Unitarian Universalist Church at Washington Crossing

The bread machines we have working here in the sanctuary are an easy modern way to bake bread. Back in the good old days, a woman started working early in the morning. She would mix and knead huge amounts of dough. Then she would bake the week’s supply of bread. The aroma of freshly baked bread brings back waves of nostalgia.

The oldest way of baking bread was quite simple and followed a very basic technique. First, you had to find some grain growing naturally. Second, you had to grind the grain (usually barley) between two rocks into the consistency of coarse flour. Obviously, it was the whole-wheat variety and definitely unbleached flour with all its bran fiber and wheat germ remaining. Eventually, they devised some sort of stone mortar and pestle. The recipe was simple, flour, water and a little salt. They mixed the ingredients and placed them on a very hot flat rock. They covered the dough with ashes and baked it until done. Just scrape off the ashes before eating.

This was how the nomads did it. They would not want to carry much with them nor was there normally time to let dough rise. That of course is the original reason why the Israelites in the Passover story ate unleavened bread. It was much later that the mortar and pestle came along, and later still for the clay griddle or pan for flat bread. Still later metal was used and loaves were formed.

So, why a service focused on bread? Sure, many of us have emotional memories connected to smelling bread baking, not to mention eating freshly baked bread. My mother baked all sorts of things. One of my favorites was fresh baked bread, even better her cinnamon rolls, long before we worried about cholesterol.

Bread also played a central role in the history of humanity. Ecclesiasticus 29:21 is not part of the accepted Hebrew Scripture, but rather one of the very early books that did not make it in officially into the canon. It is part of the Apocrypha. In it Ben Sirach wrote, “The essentials of life are water, bread and clothes and a home with its decent privacy.” Bread was long the staple food for most people, thus, its name, “the staff of life.” Meat was an unusual treat reserved for special occasions like holidays, festivals and weddings. A person would normally eat three small loaves of bread at each meal. A prisoner would receive one. When there was porridge or stew, bread became the spoon.

So important was bread that it became a metaphor for that, which sustained life. Bread came to symbolize the spirit of life. They used it in cultic rituals and sacrifices. To break bread symbolically indicated a bond of friendship.

Grain, of course, was seen as a gift from God, so the fact that the Jewish Passover originated during the beginning of the grain harvest was significant in the Muslim tradition. Bread was understood as a gift from Allah, and as such could not be sold, but only given or exchanged. Not surprisingly, for Christians, bread came to represent the very body of Christ.

There are all sorts of cultural beliefs or superstitions about bread such as: you put a piece in the baby’s cradle to keep away disease and to cure all sorts of things. Bread crusts will curl your hair. German bakers never turned their back on baking bread out of respect. Romanians who dropped a piece of bread would pick it up kiss it quickly as an apology. Interestingly, a Czech might throw crumbs of leftover bread into the fire as kind of a sacrifice. However, for an Englishman, throwing breadcrumbs into the fire meant the person would become poor.

Of course, the passing of bread was not just a polite gesture; it was an expression of a wish for good health and a long life. So what does all this have to do with today? We may think we are so much more sophisticated than our ancient ancestors who held such superstitions and yet, bread continues to have powerful symbolism for us.

Bread, like us, is a mixture of ingredients. Like bread, we too find ourselves kneaded together and worked over, allowed to rest and rise again often only to be pounded down once more and left on the sidelines. Yet we hope to rise again. Like bread, the heat of life and the world can surround us, transform us or leave us burned. Therefore, we gather together today and many other times as a community of faith, hope, love and action.

We do so to comfort one another during the times we feel punched down and oppressed by the heat of the world. We do so to challenge one another to express greater justice, equity and compassion in all our actions and interactions, which sometimes can feel like the steady kneading of bread dough.

So, it is that today we will pass bread to one another. We will invite you to join in eating it (unless gluten intolerant in that case please join us in spirit only.) Ours is a polite gesture, it is an expression of our wish for good health, a long life deep friendship, and a meaningful life lived with compassion and joy.