How The Bread of Life Came to Change the Way We Live

My parents share dinner at a restaurant on the water in Florida, where, on a whim, they decide to purchase a small sailboat. They don’t have any idea how to operate it, but that doesn’t stop them from setting sail toward the Caribbean.

Soon, our tiny family embarks on a maritime adventure, complete with breathtaking sunsets and colorful underwater reefs. The trip also includes mechanical problems, unexpected storms, and running aground. Despite the difficulties, we all feel alive on the boat, and sailing soon becomes a regular part of our family life.

Most of the islands we visit are uninhabited, so my mom purchases food provisions including cases of canned goods, bottles of vinegar and oil, and bags of rice and flour. Other than oversized cans of Dinty Moore’s Beef Stew, our protein comes from subsistence-living on the sea. That means we hunt daily for fresh conch to scorch, grouper to broil, and lobster to steam. Some days we return empty-handed.

That’s when Mom tries her best to spruce up canned corn and metallic-tasting green beans. In our postage-stamp-sized kitchen, there’s only so much she can do.

Then she stumbles on the magic recipe that can salvage any meal—fresh baked bread. With eager eyes, I watch as she mixes the ingredients, and I beg for a spoonful of raw dough. Once the bread is in the oven, the scent of love wafts through the cabin.

My parents and I wait for the loaf to cool enough to cut. Thick yellow butter melts into the crumb, and our little family breaks bread together.

Just-out-of-the-oven bread can make you feel like you’re tasting the divine.

Perhaps that memory is part of what set me on a culinary, spiritual pilgrimage all these years later. Over the course of the last year, I’ve descended more than 410 feet down a salt mine, harvested olives in Croatia, fished on the Sea of Galilee, harvested fruit with a world-premiere fig farmer, and spent time with a butcher in Texas known as the “Meat Apostle” in order explore food in the Bible.

With each adventure, I’d ask, “How do you read these passages of the Bible, not as theologians, but in light of what you do every day?”

Their answers changed the way I read the Bible forever. This journey has become the foundation for a book and Bible study, Taste & See: Discovering God Among Butchers, Bakers, and Fresh Food Makers.

But some of the most delicious discoveries involved bread.

In revisiting the Scripture, the stories, the teachings, the parables of Jesus take on fresh meaning. Jesus’ declaration, “I am the Bread of Life” takes on a whole new meaning—one that’s more textured than ever before.

In one statement, I realize, Christ makes endless statements:

• I am your staple.
• I am your sustenance.
• I am your nourishment.
• I am the extraordinary in your ordinary.
• I am your past, present, and future.

In making this declaration, Jesus revealed Himself as the seed, the grain, the sacrifice, the offering, the provision. In making this declaration, Jesus alludes to God the Creator, Sustainer, Life-giver, Provider.

Jesus didn’t choose to be the ganache or the wagu or the truffles of life, but a simple, ordinary, common food.

Jesus didn’t announce Himself as pumpernickel or rye, but the “Bread of Life.”

Now the proclamation of Christ as the source of life is nothing new to John’s Gospel. The opening cosmic poetry describes “In him was life” and wherever the life of Christ advances, darkness retreats.

Jesus self-describes, “I am the resurrection and the life,” so that in Him, death shushes from having the final say.

This life that Jesus promises turns out to be so abundant, overflowing, multilayered, and full that it changes the trajectory of human life. In essence, Jesus says, noshing on the bread of life is essential to really living.

Suddenly the stories the bread of life tells rise with new meaning.

One of the most powerful symbols that bread provides is transformation or metamorphosis. Humans were never created with the stomachs and teeth to process raw grain. Grains become edible and palatable through sprouting, fermenting, roasting, boiling, and baking.

Bread baking requires the grain to endure multiple metamorphoses. The grain must be ground into flour; the flour must be sprinkled with water, salt, and yeast spores to become dough; the dough must be heated to the proper temperature for just the right amount of time to create a desirable loaf.

Maybe by recognizing the transformation in bread we will begin to recognize it in the lives of others and our own.

Margaret Feinberg is a popular Bible teacher, speaker, and creator of best-selling coloring and creative books for grown-ups, whose newest release is Taste and See: Discovering God Among Butchers, Bakers, and Fresh Food Makers (HarperCollins, January 2019). She lives in Utah with her husband, Leif, who pastors a local campus, and their superpup, Hershey. Margaret believes some of the best days are spent in jammies, laughing, and being silly. You can join her at MargaretFeinberg.com or follow her on Instagram and Twitter.

Photograph © Monika Grabkowska, used with permission