Staple

An important person in my life for about four years was the retired priest who served as interim in the parish in Palestine, Texas. St. Philip’s Church called me in 1990. Among many blessings, I was treated to a new friendship by coming to know The Rev. Eugene Blankenship, who called himself Gene, but everyone called him Fr. B. He was a real-life “Fr. Tim” if you know the priest character Jan Karon’s “Midford” series novels.

To know Fr. B was to love him. Once you knew this bachelor priest, you would hear from him on your birthday. The little handwritten card was in your mailbox one day ahead. If you were under the weather, he would bring by his homemade chicken noodle soup. When he was your priest, if he did not see you in church, he would call asking after you. He trained his flock there were a few legitimate reasons not to be in church for worship: if you had died, if you were out of town, or if you were personally tending to someone in a dire circumstance. If out of town he expected you to bring him a Sunday worship bulletin from wherever you were. He could get away with this without coming across as bossy. Somehow it never felt like hovering, only like love.

Fr. B could cook, and he could bake, it was a beautiful thing to be invited to his apartment for dinner. He would serve you a nice beverage (he was a Glenlivet man) and you could relax and visit with him because the rest of dinner was all in good order. The drink came with nibbles, among them little cheese straws he had made from scratch. At dinner I remember him saying, as he took bread and passed it, “Have some bread; I could make a meal of just bread.” I heard him say this more than once. Good old Fr. B.  I bet you are familiar with that sentiment. What is it about lovely carbs?

Around the world, in many cultures, bread is a staple. We know about all our favorite baked bread. We probably know about French baguettes, Navajo fry bread, Italian focaccia, and Jewish challah. From Germany, we love salty pretzels or sweet damfnudels. You know cornbread, pita, and the noble tortilla; have you tried Filipino pandesal, Ethiopian injera, Indian naan, or paratha? We think of rice as the main staple in Asian countries, because it is, but we also find from the Shandong province of China a flatbread, transliterated to English as shaobing, called simply “bing.”   I know you could mouthwateringly add to this list. Like Fr. B, we could make a meal of just bread.

From the Fourth Gospel, we get one of Jesus’s great “I am” sayings, “I am the bread of life.” From that saying, the Collect of the Day for this Sunday gets its imagery:

Gracious Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down from heaven to be the true bread which gives life to the world: Evermore give us this bread, that he may live in us, and we in him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Collect for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, BCP p. 219)

I think that sometimes this day is called, “Refreshment Sunday.” Lent is a long journey: we need it. In some years at least one of the scriptures has to do with feeding the people, and with bread. Every year we have this Collect asking God to give us this true bread, the Son Jesus Christ comes down from heaven and giving life to the world. It is the ultimate refreshment of our whole being, now and forever. It is a good request. Let’s make a whole life-long meal of it. Together, let us discover true refreshment.