Lessons:
Exodus 16:2-4,9-15
Psalm 78:23-29
Ephesians 4:1-16
John 6:24-35
This week’s readings are about a lot of things, but here are the big picture parts that I’m going to focus in on: faith that God will provide, we are all tied together with unique gifts as separate parts of a whole (the body of Christ), and Christ is the bread of everlasting life.
In the Lord’s Prayer it says “give us this day our daily bread” – so, in light of these readings, what is our daily bread meant to be? Is our daily bread faith from God? Is our daily bread the body of Christ? What does that mean?
What does God want all of his people to be doing every day? Take care of yourself – eating a good diet, sleeping enough, eliminating stress through prayer, meditation and connection to community, and having some level of physical activity. That’s the daily bread.
So, I want to talk about wellness thresholds, which is an idea by a doctor from the United Kingdom, Rangan Chatterjee.
Threshold effect is the idea that we all have a personal level of things we can handle before we become unwell. You were born, let’s say, in perfect health and we can deal with multiple insults to our health – up to a point – and remain okay. The fact we don’t move very much, a job we don’t like, a relationship fall apart, lack of sleep, a diet that isn’t great. You might have a person come to the doctor and say that all was going great. All was fine and then I got a new boss and now I have an autoimmune disorder. But if you look at that person’s history you see, things were not alright. We are resilient and we can deal with lots of stressors, until we can’t. The straw that breaks the camels back is a misnomer. Sure, look at the last stressor that tipped you up, but there were lots of things that got you to that point. Because there’s a whole host of things to look at in how you build your life. We can juggle one ball, two balls, three balls, but if you chuck that 4th ball at me, I’m going to drop all of them. Everything falls down. So don’t look for the one thing that it is. No one answer will help you. Of course we need a more holistic approach to improving our lives. It’s not about perfection, it’s about balance. Take the pressure off – it’s not a diet that’s perfect, or a gym routine that’s perfect that will fix everything. You just need something for your sleep and something for your stress levels, and try to be sure you are moving ENOUGH and your diet is good ENOUGH. You’ve heard the 30 minutes before bed, shut off all the tech, Or how 10 minutes of meditation will improve your life. So, here’s my suggestion, although, looking at the people here today, you might already all be doing this: commit to 5 minutes of prayer a day if you aren’t already. That’s an easy one. You will sleep better and feel less anxious in your waking hours. This is accessible and achievable. Good health is much more than food. What works in our real lives? I don’t want to come across as a lifestyle blogger who has this all figured out and is doing all these things perfectly, who is now standing here and bossing all of you into doing these things, too. Done is better than perfect. Something is better than nothing.
People have very powerful attachments about why they do certain things. Sometimes you know that your choices aren’t good for you, or healthy, and you know that your choices are not serving you. Those “bad” choices on some level DO nourish you – if you are lacking something in an aspect of your life, you can feed those comfort path ways by eating a sugary treat or watching lots of netflix every day instead of alternating those hours with other hobbies. We know that on a deep emotional level that we need to take care ourselves. Is it a comfort food, or a social connection that will feed us in the long term?
Food is a big thing. We have to eat every day to nourish ourselves. Give us THIS DAY our daily bread. We can’t re-eat the food we ate yesterday, and we can’t eat the food for this Thursday today.
Documentary How to Cook Your Life Edward Espe Brown talks about the biscuits of today, and this is what he says. We pay a lot of money not to cook. Not to confront a potato. What am I going do with this? How am I going to cook it? And, when we do cook it, we have a tendency to want to turn it into something unlike itself. You know, I can’t make it taste like those McDonald’s french fries, no matter what I do. Now our whole sense of taste is skewed. I can make biscuits but they never come out right. I tried more butter, less butter different kinds of fats, with water, with milk, eggs, not eggs. I tried a lot of things and you know after 4 or five tries at biscuits and they aren’t coming out right, I thought right compared to what? I realized that when I grew up in my family we made pillsbury biscuits from a can – you have that can that you peel open or bang on the counter and twist out of the can and put them on the pan and bake them. You know what, maybe we ought to just taste the biscuits of today and see what they are like. So I made biscuits again and tried them again and it was so good. It was buttery and flaky and wheatey with whole wheat flour that tasted like the earth, like the sun, and like water. There’s poetry and the possibility of connection with other life in those biscuits. We try to make our lives look like cosmopolitan magazine or on sitcoms – who are those people? Why would you want to be like them, where you know, you have to have the right smile and the right clothes and then eventually you can fit in or something? Are we going to have some standard to measure up to, or can we be the biscuit of today?
For different people, we need different things. Do what’s achievable. No perfection is needed in any of one these areas. Just a little something in this whole array of areas.
Food – people who are struggling with diet, remember – you just need enough for today.
Movement – there are some people who neglect their bodies. Get outside and praise God for the sun and the flowers.
Sleep – is the most undervalued thing about health. If you aren’t prioritizing it, you probably aren’t getting enough. The majority of people who have sleep problems are doing something they don’t know is having an impact on their rest. Like being on screens before you go to sleep.
Relax; do something about your stress levels – 15 minutes for yourself – or 5 minutes of prayer as I suggested earlier, for you and you alone, not involving your smart phone, and you are not allowed to feel guilty about it.
Be still in this modern life. It’s counter cultural and valuable to sit in silence and do nothing for a time.
The key to me is “give us this day our daily bread” – not tomorrow’s bread. We get up each day and start all over to do just what’s required of us in this day.
One of the bible verses we heard earlier today said:
“But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.”
The message of my sermon is this: take care of yourself, because God loves you. Jesus told you to eat the bread of life, and to really do that well, I want to invite you to really get in there, every day and be deeply reflective about what your daily bread looks like.