Christ: The Labourer's Bread

What needs to be ruminated time and again is a movement started by a carpenter and a few fishermen; a bunch of stinking labourers whose sweat testified their faith and praxis. They perspired for the sake of the kingdom of God at the expense of being called ‘vagabonds’. Indubitably what emanated from them was the stench of labour than the fragrance of complacency. They knew the value of hunger and that may be the reason why their kingpin Jesus equated his body with bread. What else could he have compared his body with in a poverty-stricken world? How else could he have conveyed his conviction in a world where people were impoverished by the dominant? Mahatma Gandhi reckons “There are people in the world so hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.” 

Christology of Bread becomes the kernel of Christianity keeping in mind the liberative axiom of this ‘Labourers’ Movement.’ Christianity would always remain a Labourers’ Movement incessantly demanding servitude and perspiration. The disciples of this movement should reek of humility, compassion, indignation and service. Discipleship is acquired by participating in the consciousness of that carpenter whom a community affirmed Christ than any outward ritualistic expression. A disciple of Christ should be identified by the intensity of vocation and not by the ‘spiritually’ alluring facades.

Christ affirms to be the bread of life. We may interpret this in a very abstract manner but to someone who cannot even afford a slice of bread to satisfy his/her hunger what sense does this affirmation make? Which hermeneutics would do justice to them? This affirmation of Christ then merely becomes a conjecture for them; something that which mocks the hard reality of the impoverished. According to the recent United Nation census India tops the world hunger list having 194.6 million people staying hungry. This pokes me reminding Fyodor Dostoevsky’s classic work “The Brothers Karamazov” wherein which the Grand Inquisitor condemns Jesus for refusing to turn the stones into bread by saying that most people are too weak to live by the word of God when they are hungry.

In a country named Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, people fill their bellies eating mud. The mud is made into cookies by mixing salt, vegetable oil and dirt. These are then laid out in the sun to dry.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the estimated volume of the edible food wastage is at 1.3 billion tons, with annual direct economic loss amounting to 750 million U.S. dollars.

Forget about sharing food with the hungry. We live in a culture where we try to exercise monopoly even over our left overs. We dispose food stuffs in tightly packed garbage bags ensuring that nobody has access even to our refuse. In a world dying of hunger this sin of food wastage is an act of desecrating the image of God.

Once Anandan, a disciple of Buddha asked him, “Give me something to remember you.” Buddha gave him some jasmine flowers and said “Its fragrance would remind you of me.” Time flew and along with it the aroma of the flowers. Anandan slowly forgot Buddha. Peter asked Jesus, “Give me something to remember you.” Jesus gave his body as bread. That bread became the part of Peter’s body, music, dance, sex, children and grandchildren. Who can forget the one who gave bread for memory?

It is of little wonder that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Bethlehem means ‘house of bread.’ This boy grows up and says to the world, “I am the bread of life”. Christians often forget that they are disciples of a man who was a labourer bearing the stench of unpleasant and hard realities; a man who fed people; a man who gleaned the left overs in 12 and 7 baskets; a man who cooked food for his disciples; a man who fasted to realize the pain of hunger and finally a man who associated his body with bread and broke it in Calvary epitomizing the saturated love towards cosmos. 

Christ is the labourer’s bread. Only the one who labours upholding the conscience of Christ would feel the taste of that bread. Only the one who is willing to break himself/herself for others would understand the fragility of that bread. Christians are called to disintegrate themselves just as Christ broke himself. St. Teresa of Avila remarks, “Christ has no body but yours, No hands no feet on earth but yours, You are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world.”

In my church tradition Eucharist is known as the Queen of Sacraments. If not for this table fellowship where Jesus attributed his body with bread which other sacrament could qualify this title?  Nadia Bolz Weber says, “The movement in our relationship to God is always from God to us. Always. We cannot, through our piety or goodness, move closer to God. God is always coming near to us; most especially in the Eucharist and in the stranger.” There is a reason why this sacrament is called the Queen of sacraments and we should vindicate it. Refusing communion to someone in the name of some hypothetical doctrinal issues is a sacrilege of the passion of Christ on the cross. It is the table of the Lord over which the celebrant has no monopoly. Celebrant becomes only the medium through which Christ administers the sacrament to his beloved. It is a disciple’s endeavour to maintain the veracity of the affirmations of Christ and that is why being a Christian is an arduous task.   

James H. Cone in one of his articles entitled ‘What is Church’ has mentioned a poem circulated at a poor people’s rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico, titled “Listen Christians”. It goes like this

I was hungry and you formed a humanities club and discussed my hunger. Thank You.

I was imprisoned and you crept off quietly to your chapel in the cellar and prayed for my release.

I was naked and in your mind you debated the morality of my appearance.

I was sick and you knelt and thanked God for your health

I was homeless and you preached to me of the spiritual shelter of the love of God.

I was lonely and you left me alone to pray for me. You seem so holy; so close to God.

But I’m still very hungry and lonely and cold.

So where have your prayers gone? What have they done? What does it profit a man to page through his book of prayers when the rest of the world is crying for his help?

Do not shy away from feeding a hungry because in each grain dwells the spirit of Christ which needs to be shared. Remember the words of St. Ambrose of Milan, “It is not from your own possessions that you are giving to the poor, you are but restoring to them what is theirs by right. The Earth belongs to everyone.”