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When the Bread of Life simply cannot be contained..
62 Plays6 months ago
We often think of Jesus' resurrection on the third day after his crucifixion as a quiet, clandestine act, carried out quietly in the dead of night. But that was no small stone that was rolled away. And we are talking about making "death work backwards" here.
What if our assumptions are wrong? And what might that mean about the power of the Resurrection in our own lives?
It makes one wonder whether one perhaps should expect a little more force, noise, and messiness than one would like when the Holy Spirit gets all up in one's business, bringing about foundational changes and such. For this "one," at least.
In this episode, licensed mental health counselor (and Allender Center Fellow) Wendy Osborn shares an insightful meditation on one of her newest hobbies, and it's implications for how we understand resurrection and spiritual transformation. (And nope, it's not gardening this time-that was Episode 16, ICYMI).
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Transcript
Hope and Easter: A Beginning
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to Surviving Saturday, a podcast about holding on to hope in the midst of life's difficulties, disappointments, and dark seasons. Times like that remind us of the agony and despair the followers of Jesus felt on the Saturday of Easter weekend, in between the Friday on which he was crucified and the Sunday on which he rose from the dead.
00:00:23
Speaker
That someday forever changed the way that humans can relate to God. But what does it look like to be honest about the very real pain we experience in the in-between? To fervently cling to hope in the God who promised us his peace and his presence at times when he feels distant or even cruel.
Meet the Hosts: Wendy and Chris
00:00:40
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I'm Wendy Osborne, a licensed counselor in Charlotte, North Carolina. And I'm her husband, Chris, a marriage mediator, conflict resolution coach, and trauma-informed story work coach.
00:00:51
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Join us each episode for authentic conversations about how life not turning out as we'd expected has created the contextual soil for the growth of a tenacious hope in the resurrection and in a God who is still making all things new.
00:01:07
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Hello, it is just me again today. Chris and I have talked the last couple of times about this idea of transformation and what it's like to wait for the good but often slow work of God and what it's like to
00:01:29
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Let him change us more into whom he has in mind for us to be What it's like to become more like him what it's like to bring his goodness into the world I once heard Dan Allender say that Jesus comes into this world
00:01:52
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through the faces and the bodies of those who bring His goodness into spaces that need His hope and His light and His freedom and His love. And so that is something that I very much want to be about.
Bread Making and Spiritual Growth
00:02:11
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So as I have been thinking about this idea of growing and letting God grow and stretch me, it has brought me straight into my renewed hobby of bread making. And I don't know if I've mentioned that much on here before, I may have, but my spiritual director,
00:02:36
Speaker
re-interested, re-inspired me to make bread. I used to do it a lot when my kids were little. It was very hearth and home and very fun and very sweet. And I put it away for many years and I got it back out a month or so ago when she shared a sourdough starter with me.
00:02:57
Speaker
and spent the better part of 24 hours texting back and forth with me to make sure that I had not ruined my starter in the process of trying to build my levain and then my dough so that I could bake a really scrumptious loaf of bread. Thankfully it turns out there is a lot of grace
00:03:22
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built into the process of making sourdough bread. And so between her and the baker's hotline that the King Arthur Baking Company offers for free, I was able to get reassurance all along the way. And my loaves so far have turned out not just beautiful, but so delicious.
00:03:45
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So, in the process of thinking about what it means for God to bring parts of me back to life that have been broken or dead altogether, I thought about an experience I had with my bread making from a few weeks ago.
00:04:07
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So, you know, you can keep your starter in the refrigerator and the colder temperature slows things down enough that you don't have to feed it that often. If you leave it on the counter, you're going to be feeding your little hungry starter a couple of times a day. But if you keep it in the refrigerator, you can feed it once a week or less, I'm told.
00:04:28
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But I had a loaf of bread in mind that I wanted to make. And I think I also wanted to make some sourdough chocolate chip cookies. So I fed my starter and I left it on the counter overnight because I was planning to bake the next day.
00:04:47
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and usually I cover the bowl with a clear plastic hair net because it lets the dough breathe and this time for some reason I thought I'm gonna put the lid onto this really cute proofing bowl that I got and I'm just gonna leave it overnight and maybe it won't like being confined oh I'm sure it'll be fine.
00:05:11
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So I went to bed and I woke up the next morning and the bowl, the proofing bowl, had slid a good eight to 10 inches from where I had placed it on the counter the night before. And the lid had blown off. I couldn't find it for about 10 minutes at least of looking. And I noticed that dough was splattered all over my kitchen walls, on my floor. I think some got on the ceiling.
00:05:42
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And I had to laugh really at the playfulness of the Spirit of God that seemed to be saying, I will not be contained. Do not try to hold me in a small space. My power, my love, my being is far too much to be held in a plastic proofing bowl.
00:06:06
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And so I thought about the work of God in my life and how it has often looked very different than I had anticipated.
Unexpected Events and Faith
00:06:15
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And sometimes things got blown to bits and sometimes things got broken and destroyed in order to be rebuilt.
00:06:28
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Um, but in the moments that things fell apart, I wasn't sure that there was a purpose or a rebuilding project. And thank God I was proven wrong by him. So I, um, chuckled to myself. I eventually found the lid of the bowl and it had shot off about four feet in the opposite direction of the bowl from the dough.
00:06:57
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So this was a massive situation that happened that unfolded in my kitchen while I was deep asleep upstairs. I was still able to use the starter. I made a lovely loaf of focaccia bread.
00:07:14
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with some rosemary from the garden and it was gorgeous and it was scrumptious and it provided me with some laughter of the gentle playful spirit of God.
00:07:29
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And so I started thinking again about the spiritual lessons in bread making. And a year or so ago, my friend Roxanne did a class at our church about the spiritual lessons of making bread. And she makes the bread for the communion services at our church. And I just find,
00:07:56
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it's super sweet to eat the bread, the body of Jesus, that was made by the hands of this sweet woman whom I deeply trust. And so
00:08:11
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I've been thinking a lot about, you know, Jesus calls himself the bread of life. His body was broken, which is of course what we celebrate in communion. You know, the grains of wheat have been broken to create
00:08:34
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the flour that we then rebuild into dough that will later become bread that will feed people. I think of juices feeding the 5,000 with loaves of bread and of course fish.
00:08:51
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I think of the kneading and the stretching that he often does in my life and it pinches. It hurts and so when I stretch the dough and I fold it over and I turn it, I'm sure it's a bit disoriented in the bowl and yet it is it is on its way
00:09:12
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to making something that will not just bring beauty to the world through its sight and its scent, but it will bring nourishment and it will probably bring people together where good conversations happen around a meal as the spread is served to be a part of it.
00:09:32
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So, once I got things cleaned up, and I'll be honest, I don't exactly know how to get the dry dough off my blue walls without really chipping the paint. So right now, I still have a splattering of dough on my kitchen wall, which is really kind of my den wall as well, because our floor plan downstairs is very open.
00:09:57
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And I'm content for now to let it be a reminder of the way that Jesus baptizes me with his spirit in most unexpected ways.
00:10:09
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And you know, at some point the kitchen needs to be repainted. But I'm gonna read what I wrote as I contemplated what had happened because this was not long after Easter and Holy Week and just thinking about the resurrection.
Resurrection and Bread: A Dramatic Parallel
00:10:30
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And so this is called, Is Resurrection Quiet? Is resurrection quiet?
00:10:38
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My sourdough starter tells me no, that it's actually quite a violent process and exceedingly messy. To steal eternity back from the fortress of death, to rescue love from forces of extermination, isn't a task for the meek or the acquiescing. Last night I made the mistake of containing my levain,
00:11:05
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After I sealed and as I slept, the lid was fully unappreciated. The forcefulness of new life ejected the plastic covering so that this morning I awoke to baptized walls and ceiling and floor. The resurgence of breath in my bucket propelled the plastic covering four feet in the opposite direction of the dough.
00:11:33
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The fact that I didn't startle to this massive explosion in the kitchen just under my bed means that my previous presumption that I am a light sleeper has been disproven. The data collected in my kitchen proves the event to have been anything but mild. And so a congregation of queries around Jesus rising fills my imagination.
00:12:01
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What happened there in the dark as the creator of life was snatched from the pit of hell and returned to the land of the living? Is the phrase, it rolled away, a fair statement concerning the stone covering that went missing from his burial cave? If no one is around when a tomb comes unsealed in ancient Israel, does it make a sound?
00:12:29
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Is the force of the chemical reaction required to move a body from death to life less brutal if the blast is not immediately experienced by other bodies? Could the resurrection of the Savior have possibly been more tame than the birth of a human baby and its cacophony of groans and bloody chaos?
Power in Resurrection and Transformation
00:12:53
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Based on the events of my morning, I think the resurrection of the divine was a rather dramatic, traumatic, not at all pragmatic situation there in the dark. I find myself wondering if that enormous rock was ever seen again. Resurrection has a forceful exhale
00:13:21
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So it must have shoved that stone more than a few feet from the scene. Just as the plot of the birth of Jesus was anything but clocked silent, I'm coming to see that neither was the rebirth. Conquering death, it turns out, takes more than a hell of a lot of power.
00:13:43
Speaker
Snatching goodness from the grave is not human-sized work. Things in the scene and in the unseen world get blown to bits by supernatural forces of power. Shards of shame shoot forth like missiles. Powerlessness reconstructs into ports of protection. Fear fragments into freedom. And trust in a greater goodness becomes a possibility.
00:14:13
Speaker
I am no longer surprised by the creaks and cries of my own body when it senses new life coming to closer to the surface of my skin or yours. The bursting forth of rage and sorrow for all that has been marred and malformed, antagonized and abused, devastated and devoured.
00:14:40
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Both emotions are essential ingredients for recreation and mixed together in just the right proportions. They form a dough stretchy enough to endure the waiting, sufficiently faithful to recall what was meant to be and moldable in hope for the reclamation of all things good.
00:15:03
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They endure fire with a love committed to pushing back the darkness and welcoming the light with every tangle morsel of its being. Am I willing to be Eucharistic in this world, allowing my own body to be broken, so that with the love and mercy of Him who led the way both into and out of the tomb, I may do my part
00:15:31
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to water the barren places and rebuild ruins, to nurture the wanting and wipe tears from grieving faces, to bring beauty where ashes have ruled and hold the hands of those dying in a myriad of ways. Will I, in imitation of the sovereign, be a place of refuge and goodness in this lonely world?
00:15:58
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setting chairs around the table that will one day serve a feast in the midst of all things made new and in the presence of only goodness ever after. Amen.
Nurture Counseling: Services and Contact
00:16:13
Speaker
The Surviving Saturday podcast is brought to you by Nurture Counseling PLLC, a counseling teaching and training center based out of Charlotte, North Carolina. We help families flourish one story at a time. Nurture Counseling provides counseling, counseling intensive for couples, conflict resolution coaching, story work groups, seminars, workshops, and retreats to provide a safe and welcoming context for exploring the agonizing experiences of pain, brokenness, and evil that disrupt our lives.
00:16:40
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and that God often uses to nurture deeper trust and intimacy with Him and with each other. You can find us online at www.nurturecounseling.net