Equipment

The following equipment is useful for illustrating the first part of this talk, each item being kept out of sight until needed: loaf, bag of flour, saucer of wheat, ears of wheat (if possible with long stalks), and a saucer of growing wheat.  This can be prepared by sowing wheat on wet blotting or kitchen paper in a saucer three weeks beforehand  For the first few days it should be kept in the dark to hasten germination.  Don’t forget to keep the paper wet!

Our daily bread

There is one kind of food which we all have in homes and which we usually eat every day, and that is bread.  Without it, I don’t know how we would manage.  Indeed bread is known as the staff of life.

So today we’re going to begin by seeing where it comes from.  We will begin with the loaf which is sliced and used for making sandwiches or perhaps toasted.  Well now, it doesn’t suddenly appear in the house by magic.  Your mother or father get it from the corner shop or supermarket and they get it from the baker.

Let’s go round, then, to the baker.  Bakers do not produce bread by magic either.  First of all they have to make the dough and for that they must have flour, which they get from the miller.  Here again there is no magic.  The flour is made from wheat which is taken to the mill to be ground.

Millers get the wheat from farmers, so now we will go and have a look at them.  They gather the wheat at harvest time, fields and fields of tall stalks crowned with golden ears, like those in my hand.  But they didn’t start like that.  A few months ago they had no ears at all, they were just green blades which came up first in the spring or autumn.  But once again there was no magic about it.  The farmers sowed the seed, like these grains of wheat in my hand.  Before they sowed it, they had to do a lot of work in the fields, ploughing and harrowing and rolling.  But one thing they did not do and could not do, and that was to make each single grain grow until it became an ear of wheat like this, containing perhaps 50 new grains.

Now, the seed grows because it is alive, and it will stay alive for several years if it is properly kept.  If, for example, you store seeds in a jar and the seeds are not completely dry, they will go mouldy and will die.  And the life of millions and millions of people depends on the fact that there is life hidden in a grain of wheat.  And who put it there?  You did not, nor did the baker, nor the miller, nor the farmer, nor anyone else on earth.  It was God who puts life in the seed and makes it grow.  So the food we eat day by day, including our bread, is God’s gift to us.  We remember this every time we say the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread”.

The Bread of Heaven

Soul and body: the complete person

So also it is God who gives our life to us, not only the life of our bodies but also the life of our souls.  We are not like one of the lower animals which, so far as we know, are just living bodies.  Nor are we like angels who are spirits without bodies.  But with us our soul and our body together form one complete person, so that without the body, the soul could not lead a full life.  As you know, one day our body which God has given us for our life in this world, will die and our soul will enter the next world without it.  That means that to begin with our life there will be incomplete.  We shall be fully ourselves again only when God gives us that new and glorious body which is called our resurrection body and which will never grow old or die.

Our resurrection body

Like Our Lord’s Resurrection Body before us, it will be fitted for life with God in Heaven, except that, whereas his Risen Body was his earthly Body which changed on Easter Day, our risen body will be new.  So St Paul compares our earthly body to a bare grain of wheat which, when it is sown, is buried in the ground.  And he compares our resurrection body to the new plant which takes its place.  “And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain.  But God gives it a body as he has chosen…” (NRSV, 1 Corinthians 15:37,38).

Jesus, the Food of our souls

Now, everything that is alive needs food to make it grow.  Harvest Festival reminds us of the food which our present bodies need.  But since our souls also are alive, they too need food to make them grow.  There is, however, this very important difference: when our bodies grow, they get bigger, but when our souls grow they become more and more like Our Lord, fine and pure and upright (Ephesians 4:13).  And that means that the soul’s only food is Our Lord himself, and he gives himself to us as the Food of our souls in the Holy Communion when we receive him in his own Risen Body in the Blessed Sacrament.  So the Prayer Book Catechism says that the benefit of Holy Communion is the ”strengthening and refreshing of our souls by the Body and Blood of Christ, as our bodies are by the Bread and Wine”. (1)

Preparation for our resurrection body

The Blessed Sacrament, besides feeding our souls, also prepares the way for our resurrection body, as Our Lord himself has told us.  “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.  Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give … is my flesh. … Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day” (NRSV, John 6:51,54).

So it is that, side by side with the annual miracle of the harvest by which the grains of wheat become bread for the food of our bodies, there is the weekly and daily miracle of the Eucharist by which the bread becomes Our Lord’s Risen Body for the Food of our souls.

Note: Relevant Early Christian writings

St Ignatius (died about 107 AD) ”breaking one bread, which is the medicine of immortality and the antidote that we should not die but live for ever in Jesus Christ”. (2)

St Irenaeus (written 175-185 AD) ”…as the bread, which is produced from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly; so also our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection to eternity”. (3)

St Clement of Alexandria (written 182-202 AD) puts these words into Our Lord’s mouth: “I am He who feeds thee, giving Myself as bread, of which he who has tasted experiences death no more, and supplying day by day the drink of immortality”. (4)

SUMMARY

1. God gives us bread and the food we need to make our bodies grow.

2. Our souls also need food to make them grow and become more and more like Jesus.

3. The soul’s only food is Jesus himself, and he gives himself to us as the Food of our souls in the Holy Communion when we receive him in his own Risen Body in the Blessed Sacrament.

4. The Blessed Sacrament also prepares the way for our resurrection body, as Jesus himself has told us.  “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.  Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever…” (NRSV, John 6:51).

References

1. Church of England (1662) The Book of Common Prayer.  A Catechism.  Available from:
http://www.cofe.anglican.org/worship/liturgy/bcp/texts/catechism.html  (Accessed 25 August 2010) (Internet).

2. Ignatius of Antioch (died c 107 A.D.) Letter to the Ephesians, 20.  Available from:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/ignatius-ephesians-lightfoot.html  (Accessed 25 August 2010) (Internet).

3. Irenaeus of Lyons (175-185 AD) Against heresies, IV(18)5.   Available from:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.ix.vi.xix.html  (Accessed 03 December 2010) (Internet).

4. St Clement of Alexandria (182-202 AD) Who is the rich man that shall be saved? XXIII.  Available from:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/clement-richman.html  (Accessed 25 August 2010) (Internet).

AD MAIOREM DEI GLORIAM