As bread is broken

We can learn and grow together, walking the walk with the hungry, homeless and marginalized. This is how bread is broken and shared, as Jesus does with us.

Bishop Scharfenberger

“There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.” So Mahatma Gandhi was quoted as saying. Gandhi was a great admirer of the teachings of Jesus, though he did not claim himself to be a Christian in the sectarian sense. He acknowledged, however, that for him the suffering of Jesus was “a factor in the composition of my undying faith in non-violence which rules all my actions, worldly and temporal.”

Whether he ever made the association with Christ’s suffering and his offering of his own flesh as bread for the world, his conviction that God’s presence would only be credible to the hungry in that form is revealing and most insightful. How else can bread allay hunger unless it is broken, chewed and consumed?

We often see how faith in God, an awareness of God’s presence, is more often found in the lives of people the world does not esteem for their wealth, health or even virtue. At the outset of his public ministry, Jesus read a passage in the temple from a scroll, quoting Isaiah, that he came to proclaim the good news to the poor.

It was the lowly, the shepherds, many of whom were likely quite young, even children, who found the king of kings in a place where animals fed, to the treasure the world did not recognize and would ultimately reject. This king’s only throne was the cross.

Yes Jesus, who came to serve, not be served, would suffer by giving himself, emptying himself as food for a hungry world. Gandhi seems to have made, or at least hinted at the connection between the bread of life and the suffering servant, both of which Jesus is, as God incarnate.

Recall the moment at which the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, with whom Jesus had caught up. They were discussing recent events and reports of what happened to Jesus. They did not recognize him until “the breaking of the bread.” 

Quite literally, the reason Jesus is able to be our Savior is because he broke for us. Like the bread we eat to feed our bodies, which must be broken, distributed and consumed, the love of God, incarnate in his Son, had to be poured out, “wasted” on sinners hungry for healing, thirsting for life.

No doubt the hunger of which Gandhi spoke was primordially a physical hunger. He had encountered so much poverty and himself had adopted an ascetic lifestyle like many who draw close to the poor do. Feeding the poor, however, is more than just handing out soup and sandwiches over a counter.

Check out the video at https://christinthecity.org, sent to me recently by a friend. It is an account of how a Christian man, vexed by the trauma of chronic homelessness in his community, discovered what Mother Teresa often experienced. “Many people,” she said, “talk about the homeless, but few talk to them.”

The Community First! Village which this man founded is best symbolized by the “Mobile Loaves and Fishes” truck he created, which now serves the homeless community, not from behind a counter, but on the same side of the open truck as you can view in the video. This was a game changer, he discovered. What he learned by doing is how building relationships, fostering community — not just housing — is what broke the vicious cycle of chronic homelessness.

Building on our faith in a God who “pitched his tent among us” as John’s gospel tells us,” we can learn and grow together, walking the walk with the hungry, homeless and marginalized. This is how bread is broken and shared, as Jesus does with us.

Human hunger runs deeper than what the pains one meal can stave off as my good friends Mike Saccoccio, Robin Messick and Deacon Gary Riggi at City Mission in Schenectady know. As our seminarians there and on mission this summer in Selma, Ala., are discovering. Poverty is born from the traumatic wounds of broken families and abusive relationships, disasters both natural and inflicted by actions of violence or the inaction of neglect and abandonment.

In both these missions, the bread that is broken may start with a sandwich or care package of clothing, but it does not end there. True accompaniment happens as names are remembered, stories are shared alone with the smiles and tears that make them human.

This is the ground on which seeds are sown that heal hearts and souls. Where the terrible isolation of suffering alone is met with the balm of a listening heart, a companion soul. It is not about counting numbers — any more than Mother Teresa did as she walked the streets of Calcutta. When asked how she ever thought she would be able to console and bring hope to so many millions, her response was, one person at a time.

 @AlbBishopEd