THE GREEN-MATO EPISODE

I was in junior high—that awkward age of growth spurts and hormone-stoked self-consciousness—when my home-packed, brown-bag lunch knocked my day off-kilter.. All right, you know how BIG a deal it is for some kids on the cusp of the teen years to be just a bit “different” from the stereotype of his or her peers. For me, the crisis was the sandwich I pulled from the lunch bag that my mother had packed.

Okay, backstory. This was January, and Mom was using up the last of her holiday-hued “fancy breads,” which included some to which she'd added green food coloring to mark the colors of Christmas. My standard peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, usually slapped together on whole wheat bread from the store, had a new look. Green.

I don't know why—maybe she was low on store bread?—but that day I had my PB&J on homemade green-speckled bread—probably the zucchini bread resulting from our garden's ultra-productive zucchini vines (harvested/frozen). The ultimate old-time homemaker, Mom also rescued tomatoes still green at the first frost, turning them into “green tomato preserves.” My sandwich combined both very “uncool” green products.

Hoping nobody had seen my unique (and embarrassing) sandwich, I slipped it back into the sack and survived the rest of the lunch break with just apple slices and cafeteria milk. I would go hungry rather than risk the ridicule of my “cool” friends who were letting me sit at the “cool-kid table.”

I snicker now over the self-consciousness of my pubescent-self, way back in an era when boys and girls somewhat dressed-up for school, not wore ragged jeans and funky tee-shirts. When even what you pulled out of your lunch sack marked you as a winner or loser. (How times have changed...) But I wonder if, when it comes to our faith in an almighty yet compassionate God, we're apt to keep Him in a sack with a tightly rolled top. Got to be careful about “cool” faith, you know.

Perhaps we need some reminders. Like those offered by the Bread of Life. Jesus. Who said, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry” (John 6:35).

Which brings me back to an uncomfortable analogy—of our tendency to “hide” our faith when it defines us as different from the world around us. Jesus denounced our tendency to be “ashamed of Him” (Mark 8:38). In earnest and robust words, the apostle Paul essentially scolded those who were timid about identifying with Christ:

I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of every one who believes, first for the Jew, then for the Gentiles. (Romans 1:16)

Powerful words, recalling that he once went town-to-town and persecuted Jesus-followers himself until his own dramatic vision-encounter with Jesus. After that, for Paul there was no finicky check-the-lunch-bag-for-possible-embarrassment religion. He was all out for the One who called Himself “The Bread of Life.”

In recounting my junior high episode, I'd led to ask: Would Jesus eat peanut butter with green tomato preserves on dyed-green bread​? I think He would, and maybe laud whoever prepared it for injecting fun into an ordinary life event.

Got an abundance of green tomatoes? Check this link:

https://www.acouplecooks.com/best-green-tomato-recipes/

DOUGH

Ah--the aroma of baking bread! A bread machine I got in the 1990s (still chugging away) makes that treat lots easier. I usually use the “dough” cycle so I can shape the loaves or make rolls. The machine requires that I mix the ingredients in a certain order: liquid ingredients at the bottom, then dry, and finally dry yeast in a well at the top. Sometimes as I measure in the right amount, from a jar kept in the refrigerator, I marvel at the invention of “dry yeast.” If I'd lived in Bible times, there was no such luxury. Women had to keep a bit of dough from each batch to “leaven” the next--something like the traditions of Alaskan sourdough.

I imagine Jesus as a little boy watching His mother make the daily bread. Some of Bible-times 'bread” was more like a tortilla, but others “leavened” to rise. Maybe He recalled His mother's cooking when He said, “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough” (Matthew 13:33). This was a parable about how Christ-followers should penetrate their entire community with their Christ-imbued words and deeds.

But a few chapters later, Jesus turned the illustration around, warning His followers to be “on guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (16:6, 11). Here, He was referring to the destructive legalism of such spiritual leaders. It might penetrate the hearts of those who hear it, but not for good.

The apostle Paul put another spin on the “yeast” illustration. In his letter to the church at Corinth, chastising them for tolerating sin. In their case, they put up with terrible sexual sin (“a man has his father's wife,” 1 Cor. 5:1) while they kept on “playing church.” Such sinful behavior damaged the church's calling and reputation in their pagan culture. As Christ-followers, they had to get rid of such hypocrisy (the old “yeast of malice and wickedness”) and establish instead a reputation of “the bread of sincerity and truth” (v. 8).

Jesus used such simple but profound illustrations. In the only miracle recorded in all four Gospels, the feeding of the 5,000, He declared: “I am the bread of life.” I sometimes think of that as I plop my blob of risen-once dough on a floured surface for its final kneading and shaping. The Bread of Life—how I represent Christ to my world—should contain no corrupting or decaying lifestyles that could cause someone to sin.

Our culture doesn't promote that. It encourages us to take in the rubbish of selfishness, bitterness, entitlement, and immorality. If you doubt that, watch TV a while. Or cruise the internet, even just scrolling through the features of the “home page” of various internet engines. It's like sweeping a dirty kitchen floor and dumping the filthy results into the dough.

Don't worry. I'd never add “floor dirt” to my dough. I want it fully edible, fragrant, and fulfilling. Qualities I associate with Jesus, “the Bread of Life.”