Break Open the Word

The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 13, 5 August    2018 Track One: II Samuel 11:26-12:13a Psalm 51:1-13 Or Track Two: Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15 Psalm 78:23-29 Ephesians 4:1-16 St. John 6:224-35 Background: Bread in the Ancient Israel The standard thinking about bread was that farming preceded baking. As hunter-gatherers learned to sustain the grains that they sought for food through farming, it naturally followed that baking and bread would follow. Now it seems that the reverse is true – recent discoveries place the baking of bread some 10,000 years prior to the advent of agriculture. Ancient breadcrumbs have been found at hearth sites in the Levant. What was the importance of bread other than nutrition? Some of it may have been motivated by preservation and storage, and some by the ability to be digested. Each culture had some form of bread either liquid (beer) or baked as some kind of flatbread. In the traditions of Israel, yeast...