All Rise: The Simple Complexity of Bread
I was five years old when I stole my first Communion.
Our church, Richardson Heights Baptist, was celebrating its fortieth anniversary. We were meeting in a local high school auditorium to accommodate all the members and guests who had come to mark the occasion. For us, it was a family celebration as much as a church party—marking forty attendees overflowed the seating in the auditorium. As a result, my siblings and cousins and I sat years since my grandparents had married just a month before planting the church.
At the service, in the aisle, next to a box of “Communion to go” cups—shots of grape juice with a cracker attached at the top, all sealed together with plastic. This wasn’t the usual manner by which our church remembered Jesus’ death and resurrection—it was just a convenient method for this celebration.
I’d watched my parents take Communion dozens of times before, each month when the elders passed silver platters of oyster crackers and tiny cups of grape juice down each pew. They’d eat their share discreetly before bowing in prayer.
“We’re thanking God for sending his Son to die for our sins,” they whispered to my brother, my sister, and me, encouraging us to mirror their solemn posture.
Our tradition allowed children to take part in Communion once they could articulate its meaning. Every so often, during our family prayer time on Sunday nights, we’d talk about the forgiveness of sins, about asking Jesus into our hearts, about baptism—an outward expression of inward cleansing. My parents prayed that God would prompt us to utter the words of the Sinner’s Prayer whenever our hearts were ready.
At five, I hadn’t asked Jesus into my heart yet, and I’d never eaten the cracker or the juice either. But that day the box of Jesus’ Body and Blood beckoned. I couldn’t pay attention to the sermon, my gaze bouncing between the cardboard container and the preacher onstage.
The low lighting masked my movements, and everyone else’s eyes were fixed on the pastor. So I slipped my hand through a slit at the top of the box of Communion cups, and I stole a portion for myself. I peeled back the packaging, careful not to make any noise that might alert my parents to my theft, and I placed the cracker on my tongue. The salty Body stung at first, before it softened inside my mouth. I feared chewing might be too loud, so I savored the taste until Jesus disintegrated on his own. Then I looked at the juice, the cup of forgiveness, and couldn’t bear to go on, filled with guilt over the hunger I could not control.
Later that afternoon, I brought the juice container to my parents’ room. Sitting on the bench at the end of their bed, I sobbed as I confessed what I’d done.
“I wanted to taste it,” I said. “But I didn’t drink the juice.”
“Do you remember why we take Communion?” Dad asked, kneeling in front of me. Mom sat to my right, holding my trembling hand.
I nodded, then whispered, “Because Jesus died for our sins.”
Dad took the cup and looked into my eyes. “Jesus loves you very much,” he said. “And he’s proud of you for being honest with us.”
I smiled, my cheeks stained with tears.
“Can we pray together?” he asked.
The three of us bowed our heads and closed our eyes.
“Jesus, thank you for Kendall’s tender heart,” Dad said. “For her honesty and her desire to please you. Help her to know how much you love her. Amen.”
As we opened our eyes, he pulled the lid off of the juice. “Would you like to drink it?” he asked. My puffy eyes grew wide before I nodded, taking the cup and sipping down the syrupy-sweet Blood.
Two more years passed before I prayed the prayer and was baptized, dunked by my dad in the baptismal pool behind the church stage.
More than two decades have gone by now, but I’m still learning what that meal—the Bread, the Body—means.
Bread is central to the story of God’s work in the world.
Since the dawn of agriculture, writes bread historian William Rubel, bread has served as a simultaneous blessing and curse. [1] The labor required to plant, harvest, thresh, grind, knead, shape, and bake a loaf reflects the Curse spoken over the soil in Genesis 3. At the same time, bread has served as the core of the human diet in almost all cultures throughout history.
In Scripture, bread functions as a sign of God’s presence: the twelve loaves of showbread placed in the Tabernacle (Leviticus 24:5-9) and the bread broken with the disciples on the path to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-33). Bread also exemplifies God’s provision, from the manna in the desert (Exodus 16) to the miraculous multiplication of the five loaves (Mark 6:34-44). It serves as a reminder of God’s promise of deliverance from the oppression and brokenness of this world: the unleavened bread at Passover (Exodus 12:1-28) and the bread offered by Jesus in the Last Supper (Matthew 26:17-29).
Throughout the history of the church, Christians have told the story of Christ’s death and resurrection through the breaking of bread. While the type of bread used in Communion has been contested (Should it be leavened or unleavened? Must it be made of wheat?), the belief that the element must be recognized as bread has held steady. But the significance of bread goes beyond church walls; it has also been the primary food in the diet of most humans throughout history. Bread is magnificent in both its mundane nature and its absolute necessity.
Bread, like God, is not a mystery to be mastered or solved. It is at once simple—a mix of flour, water, yeast, and salt—and infinitely complex. Thousands of years after our ancestors made their first loaf, bakers are still learning new ways to pull flavor and texture from grain. We can commit our entire lives to the rhythms of baking, of drawing out the nuances of wheat, and still have more to learn. The goal should not be mastery in and of itself, but curiosity and joy. Breadmaking, like faith, is a craft to hone over the course of a lifetime, a truth that is at once exciting and liberating.
- William Rubel, Bread: A Global History (London: Reaktion Books, 2011), 21.
Adapted from By Bread Alone: A Baker’s Reflections on Hunger, Longing, and the Goodness of God by Kendall Vanderslice. Copyright © 2023. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, a Division of Tyndale House Ministries. All rights reserved.
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