"Bread of Life: Be Nourished"
The First United Presbyterian Church of Loveland
“Bread of Life: Be Nourished”
Rev. Amy Morgan
February 28, 2021
Psalm 81
Sing aloud to God our strength; shout for joy to the God of Jacob.
2 Raise a song, sound the tambourine, the sweet lyre with the harp.
3 Blow the trumpet at the new moon, at the full moon, on our festal day.
4 For it is a statute for Israel, an ordinance of the God of Jacob.
5 He made it a decree in Joseph, when he went out over the land of Egypt. I hear a voice I had not known:
6 "I relieved your shoulder of the burden; your hands were freed from the basket.
7 In distress you called, and I rescued you; I answered you in the secret place of thunder; I tested you at the waters of Meribah. Selah
8 Hear, O my people, while I admonish you; O Israel, if you would but listen to me!
9 There shall be no strange god among you; you shall not bow down to a foreign god.
10 I am the LORD your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.
11 "But my people did not listen to my voice; Israel would not submit to me.
12 So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels.
13 O that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways!
14 Then I would quickly subdue their enemies, and turn my hand against their foes.
15 Those who hate the LORD would cringe before him, and their doom would last forever.
16 I would feed you with the finest of the wheat, and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you."
Mark 2:23-28
23 One sabbath he was going through the grainfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain.
24 The Pharisees said to him, "Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?"
25 And he said to them, "Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food?
26 He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions."
27 Then he said to them, "The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath;
28 so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath."
“Open wide! Here comes the airplane!” Everyone who has tried to get a baby to eat knows this phrase has nothing to do with airplanes. We are just trying to get our kids to eat. They are so easily distracted, it can take ages to get them enough nourishment to survive. So we make it fun and exciting.
What could be more fun and exciting than food falling from the sky or water suddenly gushing out of a rock? No, I’m not talking about Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, I’m talking about God providing the people of Israel with manna and quail and water in the desert. They needed nourishment for their journey, and for the first time they were being fed for freedom, after eating the sustenance of slaves for generations. I suppose God could have taught them to find or grow their own food. But they were so distracted by their escape from Egypt and their new environment that it would have taken ages and they likely would have starved to death. So God made it fun and exciting.
Like the wail of a hungry babe, the thing that sparks this festive feeding is the Israelites wailing, “Did God bring us out into the desert to starve us to death?” And God’s answer is definitive. No. God desires to feed and nourish Israel – in body and in spirit.
Further along in the desert journey - a journey whose 40 years mirror Jesus’s 40 days in the wilderness and our 40 days of Lent – God gives the Israelites spiritual nourishment in the form of the Law. This Law is intended to work like the rules we eventually teach our children as they learn to eat for themselves. Don’t snack too close to mealtime. Do eat your vegetables. God’s Law teaches Israel the rules of spiritual health. Do keep the Sabbath. Don’t bear false witness. Most of these rules and laws seem pretty straightforward, but, as we will see, once we start applying them to particular situations, the interpretation becomes more nuanced.
I had a friend who used to describe foods that were tasty but unhealthy as “sometimes foods.” She didn’t prohibit her children from eating them or prescribe exactly how often “sometimes” was, but I always thought this was a genius way of teaching kids about nutrition without being restrictive.
Because as we grow, and expand around the waistline as teens and adults, those rules about food can quickly become restrictions. I remember my family trying several different fad diets from the time I was in middle school. We ate Kashi, dehydrated our food, cut out carbs and sugar, cut out fat and dairy. Over our years of marriage, Jason and I have experimented with Atkins and South Beach, Weight Watchers and Keto. Restrictive diets will likely make a big comeback this year as many of us attempt to shed our pandemic weight gain. And while there are many benefits to being a healthy weight, there are also damaging effects of restrictive eating.
According to Pediatrics and Child Health, about one-half of teenage girls and one-quarter of teenage boys have tried dieting to change the shape of their body. More than one in three girls who are actually at a healthy weight try to diet. Teens who don’t feel good about themselves are more likely to diet. Compared with teens who don’t diet, teens who do: are more unhappy with their weight; tend to ‘feel fat’ even if they are not; have lower self-esteem; feel less connected to their families and schools; and feel less in control of their lives.
Many studies have shown that dieting rarely works long-term, which can lead to dieters feeling a sense of guilt or failure. Eating disorders often begin with restrictive diets. Restrictive diets also often cut healthy foods out of our diets – things like fruit, dairy, and whole grains – which can lead to nutritional deficiencies. According to the website Eating Well, “Participating in a [30-day] diet…can skew our view of certain types of foods, seeing them as "always bad" or "always good," with no room for balance.” So much for “sometimes foods.”
In the first century, this same restrictive approach had been applied to God’s Law by a group of religious leaders known as the Pharisees. As the Jewish diaspora expanded and religious practice could no longer be centered exclusively around the Temple in Jerusalem, the Pharisees sought to interpret the Law in ways that would allow the Jewish people to remain faithful and righteous in their everyday life. So they developed more and more restrictions and prohibitions connected to the 613 original commandments of God. Yes, it started with 10, then grew to 613, and then the Pharisees spent lots of time debating the exact application of each of those laws.
So when Jesus’ disciples are caught chewing on a few grains they plucked from a field while they passed, the Pharisees took it upon themselves to question the legality of this action. As was customary for the time, they posed their question to Jesus who, as the teacher, was seen as responsible for his disciples’ actions.
And Jesus responds, first, with a story from scripture. When King David himself experienced extreme hunger, it was not considered a sacrilege for him to eat and share even the most sacred bread. The Law of God, the rules God established for human nourishment, were not meant to restrict health and well-being in any way.
Therefore, Jesus says, “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath.” The sabbath was meant to nourish humanity, not to restrict it. It’s like the saying, “eat to live, don’t live to eat.” This is often meant to imply we should only eat what is needed to survive and not be constantly stuffing our faces. But those who obsess over food restrictions can “live to eat” just as much as those who are constantly looking forward to their next morsel. Eat to live means to eat in a way that is fulfilling and life-giving. What Jesus is saying to the Pharisees is “Follow the Law to live; don’t live to follow the Law.”
Healthy nourishment is found in applying rules in life-giving ways, which sometimes means breaking those rules. Jesus healed and let his disciples pluck grain on the Sabbath, breaking with restrictive interpretations of the law to allow the Law to be life-giving. My friend allowed her kids to occasionally eat “sometimes foods,” breaking with restrictive interpretations of what’s good for kids to eat so that they could have a healthy, life-giving relationship with food.
Jesus ultimately declares that he – the Son of Man – is Lord of the Sabbath. This means that we can listen to and learn from Jesus how to live in ways that will lead to abundant life. In Psalm 81, God is urging Israel to listen to God, to follow that first commandment, which is first for a reason. If we listen to God and God alone – instead of all the false gods we worship, including, sometimes, ourselves – then we will quickly come to understand that God desires to nourish us - to feed us with the finest of the wheat, and to satisfy us with honey from the rock.
God desires us to be nourished – that is the purpose of the Law, that is the purpose of following Jesus, and that should be the purpose of any religious observance. Food is not the purpose of food. Life is the purpose of food. And in the same way, the Law is not the purpose of the Law. Life is the purpose of the Law.
This means that there is no diet or prescription or hard-and-fast rule that we can all follow in the same way that will lead us to satisfaction and fulfillment and health and wholeness. Physical and spiritual health grow out of a meaningful relationship with the rules of life and the Lord of Life.
Many of us right now are hungry. Hungry for health. Hungry for relationship. Hungry for hope. Hungry for justice and peace. Hungry for civility and unity. Some of you may have skipped breakfast and just be plain hungry. And like the Israelites in the wilderness, we are crying out like hungry children for God to feed us before we perish from our hunger. We may even have moments when we wonder, “Did God bring us out into this desert to starve us to death?” And God’s answer is still definitive. No. God desires to feed and nourish us – in body and in spirit.
We may not get food falling from the sky, but that doesn’t mean God won’t make this exciting. We’re witnessing and participating in the largest global vaccination effort in human history. We’re experiencing creative ways to be in relationship and going to extraordinary lengths to keep our bonds of love intact. We’re seeing scores of Confederate monuments and symbols removed and replaced, policing reforms enacted, and communities of color engaged in the political process like never before. And we may not be able to throw a pancake breakfast here at the church, but we managed to deliver loaves of bread to every member of our beloved family. That’s all exciting stuff if you ask me. That’s some good, nourishing stuff.
So let’s not shut that down by trying to drill down into the details of what everyone needs to do. We’ve had some serious restrictions placed on us in the last year so that we could save lives. We’ve been wearing masks and social distancing. We’ve been washing hands and sanitizing surfaces. We’ve been staying home and staying home and staying home.
But the time will come, hopefully soon, when these restrictions will no longer be life-giving for most people. And I’m not certain it will be extremely clear when we’ve arrived at that point. For some who’ve been fully vaccinated already, it may be life-giving to ease up on some restrictions and return to some nourishing activities. For others, it may be life-giving for them to continue wearing a mask for many more months, or it may be a life-giving choice in every season when illness is spreading.
But instead of being like the Pharisees in Jesus’s story, calling people out for breaking the rules as we’ve interpreted them, trying to control and restrict one another’s understandings of what is healthy and nourishing, we must remember that we are not God, we are not Jesus, we are not the one who knows what is best for everyone else. We don’t even know what is best for ourselves most of the time.
But God does know what’s best for us. And God desires to nourish us – physically and spiritually. God has given us rules to guide us toward health and wholeness and abundant life. Let us not diminish life – ours or others – by imposing restrictions on those rules that would starve us of nourishment.
Instead, be nourished. Be nourishing. Enjoy those “sometimes foods,” like plucking grain on the Sabbath. And follow Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath and the Lord of Life, to whom be all glory forever and ever. Amen.
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