John 6.51-58: Bread...Again

Have you ever noticed how many times scripture talks about bread? Art&Faith Matters has talked about it here and here and here and here. And just for good measure, there is manna here. There is lots of bread in scripture, and in John 6:51-58 a connecting line is drawn between bread and manna:  This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate...

Master of the Gathering of the Manna. Gathering of the Manna from the Ashburnam Pentateuch. 

1470-1490. Musee de la Chartreuse de Douai.

The picture above is exactly what it describes (and the designation/naming of the artist is drawn from this work). What is interesting, I think, is the manner in which people are gathering the manna. Some are picking up the wafer-shaped manna from the ground. Men, women, and children are all engaged in the task. Babies are held in their mother's arms, and people embrace as the miracle occurs. This is clearly a celebration. As it should be. For the coming decades the people will be fed daily with manna and quail.

But there are others who are not waiting for the manna to fall. They have baskets raised in order to collect the manna as soon as possible. Compositionally, it works. The figure at the top center is positioned directly beneath the hole in the sky from which the manna falls. A dark funnel-shaped shadow leads directly to the opening of the vessel being held aloft. The dark shadow also highlights the light-colored manna as it falls. Others in the crowd echo his practice and position.

Jesus identified himself as the living bread that came down from heaven. How do we receive that bread? Do we wait for the bread to fall to the ground before we pick it up? Do we think, "Bread (or manna)...again"? Or do we reach above our heads in order to snag that bread out of mid-air so that we can have it at the earliest possible moment? There's a difference.

For thoughts on Solomon's request for wisdom, click here.
For one tradition's use of bread, see Food&Faith Matters here.

World Communion Sunday: A Host of Breads and Circuses

The first Sunday in October is celebrated by some Christian denominations as World Communion Sunday. Originating in the 1930s, out of the Division of Stewardship at Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, PA, the day was meant to unite Christians around the world as everyone came to Christ's table. The day, first called Worldwide Communion Sunday by Shadyside pastor Dr. Hugh Thompson Kerr, was slow to grow. It was during World War II that more congregations and denominations caught the spirit of the day as they sought to unite a fragmented, divided and warring world.


The provision of bread is found throughout scripture as a demonstration of God's providence and care: from Abraham's and Sarah's baked cakes offered to three strangers to Christ's breaking of bread with the pilgrims at Emmaus, from the unleavened bread of the Passover to the institution of the Lord's Supper by Paul. God provides the gift of daily manna in the wilderness, and Jesus provides his followers with the example of praying for "our daily bread".


Bread, in all its flavors and forms, is a dietary staple around the world. Breads are made with local grains in varying proportions. Some breads are long, skinny loaves. Others are round, ball-shaped loaves. Crusts can be thick and golden or crackly and crunchy. Chewy sourdough or fluffy sandwich bread. The varieties of bread are endless.

Bread has also been used by nations and governments as a symbol of their own providence, as a rallying cry for patriotism, as a criticism of others, as a call to sacrifice, as a tool for political control. The Roman poet Juvenal criticized the Roman citizens of his day (c. 100 CE) as having abandoned their historic civic duties and caring only for "bread and circuses" (panem et circenses) - the free grain and populist entertainments that were the means of acquiring political power in his day. As we observe World Communion Sunday 2017, consider the messages and meanings of the posters below in their own time and in ours.


Posters top to bottom:
World War I home front poster. Don't Waste Bread. UK.
1938 poster for General Franco's nationalists. Por La Patria El Pan Y La Justicia (For the Nation, Bread and Justice). Spanish. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
1932 election poster for German National Socialist Party. Work and Bread for all. Vote National Socialist. Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive #2/42/155.)

World War II poster. Economisez... (Save the bread. Cut it into thin slices...and use all the crust for soups.) France.

Did you know there is a Museum of Bread Culture?
http://www.museum-brotkultur.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=77&Itemid=5#

Find a reflection on the reading from Hebrew scripture for Proper 21(26)A/Pentecost 17A here.

This week on Art&Faith Matters on Facebook, an ancient image for World Communion Sunday. Click on the link below.

Matthew 15.10-28: Stella's Table Manners

After a difficult beginning in life, Stella (a German shepherd-Husky-Rottweiler mix) came to live in a very good home. However, Stella will occasionally get overly enthusiastic when dinner begins and will beg at the table. When that happens, Stella's people will get her attention with the words, "Stella. Table manners." The image of dogs eating under and arround the dinner table is familiar to many people who share their lives with dogs. Jesus' exchange with the Canaanite woman about children, bread and dogs - the Gospel reading for Proper 15(20)A/Pentecost 11A (Matthew 15:(10-20) 21-28) - adds something new to the conversation. Jesus' association of bread, table, children and dogs offers a strategy for looking at images of the Last Supper. Are there crumbs falling from that particular table? Are there any references to Jesus' conversation with the Canaanite woman?

Jacopo Tintoretto painted at least ten different versions of the Last Supper. They are busy, active scenes - quite a contrast to the solemn poses and perfect perspective of, say, Leonardo's iconic version. In Tintoretto's compositions, the disciples are not alone with Jesus - other people are present. In one version, the dishes are being washed in the same room as the supper while smoke and doves fill the space. In the version at left (top), now hanging in Venice's Santo Stefano church, a dog is shown on the steps directly beneath Jesus. The line of the dog's body, which points directly to Jesus, is echoed by the line of a child (to the right of the dog) and by the line of a women (to the left of the dog). Dog, child, table, woman. The reference is to Jesus' conversation with the Canaanite women.

The bottom left image is another of Tintoretto's versions of the Last Supper. There is another dog present on the steps leading up to the table where Jesus (at the back of the room) is eating with his disciples. What do you see in that image? Is there a woman and/or a child? Who are the human figures on the stairs? Is there something about those people that should make us think of crumbs falling from the table?

As we gather around the Lord's table, we should mind our own table manners. Is everyone being served? Is everyone welcome? Is anyone relegated to receiving only the crumbs that fall from the table?

(Top) Tintoretto. The Last Supper. c. 1570. Santo Stefano, Venice, Italy. 
(Bottom) Tintoretto. The Last Supper. 1579-81. Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice, Italy. http://www.scuolagrandesanrocco.org/home-en/tintoretto.

For a take on the reading from Hebrew scripture for this Sunday, click here.

This week on A&FM's Facebook page, a look at Psalm 133. Click on the link below.

John 6.1-21: Bugs at the Picnic

"Dinner on the Grounds" is one more way of saying "church picnic". Whether spreading food on a blanket on the ground or using boards placed across sawhorses, the idea is one of sharing food outdoors in congregational fellowship. It's an idea that Jesus embraced in the gospel reading for Pr12/OT17/P +8 (John 6:1-21). The crowd sat down and passed around fish and bread.

The artists who have interpreted this story usually show throngs of people in the landscape and somewhere in the crowd Jesus, several disciples and often the boy whose lunch was the foundation of the feast. The paintings usually don't show things that many of us would associate with an outdoor picnic - heat, humidity, rocks, hard ground, scratchy grass...and bugs. Aren't there always bugs at a picnic? Grasshoppers, ants, flies and other often unidentifiable creepy-crawlies.

Seventeenth-century still-life painter Georg Flegel took the John 6 picnic out of its narrative context - there are no people and no landscape - but still made it a religious painting by including...a bug.

Georg Flegel. Still Life with Stag Beetle. 1635. Oil on Basswood. Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne, Germany. WRM 2824.

Specifically a stag beetle. That is the creature in the lower left corner marching toward the fish, huge mandibles leading the way. The stag beetle gets its name from those waving mandibles which resemble the antlers of a stag. And the stag has long been a symbol for...Christ. Pliny the Elder in his Natural History (8.41) identified stags as the enemy of serpents, drawing them out of their holes and trampling on them; the parallel with Christ was then obvious. The stag beetle is gathered into the symbolism by it's association with the stag.

But, believe it or not, Christ is also associated with the beetle. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, referred to Jesus as the "good scarabeus" (Egyptian Mythology and Egyptian Christianity, Samuel Sharpe, London, 1863, p. 3). Scarabs are amulets carved or modeled in the shape of the beetle (usually identified as Scarabaeus sacer), which was sacred in ancient Egypt. In the Septuagint, Habbakuk 2:1 is translated: For the stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beetle out of the timber shall answer it. The meaning is disputed, but Ambrose, Augustine and others adopted the "beetle" translation and associated the beetle with Christ.

Other German artists, including Albrecht Durer, arguably the most famous German painter of his day, used the symbol. There is a stag beetle teasing the dog in Durer's The Virgin among a Multitude of Animals (1503, Pen and ink and watercolor, Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna). The artist also put a stag beetle on the step in the lower right corner of his 1504 Adoration of the Magi.

Albrecht Durer. Adoration of the Magi. 1504. Oil on wood. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

Flegel includes onions and wine in his still life, but it is the inclusion of the stag beetle that would have led a contemporary viewer to see this as a religious painting. The meal is fish and bread, and the host is Jesus Christ, just as the gospel of John told the story. It's the bug at the picnic that tells the story.

For thoughts on 2 Samuel 11:1-15, click here.