BON APPETIT

On a Friday night as Yeshua, head of the family, was preparing to bless the bread -- baruch atta Adonai Eluhenu --, he looked at the pile of inviting, freshly-made blond loaves and thought: Yes, that too has its place in the prayer I'm building. We harvest the wheat, we thresh it, we mill the grain, we bake the flour; but without the wheat, and the millet, and the rest, what should we do? It was you, Father, who brought forth lechem min ha'aretz, bread from the earth. Nothing is so basic: it is 'bread', but sometimes we use it to mean simply 'food'. It is your gift, not our right.  And sometimes You withhold it, or seem to; sometimes rains or drought spoil the  harvest, and we go hungry. You have not given, but You have allowed, great famines. It would be proper to ask for it: "Give us today today's bread, today's food." Only today's, he thought; it would be wrong to demand tomorrow's, too like hoarding, control, security. Abba, you have taught us to care and not to care, to live lightly, loving only you so that we may the better love all else. Give us, just for today, the lechem we need.

And, he reflected, as every thing here below is itself but also an image, how true this is of the lechem! It is the warm bread we eat and enjoy this Shabbat, but at the same time it is the unleavened bread that reminds us of our flight from Egypt; it is the food that God provided for Israel in the desert -- and remember, they were told to gather only each day for that day (except for Shabbat). And the food God gives is not only that of ha'aretz, is it? 

As he meditated, walking in the fields that day, the subject opened out and out in his mind. What feeds us? What feeds our bodies? What feeds our souls? `What has fed my mind, that now I can access so many treasures of thought? And the Word of God swam into his mind: all those riches of Torah, Tanakh, all the words of the prophets, all the overflowing beauty of the Psalms -- what a banquet!

The Psalms brought him to the Meshiach, that supreme gift from God that we are promised. Meshiach, who will repair the great Ill and heal Israel of its wounds. Will not Meshiach be like bread also, not today's but eternity's?

BON APPETIT

On a Friday night as Yeshua, head of the family, was preparing to bless the bread -- baruch atta Adonai Eluhenu --, he looked at the pile of inviting, freshly-made blond loaves and thought: Yes, that too has its place in the prayer I'm building. We harvest the wheat, we thresh it, we mill the grain, we bake the flour; but without the wheat, and the millet, and the rest, what should we do? It was you, Father, who brought forth lechem min ha'aretz, bread from the earth. Nothing is so basic: it is 'bread', but sometimes we use it to mean simply 'food'. It is your gift, not our right.  And sometimes You withhold it, or seem to; sometimes rains or drought spoil the  harvest, and we go hungry. You have not given, but You have allowed, great famines. It would be proper to ask for it: "Give us today today's bread, today's food." Only today's, he thought; it would be wrong to demand tomorrow's, too like  hoarding, control, security. Abba, you have taught us to care and not to care, to live lightly, loving only you so that we may the better love all else. Give us, just for today, the lechem we need.

And, he reflected, as every thing here below is itself but also an image, how true this is of the lechem! It is the warm bread we eat and enjoy this Shabbat, but at the same time it is the unleavened bread that reminds us of our flight from Egypt; it is the food that God provided for Israel in the desert -- and remember, they were told to gather only each day for that day (except for Shabbat). And the food God gives is not only that of ha'aretz, is it? 

As he meditated, walking in the fields that day, the subject opened out and out in his mind. What feeds us? What feeds our bodies? What feeds our souls? `What has fed my mind, that now I can access so many treasures of thought? And the Word of God swam into his mind: all those riches of Torah, Tanakh, all the words of the prophets, all the overflowing beauty of the Psalms -- what a banquet!

The Psalms brought him to the Meshiach, that supreme gift from God that we are promised. Meshiach, who will repair the great Ill and heal Israel of its wounds. Will not Meshiach be like bread also, not today's but eternity's?

ABUN D'BISHMAYYA -- NOT TO BE MISSED

I had been meditating on the Lord's Prayer and its curious optatives; then, browsing a little further, I came upon a remarkable little video from the Talmidi Jewish community, which gives a reconstruction of the prayer in Galilean Aramaic, the dialect Jesus spoke. It's a reconstruction, because no original version of it in the language is known; but it is borne out by one or two other specialist websites and seems accurate. The prayer as reconstructed here and then re-translated seems to me not only quite beautiful but entirely acceptable to a Christian -- indeed, as the speaker says, it clears away a few bumps that those dealing with the traditional Greek-based Christian version stumble over. I particularly like both his view of the prayer's twofold organisation and his explanation of the final three petitions. Here is the link. I'll return to the optatives in my next.

DISCIPLES OR GOOD BREAD

Mary's Well, Nazareth, photograph ca. 1900

Reading the Gospels, I’ve often wondered about the ordinary people. After all, in the three years of Jesus’ travelling ministry, there were hundreds who were physically healed by him and thousands who were spiritually healed, touched or influenced. And there were only 12 disciples, and 72 apostles. What happened to the others?

One assumes they got on with their lives, but with a difference. A huge difference for some, a subtle difference for others. And the long term must have been varied also: remember the parable of the seed falling on various kinds of soil. Yet – to cite a different parable – the leaven was in the dough, and working quietly. I’m not referring to the early Christian communities, like those in the book of Acts. I’m just thinking of the Jews and Samaritans and Galileans in whose town he had stopped, in whose house he had had dinner, in whose synagogue he had explained the prophecies of Isaiah. Or the ones who had crowded on the shore of Lake Kinneret to hear his powerful voice speak from a fishing-boat offshore. Or the ones who had sat on the ground on the Mount of Olives, heard him talk, and had then been fed bread and fish in surprisingly adequate amounts.

What happened to them afterwards? They weren’t in Jerusalem that terrible Friday: even most of the disciples weren’t. They were getting on with their lives, in Nazareth, in Bethlehem, in Caesarea, and on the banks of the Jordan. Here a carpenter, there a widow supported by her eldest son; a woman who was no longer hemorrhaging, leading a normal life with an imperishable memory; a man who could now see that the walking trees were in fact people with faces; a young student who had heard the prophets and the Psalms unforgettably explained; a couple of sisters who were forever persuaded that they had seen the Anointed One, the Meshiach, awaited by all Israel since forever.

But normal lives. Getting and spending they laid waste their powers, like all of us. They dealt with poverty, bereavement, love, unruly kids, difficult employers, and all the other vicissitudes of life. Yet behind, through and in everything there was a new dimension. The Kingdom, the Reign, was in one sense already here; the Law had been radically simplified and simply radicalized; instead of myriads of commandments there were now two huge ones; and they knew they were loved.

There is a relevance here that the rhetoric of the churches is missing. They constantly tell us that we are all called to be disciples. This of course cannot be true: the disciples gave up their fishery business and their tax office to follow Jesus wherever he went; the apostles travelled all over the Near East, preaching. Their successors are today’s priests and ministers. The rest of us have a part to play, but don’t call us disciples. We are the ordinary people touched by something unforgettable. Getting on with our lives, but with a difference. Not the leaven, but the leavened dough. In France they say of someone, Il est bon comme du bon pain: ‘he is good like good bread’. And yeast reproduces.