BREAD FOR THOUGHT

I love working with dough. Oh, the fragrance of bread or rolls while baking! When bread machines were popular, my husband bought me one, and the loaves of bread it produced were quickly consumed by my peanut-butter-and-jam crowd.

Usually around Christmas I would make a Swedish apple ring, spreading chopped apples, sugar, and cinnamon over a buttered dough circle, rolling it into a sausage shape, forming a ring, and then cutting slits on top. Every time I pulled one out of the oven, I remembered my late mother, who excelled in “rings.”

These days, I bake little, but appreciate the “dough” cycle on my machine as arthritis makes kneading dough painful. The other day, I rolled out the dough circle for crescent rolls to take to a meal with my grandboys' other grandparents, visiting from across the state. Fresh out of the oven, the rolls wafted a tempting smell even from the covered bun basket. Those little tigers ate several before we even sat down together for Sunday lunch!

Working with yeast after several months' hiatus got me thinking about yeast in ancient times. Bible women didn't have the convenience of granulated yeast from the grocery store. They kept a “live” lump from each baking. It was a valuable cooking product! I wrestled with the passages that weren't complimentary about yeast. In Matthew 16, Jesus warned His followers, “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” Because this teaching followed the miracle of feeding 4,000, the disciples had a “duh” reaction and thought Jesus was referring to their failure to bring enough food for the gathered crowd.

Then the lightbulb moment: Jesus was referring to the legalistic teaching of the traditional religious leaders.  His point was that you can't mix Jewish legalism in with freedom-in-Christ. Luke 12:1 called out the Pharisees' hypocrisy as “leaven.” They paraded their adherence to spiritual “rules” they made up to the tiniest details, like counting out seeds of spices for a precise tithe. But deep inside they were evil and corrupt. In Galatians 5:9, a passage about falling back into legalism, Paul remarked, “A little yeast works through the whole patch of dough.” Yeast “works” because of fermentation, a “dying” process.

Not to take away the romance of enjoying homemade bread and rolls, but could there be a rebuke for our times? Christ replaced thousands of pharisaic rules with the rule of love: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul, and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27).

Actually, that's quite a “yeasty” life philosophy. Doing so permeates life in a positive way. Especially in this season, tainted by the fears and ills of the coronavirus, we need the positive “leavening” of practical love. Oh, and some homemade bread or rolls would be a nice gift, too!

THE GIFT AND THE GIVER

 “Preparing for communion” was one of our local church's ministries where my husband and I once served. It meant several hours of teamwork—usually with someone else—to fill the little “communion cups” in the slotted trays, then spreading plates with tiny crackers. All was refrigerated until needed the next day. Then before each service, the “communion table” was serviced with fresh juice and crackers.

This time-honored way of sharing what the Bible describes as “Christ's body and blood” was a sobering duty for me. Regularly it reminded me of the cost of having a restored relationship with God. The cross wasn't a pretty decoration. It was a place to die.

We've noticed a change in the “elements” used for communion services, driven probably by the pandemic-influenced need to minimize “germy” human touch. Now there are prepackaged “juice and crackers” opened by peeling off the foil top.

Earlier in my life I worshiped in a tradition that had a “common cup” that the pastor passed through the line of people at the altar rail. He wiped the cup after each “sip” with a cloth! Hello, my neighbor's cold! Yet, despite the concerns for germs, I think that “common cup” was the more Biblical symbol of what Christ actually did through the last Passover supper He ate with His disciples:

Take and eat; this is my body....Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. (Luke 25:26-28)

It's right there: the gift, and the Giver. As the hectic Christmas shopping season comes upon us (however that may turn out with all the coronavirus restrictions), this is the message that gets smothered. Christmas isn't about gifts and parties and concerts. And maybe the squashing of so much of the “festive” part of the season this year will have a purpose. Maybe it will take us back to the altar rail, or to the passed communion tray (even with its sanitary “cup” and wafer) to remember that a crudely constructed wooden animal feeder would ultimately lead to the crude and splintered executioner's cross.

There's a contemporary Christmas song that supposes to ask Mary if she knew in holding her firstborn child that she was looking into the face of God. For some reason, that grips me, and I keep thinking about it long after the song has progressed to the end. In the same vein, as the plate or basket is passed during communion, I ask myself, Do I sense God in this moment? Do I realize my impoverishment before a holy God? Do I express enough gratitude for the magnitude of what this symbolizes?

One day, Jesus told a parable to open the eyes of some religious leaders who thought they had their acts together. He told of a Pharisee and tax collector who went to the temple to pray. The Pharisee stood up and listed all the virtuous things he did. But a tax collector couldn't even come near the holiest part of the temple. He beat his chest and declared, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner” (Luke 18:14). He, not the Pharisee, was forgiven.

Thanksgiving is less than a week away. Many people use their celebration turkey dinner to pause and go around the table listing their blessings. Family and home are usually mentioned. But could the greatest blessing be symbolized in a prepackaged cup and wafer?

GUIDE ME!

Wales--the western side of Great Britain
and birthplace of this great hymn.

A monthly feature on a hymn of the faith. This one is reminiscent of Isaiah 54:3: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, nor shall the flame scorch you.”

Some countries go crazy for soccer or football. Wales adds another passion: singing. Its big event in mid-July, which draws 4,000 participants and 50,000 visitors to Llangollen, usual population about 4,000, features singing and music! The Welsh have historically been a singing people, from the early years of coal mining when workers sang their way into the mines. They’ve had music festivals going back to the 12th century. Into this culture in the early 1700s rose a young man, Willliam Williams, son of a wealthy farmer, who graduated from the university as a physician. At this time in England, the Wesleys and Whitfield were evangelizing thousands in open-air meetings. But in the southwest corner of Britain, Wales, Howell Harris was the electrifying evangelist. One day Williams heard Harris preach from atop a gravestone in a church yard. That day he was converted, and his life focus changed from medicine to soul care.

After that, Williams pursued ordination in the established Church of England, but soon left that and in 1744 devoted himself to the Methodist teachings of the Wesleys. Soon after that he wrote the Welsh text to a hymn built on the Exodus accounts, which we know as “Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah.” Just as the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for forty years, Williams devoted more than forty years of his life to itinerant evangelism. He endured snow, rain, heat, beatings by mobs and more as he traveled by foot and by horseback, covering more than 95,000 miles as he preached and sang.  He sometimes drew huge crowds—10,000, and once an estimated 80,0000, noting in his journal that God helped him speak loud enough for all to hear.

One writer remarked, “He sang Wales into piety.” He was considered the poet laureate of the Welsh revival.  He wrote 800 hymns, most of them unknown because they were never translated from Welsh.  This one was. 

When it came over the Atlantic to the United States, it was among hymns learned by the wife of President James Garfield. As he lay dying of an assassin’s bullet, the President’s wife began singing this song. Garfield began to cry and turning to his doctor remarked, “Glorious, isn’t it?”

Its popularity continues in Wales, where it’s often sung at soccer matches. It also was chosen for more dignified British occasions, including the 1991 funeral of Princess Diana and the 2011 wedding of her son Prince William to Catherine Middleton. With its universal message of God’s help in struggle—the big lesson of the Exodus—it affirms that God is our provider and “Bread of Heaven” in our own barren lands.

Join a full church in singing this hymn! The final lyrics are in the Welsh language https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=%22guide+me+o+thou+great+jehovah%22%2byoutube&docid=607999375793913958&mid=E70189B64274AC8EA5ECE70189B64274AC8EA5EC&view=detail&FORM=

HOW LONG?

It wasn't COVID-19 that put the Bible's Job in the town dump, in utter physical and mental misery after losing his children, wealth and health. The Bible book bearing his name mentions painful sores from his feet to the top of his head. (Was it full-body shingles?) Devastated, miserable beyond words, he finally asks some friends a question of two penetrating words: How long.

Even common laborers, after working all day, get to sleep at night. But Job's pain keeps him awake. “The night drags on and I toss till dawn,” he says (Job 7:4), because of his unbearable suffering from this mystery disease. Then, in a more famous verse, he adds: “My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and they come to an end without hope” (v. 6).

How long? I've heard those same words behind the conversations about the coronavirus. How long before a vaccine attacks the beastly virus? How long before normalcy returns to life, without required masks, social distancing, and constant hand-washing? How long before the shadow of death from this virulent illness passes?

Maybe it's worth considering that Bildad the Shuhite, one of Job's so-called “comforters,” turned “how long” into a rebuke:

How long will you say such things? Your words are a blustering wind. (8:2)

And Job rejects their so-called advice with other “how-longs” or similar defenses:

How long will you torment me and crush me with words? (19:1)

When we're up against something that is too big, too awful, and too hard, it's always good to submit to an attitude check. We don't always find the healing perspective in commiserating with other complainers and sufferers.

I grew up going to church and Sunday school, plus completed two years of “confirmation class.” And while I had some head knowledge about my faith, I realized how little I embraced when I got to college and had to take a required class in great literature.

Guess what: Job was in there along with other secular books like “The Prince” by Machiavelli. The college bookstore even sold Bibles for that class because that's where students could find “Job” in those pre-internet days! Well, I'd brought my old childhood Bible to campus, but never had tackled Job. I had a lot of learn. I still do.

I know now that after all the blaming and accusing dialogue between Job and his “friends,” the truth emerges when the voice of God enters the conversation. Just how that happened, I'll find out in Heaven. But Job caught a glimmer of hope almost exactly halfway through this inspired book of ancient poetry. When I read this passage, I also remember how it glistened as a vocal solo in Handel's oratorio The Messiah:

I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. (Job 19:25-26)

The book of Job ends well: he's physically healed, his wealth restored, and more children born to him, including daughters who were the most beautiful of their times (42:15). I find that an interesting detail!

But I know I can't read Job as a prescription for my life. Suffering may come. I may even be a victim of this dreaded virus. I don't want to be, but I have to leave that to God. Because: I know my Redeemer lives—and someday I will see God.

In the meantime, I cherish scriptures like this one:

The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me; your love, O LORD, endures forever—do not abandon the works of your hands.(Psalm 138:8 NIV)

Such a perspective changes the whiny “why me?” and “how long?” into a trust that God knows—and that should be enough.