Wonder Bread

St. John's Episcopal Church, Milton, DE
Pentecost XII - August 11, 2024
Proper 14, Year B, Track I

In my mind’s eye, I can still see my grandmother’s kitchen as clearly as I can see my hand in front of me. I can see her kitchen table  -  the place where we ate breakfast together every morning - which also served as a banquet table of sorts when the whole family was together. 

 

Of necessity, it was a large table. Like many immigrant families, hers was large. My grandmother had twenty pregnancies and twenty-two children. Only nine made it to adulthood - five girls and four boys - but when you add spouses and their children, my grandmother’s kitchen filled up very quickly. 

The table was also the place where meals were prepared - meat, poultry, and pork were tenderized and fish and shellfish were seasoned with generous amounts of salt, pepper, onion and garlic (lots and lots of garlic) as the basics and then, depending on the menu, with fresh or dried seasonings like sage, basil, oregano, thyme, parsley, and saffron.

It was the rare occasion that meat was served alone. It was always in a casserole or a stew, in a pot roast or a loaf, a soup or a pot pie, and always surrounded by tons of vegetables, fresh out of her garden or from large jars which she had put up: potatoes, carrots, squash, turnips, beets, string beans, tomatoes, broccoli, etc.

The menu varied, depending on what the butcher had on sale or what my grandfather and uncles and boy cousins  (“the boys” as she called them) had caught on their fishing trip when they took my grandfather’s boat off the coast of New Bedford, MA or had gone into deeper waters off the island of Cuttyhunk.

The one item on her table on which you could also depend was bread. Now, my grandmother was an excellent cook - I can’t think of a thing she made that I didn’t like - and at the risk of sounding like Oprah in that Weight Watcher commercial, I’m going to say it anyway, “I love bread.”  Probably more than Oprah, I love bread.

Now, if you’ve ever had real bread - especially if you’ve made or been part of the process of making real bread - you know the difference between real bread and processed bread. I’m probably going to date myself, but I’m now old enough that I don’t care anymore, but I remember the first time my mother brought home something called “Wonder Bread”.

How many here will admit that they remember Wonder Bread?

How many still eat it?

Mother was sooOOoo proud, sooOOoo pleased to be able to bring home to her children bread that was different from anything she had been fed as a child. This wasn’t some recipe created by some peasant in a fishing village in the old country. This was wasn’t some ancient recipe but something created by smart men, modern men - actual scientist in a real laboratory - that was made from a scientific formula. 

 

Not a recipe, a formula, see? It wasn’t ancient, it was modern. Not from a kitchen but a scientific laboratory. Not heavy and dark but white and light as a feather. Why, it was a miracle of modern science. It was a wonder, is what it was.

And so, it was called WONDER Bread. 

Except, we hated it. I mean, we kids didn’t say that, of course. Not to her face. We must have had a sense that one day, it would be our turn to be the parent, longing to please our children in a way that our mother or father never could.

As my mother hovered over us at our kitchen table, we each took a bite of the bread on which she had slathered margarine - not the pale, creamy, sweet tasting butter from our grandmother’s house, but that deep yellow spread that didn’t taste or smell or feel anything like real butter.

She seemed so eager to please us, so excited to be so different from her own mother and establish herself as a mother in her own right, that, well, we smiled and then oohed and aahed until she clapped her hands with joy and turned her back to head into the kitchen.

Once her back was turned we kids looked at each other around the table. Our eyes silently conveyed our chagrin and a resignation to our mother’s romance with the miracles of modern science.

We knew that whenever we wanted real bread we could just head downstairs to our grandmother’s apartment and she’d always give us a thick slice of her bread - sometimes slathered with real butter and her strawberry preserves or dripping with orange marmalade; other times, depending on the season, we would have a real treat of fresh warm bread, right out of the oven, slathered with butter and then topped with fresh slices of peaches or pears or apples from the fruit trees in her yard. Sometimes, as a special treat, she would take some of her freshly ripened figs, mashed and cooked with honey, which would become a fig jam.

It was no wonder to us that Wonder Bread could never hold up to the weight of real butter and slices of fresh fruit or a thick layer of fresh fruit preserves. Or, in the summer, a thick slice of beefsteak tomato. There was simply no comparison. But, Wonder Bread was not created for that. It was created to make more bread available to more people at a fraction of the cost. It was a utilitarian ethic at its finest, efficient best: The greatest good for the greatest number.

Wonder Bread may have been a miracle of modern science, but we kids had already tasted something that was a mystery.

Somehow, someone, somewhere way back in time had figured out that taking a living thing - a fungus called yeast - and added it to ground flour and sugar and water - the basic elements of life - and if you had the patience to watch it rise and fall and then rise and fall again and then if you kneaded it with the strength of your arms you didn’t know you had, and then baked it in in an oven - could create something that, mysteriously, would sustain and nourish life.

It was the difference between tasting a scientific wonder and entering the deep mystery of the alchemy of the very stuff of life.

Earlier in this sixth chapter of John, we read that Jesus had just finished feeding 5,000 people with just five loaves and two fishes. The people were so astounded by this miracle that they followed him out on the Sea of Galilee to see what other miracles this prophet could perform.

But Jesus pointed them beyond their present reality and toward the mystery of life. He told them that His life was the central ingredient of Life. He said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Our bodies are still nourished and sustained by the bread of this world, but our souls - ah, but our souls - require a different kind of substance and nourishment.

We were born into this world, as Teilhard de Chardin says, not as human beings to have a spiritual experience - No! - but as spiritual beings to have a human experience. We need the bread of this world for our bodies, but we need the Bread of Life - Jesus - to nourish and sustain our souls.

Every Sunday, we gather together as a community of faith and listen to the ancient stories of God’s intervention in the drama of our lives. We sing the old, old songs which tell the story of Jesus and his love. We profess our faith in the ancient Creeds, and confess and receive absolution for our sins, offering prayers and petitions for ourselves, one another and the world.

It is then the job and the privilege of the priest to gather up all these various ingredients - the elements of our worship that act as flour, sugar, salt, yeast and water - and offer prayers of gratitude over them and make what we call “a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving” over the simple, basic elements of creation so that we - together, people and priest - our work - the sacred liturgy of our lives of faith which we call Eucharist - the words of our faith become flesh and call forth the true presence of Jesus,the Bread of Life, that our souls may be nourished from the bounty of creation for this life and the life to come.*

We are spiritual beings who are here, on this fragile earth, our island home, to become human beings so that, when our work here is done, we may return to our Heavenly home as spiritual beings with the One who creates Life.

How any of that happens - how the simple elements of creation - bread and grapes become wafers and wine - become the Body and Blood of Jesus, the Bread of Life - is a deeper mystery than even the mystery of how the simple stuff of creation becomes the Bread of the world.

It is more than a wonder; it is a miracle of faith in which we are privileged to participate each and every Sunday, being the day when we remember and celebrate the gift and the mystery of the Incarnation, the Miracles and Wonders and the Resurrection of Jesus.

Hear again the words of life which feed our very souls: “Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

I don’t pretend to understand it. I just embrace with deep gratitude the wonder of it all so that our faith, our souls, may be nourished and sustained in this life and the next.    

Amen.

*I must say, I think I out-St-Pauled St. Paul with that sentence that is, itself, a full paragraph. I think he would be proud of me.