by Rachel Twigg

At the start of the pandemic, I was pastoring at a church that had communion at every service. Eating bread and wine together every week were a core part of who we were.   And the bread wasn’t those flimsy wafers either.  It was baked by a member of the community and servers were instructed to give people a decent piece that they’d need to chew and taste.

 Bread was an important part of our shared identity as a church community.

 At the first church I ever worked at a lovely senior lady asked me what my favourite food was.  I knew this was an important question to answer correctly because I would likely receive that food item on a semi-regular basis for the rest of my time there.

 I answered bread – any kind, in any form.

The Bread of Life 

 The Bible says that human beings can’t live on bread alone, but we can last for a pretty long time on the stuff. (Matthew 4:4)

 Generally speaking, bread in some form – from injera in Ethiopia to the gluten free variety here in Winnipeg is an elemental staple.  It is a core food that humans have used to nourish themselves for a very long time.

 The Bible is full of stories about bread. 

 In it we find stories about the practical need for literal bread – for food that sustains us – and spiritual bread.

 In Exodus we read about the feast of unleavened bread.  When the people of Israel leave Egypt, they make bread without leaven. Bread they can make quickly without having to wait for it to rise. Not only do they bake unleavened bread on the day they leave, Moses also tells them that they are to continue to bake unleavened bread in order to, “Remember this day on which you came out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery...” (Exodus 13: 3)

 Later the people of Israel will be fed bread from heaven, manna, as they wander in the wilderness.  (Exodus 16:4)

 In 1 Kings we read about how Elijah laid down exhausted under a broom tree and an angel fed him “cake baked on hot stones.” (1 Kings 19: 5)

 Throughout the gospels Jesus feeds crowds of people using small amounts of bread that always go much further than anyone could have imagined possible.

 In John 6:35 Jesus says, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

 And later Jesus will gather with the disciples for a Passover meal, a feast of unleavened bread where he will “take a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which if given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” (Luke 22: 19)

Bread as an Essential Part of Shared Identity 

This is what my church community and many other church communities were doing every week pre-pandemic when we gathered together. Remembering Jesus.

 Bread was an important part of our shared identity.

 But that stopped in March 2020 when the pandemic shifted from an idea to a reality.

 We gathered online every Sunday and participated in a service that did not include communion.  Our leadership had told us to take this time to fast from communion.

We did, but I did not like it.  I hated it actually.

 I learned a lot about myself and my relationship to communion bread in that time.  I learned, for example, that while the bread was important to me, it wasn’t anywhere near as important as the experience of standing in a circle with other people and sharing that bread with them.

 Some of my colleagues in other churches were anxious to get the literal bread to people. Donning PPE and using silver tongs they created little bags of “Jesus to Go” that they delivered to people.  

 I can respect their intention and their sincerely held beliefs but I also realized that this wasn’t something I was going to do unless I heard my parishioners express a desire for it.  The little piece of bread, without the community, wasn’t important to me.  Prior to the pandemic, however, I would have told you it was.

I actually only had one parishioner say that wanted the bread on its own and I offered to deliver it to them. But as we talked through the details, they realized that it was in fact the community they were missing. A little wafer in an envelope was not what they wanted.

What Sustains Us   

They didn’t want a wafer in an envelope but they were hungry, and everywhere I looked people were turning to bread as a response to that hunger. Based on conversations with friends and what I saw on social media it felt like the entire world was baking bread. Banana bread, sour dough bread, so much bread.

 I’m not entirely sure why so many people started baking bread early in the pandemic.  Perhaps they were bored. Perhaps it was something they always wanted to do and now they had the time. Perhaps it was to stave off anxiety at seeing so many empty grocery store shelves. Maybe knowing they could make their own bread made them feel safer, more in control.  Maybe it was a combination of all of these factors.

 One of my favourite prayers is the Awareness Examen. It a simple prayer that invites you to reflect on your day by asking the questions: Where did I feel most alive and least alive today?

 The key gifts of the awareness examen are that it expects us to look at our whole lives – the highs and the lows - and that it helps us to see patterns in our experiences.  If you are in a season where God seems entirely absent and everything feels hard, your examen practice will allow you to acknowledge that this is your real experience while also reminding you that it hasn’t always been that way, and it won’t always be that way.

 The examen can help us identify what our “bread” is.  It can help us identify the things we need to hang on to in order to sleep peacefully and look forward to a new day.

 At one point in the pandemic, I realized that I had lost almost all of my “bread”—the things that sustained me.  I had lost almost all of the things I normally did that were life giving to me. I had lost going to hot yoga classes, seeing movies, eating in restaurants with family and friends. I had lost gathering in a physical space to sing and share bread and wine with people I loved.

 I had found some new bread too – a daily practice of praying evening prayer online with my community. New online friends. Livestreams of concerts and plays I never would have been able to attend if they had been offered in person.

Life-Giving Bread 

When the pandemic began, I also gave up a lot of things that weren’t giving me life – not intentionally or by choice but I gave them up all the same.  I used to have a lot of meetings in coffee shops and I’d often find myself shopping in between them to kill time.

 And buying things I absolutely didn’t need.

 I spent a lot of time doing things that didn’t really feed me, that didn’t give me life. Now that I have set these things down, I don’t want to pick them back up again.

 The pandemic has given me a lot of time to think and re-evaluate the ways I feed myself.  To learn about the things that do and do not allow me to live the life that Jesus, the bread of life himself, promised in John 10:10 when he said, “I come that you might have life and life to the full.”

 As a priest, one of the most lifegiving things I get to do on a regular basis is share bread and wine with people. It is in moments like that that I know I am living most into who I was created to be.

 When a global health crisis means that this act could endanger people’s lives, I will continue to find other ways to share bread – by worshiping online, or a kind word, or a joke – because it is ultimately the people that matter to me, not the format we use to connect.

 And I also know that there will be a quiver in my voice and tears of joy in my eyes the first time I get to place bread into someone’s hand, look them in the eyes and say, “The body of Christ, broken for you.” 

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Rachel Twigg has never had a job title that easily fit on a business card. She’s a pilgrim who loves to explore new places and new ideas. She’s a priest, spiritual director, and retreat guide, as well as a teacher, preacher, and writer who is equally comfortable discussing spiritual disciplines, how to make the perfect cookie, or why she still dreams of a Buffy spinoff featuring Giles and Anya. She thinks nuns and monks are some of the coolest folks around and she loves hanging out in monasteries, including St Benedict’s Monastery were she is also an oblate. When she is not working, she can often be found drinking coffee, walking her dog, or doing both at the same time. Learn more at www.revracheltwigg.com