Image: Marc Chagall, Lithograph of King David, Bible Limited Mourlot, 1957.
‘Bread broken and given’
Andrew Collis
Ordinary Sunday 11, Year B
1 Samuel 15:34 – 16:13; 2 Corinthians 5:6-17; Mark 4:26-34
“Breadcrumbs can be enough/ When friends sit down to share/ it’s a kind of picnic miracle/ of willing and of care// It happens in the moment/ You just use what you’ve got/ a handful of presence, a portion of kind/ The bread that fills the spot” (Alison Bleyerveen, 2024).
“[W]e must not seek Christ’s presence in the dense reality of unbroken bread”, writes theologian G.P. Ambrose (The Theology of Louis-Marie Chauvet, 2012).
A concise and insightful comment. We often think of revelation as something like a loaf of bread, as alluring as it is self-contained.
But revelation as bread broken … as fraction, brokenness, moreover, a break with expectation or convention, this revelation shocks.
Revelation, to paraphrase songwriter Leonard Cohen, is the crack-ing of things – a crack-ing that lets the light in. Revelation experienced as both woundedness and wonderment …
We must not seek Christ’s presence in the dense reality of unbroken bread, then, but in the event of bread broken and given.
Today’s readings witness divine happening, and not without humour, which overturns expectations, even as it returns us to the world, to each other and to ourselves (as though for the first time): “The love of Christ overwhelms us,” says the stand-up apostle, and behold, “everything is new” (2 Corinthians 5:6-17).
David is the Cinderella of the Hebrew Bible. He is the least likely ruler.
God makes Godself known in and through the people of a promise, in and through their desires for a monarch to rule over them – but in a way that redirects their desiring. David is the boy, the little one, a little unruly. Thus, he prefigures the event of Jesus the Messiah.
David’s story – full of cracks and crises – is akin to many Bible stories about younger sons, smarter daughters, stoned prophets, faithful foreigners, resourceful managers, humane tax collectors and sex workers, children made visible, witnesses made credible, women empowered to preach and to lead churches, everyday farming scenarios, bumbling disciples brought to tears and to their knees, a manger-cradle and apocalyptic lamb, wise birds and lilies.
God makes Godself known in events that shatter pious pretensions, our illusions of possession and control. Revelation upends what we know about the world and who we think we are …
In our gospel, Jesus points to seeds and shrubs as signs of God’s rule. Seeds that grow into shrubs (shrubs or weeds, not imposing trees), whose foliage provides shade for the birds on the ground! The reign of God is like a shrub? The reign of God is like a weed?
Like the image of David as Cinderella, this is comic. God knows we need a laugh.
Jokes make their points. Empires – Egypt, Babylon, Rome – were/are frequently imaged as mighty trees.
If unbroken bread (like an unopened Bible) stands for the dream of full presence, immediate/unmediated contact with the divine, then Christ is present in bread broken and given (the Word read, shared, its meaning pondered in the Spirit, proclaimed … the Word re-remembered).
That means Christ is present “in his own strange way” (Basis of Union, para. 4) – obliquely – disorienting, deconstructing, elusive, restorative … Christ is present in our humble openness to the world and to each other … in our brokenness and readiness to give and to forgive.
On this Refugee Sunday, praise be to God of all generosity, God of all generous souls … praise be to God of freedom and justice, God of all who give freely, graciously …
As we say in our un/mission statement, Christ is present in our “sharing gifts of friendship and hope with each other and with our neighbours” … May it be so. Amen.
