Breadbox of World Peace

Luke 2:1-7, 13-14

1 In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2 This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3 All went to their own towns to be registered. 4 Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. 5 He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. 7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, 14 "Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!"


A friend of mine received a breadbox of world peace for Christmas this year. There is a story behind this breadbox of world peace, though I do not know all the details, nor do I understand fully what I do know. What I do know is this: there is a brand new breadbox on the kitchen counter rumored to be the key to world peace.

This next bit seems unrelated, but follow me here. I was driving the road between Athens and Atlanta this weekend when another friend called to see where I was. Right at that moment, I passed a sign letting me know that I was in the town of Bethlehem. She didn’t believe me when I told her, but it was soon cleared up that I was in Bethlehem, GA, not Bethlehem, a city of David in Judea. Noting my location got me thinking about Bethlehem and what the name means. I don’t know how to read Hebrew, but I do know how to use reference materials and because of this I know that in Hebrew Bethlehem is broken into two words (bayit and lechem). These two words, when put together, mean “House of Bread.” (House of Bread over which angels sing “peace on earth and goodwill to humanity”, breadbox of world peace…see the strange way my brain works!)

Bethlehem is the town in which the incarnate God was born the Christ child. It was in this place that God became man, turning everything we know on its head. Theologian and New Testament scholar Bill Mallard illustrates what happens when Word becomes flesh at Bethlehem by describing a widening chasm between God (Word) and humanity (flesh). God’s solution to this problem is to redeem flesh by becoming flesh. The incarnation is God repairing the separation between God and humanity through Jesus Christ, born in Bethlehem, the House of Bread.

God has this countercultural tendency. God takes things and changes them so that we are never left the same. We live in a world that seems anything but peaceful. We live in a world wrought with strife, plagued by fear and frustration, overrun by greed and pride. We live in a world in need of grace, grace freely given, grace certainly not deserved. One of the ways in which we receive God’s grace is through the sacrament, through bread and wine. Ted Runyon (theological hero of mine) writes, “In the hands of Christ, the sacrament is presented to us as the world in its original and eschatological form. He takes the bread and the wine, which are products of our ordinary world—and therefore related to the complexities of international grain cartels, embargoes, starvation, and alcoholism, and all the other ways in which God’s good gifts have gone awry—and turns them into signs of his kingdom of justice and love. He does this by identifying them with himself and his mission--his body, his life’s blood—just as he did with the paschal bread and wine at the Last Supper.” (From Keeping the Faith: Essays to Mark the Centenary of Lux Mundi, 1988) In Christ’s hands, bread is a symbol of countercultural, dynamic, mind-blowing peace. Because, on the night in which he gave himself up for us, Jesus took the bread, gave thanks to God, broke the bread and said ‘Take, eat, this is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me’ (from Luke 22). The communion liturgy goes on to ask the Holy Spirit to make the gifts of bread and wine be for us the body of Christ so that we may, in turn, be for the world the body of Christ, redeemed by God’s grace. If we could just begin to see ourselves more and more as the body of Christ and take that responsibility seriously, then yes, we will glimpse the heavenly kingdom, here and now, and know the real peace of Christ.