Bread for the Journey: Daily Bread

Matthew 7:7-12
The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany 2011

“Wherever the road is turning, there is bread for the journey.” “Pass the Word around: Loaves abound!” 420 loaves, to be exact. Take a look at last Sunday.



This week, hungry adults and children were fed with Bread for the Journey that you provided. I was in a meeting this week and remarked to someone that I was a little anxious that it had taken longer than we had anticipated to bring the bread to the Lord’s Table. “No, no!” he said. “It was wonderful! They just kept coming. They just kept coming.” On Monday, Loaves & Fishes delivered all 420 loaves to Project Host. That’s how Loaves & Fishes works: “mobile food rescue” to feed people who are hungry.

I suggested last week that our primary focus was changing in our consideration of the stewardship of our lives from our bread for our journey to other people’s bread for their journey. To move from our bread for our journey to others’ bread for their journey is not a socially driven shift in focus or an economically driven shift or a politically driven shift. It’s a theologically driven shift in the narrowest sense of the word “theological”: it’s a God-thing.

It’s right there in this morning’s gospel lesson, in Matthew 7:11: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”

Matthew 7:11 is a hard verse for some of us for two reasons. The first reason is that some of us resent it when Jesus or anyone else speaks of us human beings as being “evil.” As early as the fourth and fifth century, two roads diverged in the theological woods, and which one you choose to follow makes all the difference in what you believe about human beings. The great North African theologian Augustine popularized the doctrine of original sin that has led Christian theology down a road called “the total depravity of man.” That’s the “you-who-are-evil” path; and its followers always shout, “Hear! Hear!” when they hear it.

The other road in the theological woods of the fourth and fifth century was walked by a Celtic monk named Pelagius whose view of humankind and creation was very different. For example, Pelagius wrote, “There is no creature on Earth in whom God is absent. . . . When God pronounced that [God’s] creation was good, it was not only that [God’s] hand had fashioned every creature: it was that [God’s] breath had brought every creature to life.” That’s the road called “inherent divine goodness,” and if you are on the “inherent divine goodness” path, you are inclined to shout, “I object” when you read or hear expressions such as “you who are evil.”

Now, in fairness, I have to tell you that these are not two equivalent roads in the history of Christian doctrine. Thanks to the insistent theological politicking of the great Augustine, Pelagius was condemned as a heretic; and you might say that “North African theology” has dominated “Celtic theology” ever since. But many of us in this congregation are more Celtic than we might have thought, and so when we hear “you who are evil,” we at least squirm a bit, even if we don’t shout out, “I object!”

The second reason Matthew 7:11 is a hard verse for some of us is the masculine reference to “Father in heaven” who gives “good things to those who ask him.” Thousands of years before Augustine and Pelagius argued with each other over original sin and total depravity and inherent divine goodness, two other roads diverged in the theological woods. The earliest evidence we have for the human religious imagination includes both the masculine and the feminine in its understanding of the Numinous, Ultimate Reality, Divinity, God. In time, however, there was a fork in the road, and Mother God and Mother Earth were sent packing down a path of obscurity, while “Father knows best” became theology’s superhighway. This is especially so among us Protestants who banished even Mary “the mother of God” from the path we take.

Those among us who are troubled by the whole male domination thing squirm at least and sometimes shout, “I object!” when we come to assertions of the fatherhood of God, just as others of us squirm at least and sometimes shout, “I object!” when we come to assertions of the motherhood of God.

But none of us should permit the core teaching of Matthew 7:11 escape us because of our reactionary affirmations or reactionary objections on the divergent roads we walk. The core teaching of Jesus in this verse says that we human beings do indeed know enough about what is good and are indeed capable of doing what is good to feed children when they ask for food. We know enough not to give them a stone when they ask for bread.

Whether you are on the total depravity road or the inherent divine goodness path, whether you are on the Mother God trail or the Father God highway, you know enough about what is good and you are capable enough of doing what is good to feed children when they are hungry. All around us in society there are horror stories about individuals and families who have failed to exhibit the capacity to know and to do what is good, but those egregious cases do not absolve you and me of the responsibility we have to know and to do what is good.

The same Jesus who said, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35) said, “I was hungry, and you fed me” (Matthew 25:35). The same Jesus who is “the bread of God” that “comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (John 6:33) said, “feed my sheep” (John 21:17).

No member of this congregation in the twentieth century cut any wider a swath through Greenville and this church than Schaeffer B. Kendrick. An attorney, a faculty member at Furman, a proponent of civil rights, a person of faith, a purveyor of wisdom, and a raconteur of the highest order, Schaeffer Kendrick insisted nearly twenty years ago that this congregation should lead the way in efforts to alleviate hunger among children in our community.

It is because of Schaeffer Kendrick’s challenge that the large basket sits in the “Come Unto Me Window” in this Sanctuary, and it is because of Schaeffer Kendrick’s challenge that green plastic bins to collect non-perishable food items sit at the primary entrances to this facility. It’s not a stretch to say that “Mission Backpack” is the result of Schaeffer’s call to feed hungry children. If for twenty years we have been hearing what we know is good and what we are capable of doing, then wouldn’t it just make sense to take the next step in doing it. No more stones for hungry children. It’s bread instead, and Mission Backpack is a way to make it so.

When my grandfather was a boy growing up outside Ogden, Utah, he worked for a farmer he called “Uncle Henry.” “Uncle Henry” was no relation, but “Uncle” said a lot about how much my grandfather thought of him. One evening, my grandfather was with a group of older boys who decided to raid Uncle Henry’s watermelon patch under cover of darkness. My grandfather says he felt pang of guilt about the plan, working as he did for Uncle Henry; but he didn’t have the nerve not go along with the older, bigger boys.

The watermelon patch was behind the house, so once it was dark, the boys made their way down to the river, and from there they slipped across the fields up toward the house. They climbed over the fence, and each of them felt around until they found one of a size and shape they wanted. Back over the fence they went, but one of the boys tripped and fell with a thud that alerted Uncle Henry dogs that something or someone was out there. The boys took off running, but they were no match for the dogs, of course. But they didn’t need to be. All they needed to be was bigger and faster than my grandfather, and they were. When the lead dog reached him from behind, it knocked him down and snarled at him momentarily—until it recognized who he was, and then it stood over him licking him in the face while the other dogs milled around wagging their tails.

Moments later, a lantern appeared and there was Uncle Henry standing in its glow among the dogs. “What’s going on here?” he asked sternly. And then he saw my grandfather and a broken watermelon lying just out of his reach. Uncle Henry shook his head and said quietly, “Victor, all you had to do was ask.” “All you had to do was ask.”

They are asking. All around our community they are asking with their words and with their eyes and with the growling in their stomachs. They are praying in the same words we are: “Give us this day our daily bread.” And it does not matter one whit which road through a theological wood we are on. It does not matter a hill of beans what our social or economic or political convictions may be. On this one, we know what is good and we are capable of doing it. It's the next step in the Schaeffer Kendrick Challenge twenty years later.

So as the call goes out to pray and shop and pack and deliver and give for Mission Backpack, I hope you will take the next step in bringing bread for the journey, not our bread for our journey, but bread for the journey of others. After all, the same Jesus who said, “I am the bread of life,” said, “I was hungry, and you fed me.” The same Jesus who is “the bread of God that “comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” said, “feed my sheep.”

“Wherever the road is turning, there is bread for the journey.” “Pass the Word around: Loaves abound!”


This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.