing sugar and flavor.
It takes time for new things to impact us. You can’t just expect a new narrative, a new story, a new way of thinking to shape you after your first encounter. Jesus tells a story about scattering seed and how where the seed lands impact how it grows. When a seed falls in shallow soil, it might sprout quickly, but it won’t last long.
If we don’t take time with our faith, if we don’t allow the words of Jesus, the teachings of our tradition to really soak in, we MIGHT have a lot of enthusiasm, we might jump in with both feet! But we won’t last very long because when our faith is challenged - we won’t know what to say.
Many people I meet who have “fallen away” from the Church have done so because the kind of faith they were presented with was just too basic to stand up to scrutiny.
‘If you believe your life will be easier.’ “Good people go to Church. Bad people don’t.” “Only Christians go to Heaven.” “You can’t be gay/trans/questioning/curious and a Christian.” “If you pray then bad things won’t happen.” “If you give your money to the church you will get more back.”
All of these promises have been made, whether with good intentions or not, to ‘rush’ ppl into faith. To ‘dumb down’ Christianity so that more people will believe.
But you can’t rush faith, just like you can’t rush this part of the bread making process.
With bread, you just end up with flat, tasteless loaves. But with faith you end up with a lot of hurt people.
If we spend time with scripture we learn that believers represent all kinds of behaviors, attitudes, and lifestyles. When we study the history of the church we learn that historically, often the most faithful Christians have suffered the most. When we encounter our tradition we learn that prayer doesn’t make bad things disappear… but that it does make it easier to bear them. We learn that a community of people praying together has spiritual and practical benefits! We are reminded that people care for us, and sometimes they bring us cake. We learn that human conceptions of good and bad don’t really apply to the spiritual world, and that our good actions in this world really only matter if they come from the right intentions.
Most of all, what we learn when we spend time with our faith, is how little we really know and how much more there is to understand. We develop deeper connections, more robust structures and flavors, better connections with believers in this world and throughout the world’s history.
So friends, I encourage you to spend time with scripture, with our traditions, and with your faith - so you can develop the kind of faith that will carry you through the most difficult times.