Not by Bread Alone… Yes, But Bread Still!

Gathering around meals - "food" - is a central act
of human community

Here is a haunting statistic reported at a meeting that I attended yesterday morning with the Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida: "…if Interstate 4 were lined with children suffering from hunger just from our Central Florida communities and they were standing ‘shoulder to shoulder’ and you began to drive at 55 miles per hour beside that line of children it would take you over 30 minutes of driving before you would come to the end of that line (shoulder to shoulder – I mean shoulders touching!)."  Add to that, people are being arrested for sharing their food with the hungry in downtown Orlando.  Add to that, in the midst of our recent recession more children than ever before in the history of the United States of America have fallen under the poverty line and many of them are going to bed hungry every night.  Add to that, we are still the richest nation in the world with its largest economy.

It is in the spirit of Jesus that the Christian community was founded nearly 2000 years ago.  Christianity in its most faithful form provides an opportunity for the spiritual development of individuals and communities around the principles of loving compassion lived out in ways that create communities and environments where every person is loved and valued.  Each human being, especially those who are most vulnerable, can find the opportunity for wholeness, hope, and healing if we are truly living out the Spirit of Jesus.

A scene from the "Spice Market"
Istanbul, Turkey

One report from the Christian Scriptures suggests that when Jesus was in a struggle with a dark force of destruction (the antiquated biblical ideology states that he was, "tempted by the devil") he was encouraged to use his power for self-serving interests (turning stones into bread).  His response was quite simple, "human beings do not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God."  Indeed, we do not live by bread alone, we also require spiritual nourishment.  People of faith, whatever their religious identity may be, believe that we are far more than simply a combination of chemicals organized by biological processes into soul-less creatures.  We are spirit at our very core, and those of us who travel the journey seeking to live a faithful life believe that the human spirit is connected and imbued with the divine.

Through the various religions and spiritual conceptualizations in the world we will characterize this relationship to the divine in many different ways.  We will see and understand the journey through various matrices.  We will organize ourselves and our communities defined by those various principles in a variety of ways.  But at the end of the day, the best of all of our traditions, religious concepts, and spiritual understandings, will be marked by a central and core belief that we are called to love and care for one another as we share this journey called life.  People of honest and sincere faith would likely agree it is not all about bread alone: nevertheless, everyone should have enough bread – enough food!  Our world is rich with resources, thank God, and the truth is there is enough for everyone.   Yet in our own community, in our nation, and in the “world which we all share” there are still people who go hungry every day.

A vendor at the water's edge of the
beautiful Bosphorus Straights

Of course, the word "bread" is also used in the common vernacular to mean “money.”  Now consider the words, "human beings do not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceeds from the mouth of God."  It is perhaps true that what stands most often in the way of our ability to share what we have in meaningful and life-giving ways is our attempt, each of us, to amass more and to share less.  We have become too comfortable with the idea that greed is good.  We have allowed our pursuit of stuff, our petty amusement with the things we own, and our arrogance connected to the size of our bank accounts and our investment portfolios to guide our every waking decision.  In such an environment there is little hope for those who traverse the journey of life in the most meager of circumstances.

At the "Spice Market"

The Christian Scriptures contain warning after warning for the human race regarding the pursuit of our own wealth, comfort, and ease while we ignore, or worse still, demean and harm the most vulnerable and fragile among us.  Righteousness in biblical terms is not about a small minded set of moralisms; it is about creating a world within our own communities which provides – through loving compassion, generosity, and fairness – for the needs of each human being.

There is a beautiful scene in one of the sections of the Christian Scriptures: it suggests a setting of some sort of final, cosmic judgment.  I prefer to think of it in the context of each of us coming to the end of our own journey in life.  In my scene, as my life is beginning to fade (I hope that's a long time in the distant future, but really, who knows?)...

I see myself sitting, let's say on the beach near the water's edge, and beside me is my friend and teacher Jesus, and he says to me,  'I was just thinking about that time, when I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you went and got me a drink of water, I was sick and you stopped by to see me, I was in prison and you came to visit me, I was alone and afraid and uncertain about the future and you were honestly concerned about me, you did your best to help me.'  I look at the 'spiritual presence of Jesus' at that moment in complete confusion and say,  'honestly, I don't remember doing any of that for you.'  At that point, my teacher and friend says to me, 'oh, you misunderstood what I was saying, you see, because I am the divine reality of life I am present in every living creature, and every human being. Every time that you honestly did your best to show loving kindness and compassion toward another by your actions, I experienced that kindness, so in a very real sense all of those things, the only thing in life that really matters, you did those things to me.'

Now, I don't necessarily think that this fanciful conversation will actually happen as my life is coming to an end.  But if it did, well… I guess I would hope that my teacher and friend, the divine spirit of Jesus - which I continually seek to guide my life - might be able to offer such words.  In any event, I do believe that living a life of loving and just compassion is simply why we are here.