It is Tuesday, welcome to Day 2 of Holy Week Tears
If you are journeying with us this week, you will know that today is Day 2 of our Holy Week Tears reflections and that we are creating a visual focal point as we move through this Holy Week. Take your tear drop shape and place it next to yesterday’s Palm Cross and on it place a bread roll or a slice of bread, a naan or pitta or a cracker. Bread is an important symbol throughout the Bible, not least because it demands some sort of preparation.
Last year, before lockdown, I would have said “it is easy for us to get bread”, maybe it isn’t so easy now, but certainly in Biblical times it took a bit of time, no corner shop or supermarket to supply it. Unleavened bread was a more speedy make because you didn’t have to leave it whilst the yeast did its work and rose the loaf, but you still had to build a fire, which meant collecting wood and getting a flame. We know how long it takes to make bread to get it to rise, it means a bit of forward planning, a bit of preparation. A bit of a settled existence…think of those displaced and homeless, refugees in a foreign land. I make all our own bead, including sour dough and that takes three days, you need time and patience, there is preparation and waiting.
Remember how the Israelites had to leave Egypt with no time to let their bread dough rise? (Exodus 12:34) The Jewish people still use unleavened bread to celebrate Passover and their rescue from Pharaoh.
Jesus refers to himself as “the Bread of Life” (John 6)
Bread is nourishment and sustenance for the body, but Jesus offers spiritual bread that feeds our spiritual lives.
We recall some of that each time we pray the Lord’s Prayer…maybe pray that now.
In Holy Week, in Jesus’s journey towards the cross, he asked his Disciples to go and prepare the Upper Room for a meal together, find the story in Luke 22:7-13. Here he would share a final meal with his Disciples, he broke bread and shared wine and we recall this when we share Bread and Wine together in church.
Listen to this hymn and reflect on the words, and for today the first two verses are very significant.
Hymns:
An upper room did our Lord prepare (StF 569)
In bread we bring you, Lord (StF 589)
Hill song ‘The Lords Prayer’
A closing prayer:
Eternal, Holy God, you are amongst and with us and we praise, we worship, we adore you.
You are the calm at the centre of our beings, the hope of promises to come.
You are the one who adds yeast to our beings
You are the one who has prepared us, has kneaded and tended us.
You are the one who sees us rise and mature and become what you have us be.
You are indeed the Bread of Life for us and in us.
Eternal, Holy God, we praise and bless your Holy name.
Amen
