Bread
Jesus always seems to be passing out bread. He did it when he fed the multitudes. He did it at the Last Supper. He did it when he had a meal with the two disciples from Emmaus. It was when he broke the bread that they recognized Him as the risen Jesus. He does it again here on the seashore with the seven disciples. The Lord seems to love to give His people bread.
He still does. We receive bread from Him every time we participate in the Lord’s Supper. It reminds us of Him, specifically of His body that was broken for us. It speaks to us about our need to receive Him into our lives by faith.
Episode 214 of the Television series M*A*S*H* was titled “The Live You Save.” It featured Colonel Charles Potter leaving his post at MASH and going to the front lines to help wounded soldiers there. He is struggling with the meaning of life and death and late in the story, he comes to a soldier who lay dying from his wounds.
Potter pleads with this dying man to tell him what he is experiencing, “Please I have to know. What is happening to you?”
All the soldier says in response is, “I smell bread.”
We are never told what that was supposed to mean or why the man said it. No explanation is given, but I have a hypothesis. Bread is the symbol of the broken body of Christ, the death of Jesus which gives us life. Jesus himself said, “I am the bread of life.” I suspect the writer of that story injected some of his Christian faith into the story. The man, as he moved from this life into the next, smells that unmistakably wonderful odor of bread.
