In November 2012, Time magazine declared Twinkies to be among the top ten most iconic junk foods. In making this declaration, Time mentioned that Twinkies have “been a staple in our popular culture and, above all, in our hearts.”
Time also said that, despite its “lack of any nutritional value whatsoever, the Twinkie has managed to persevere as a cultural and gastronomical icon."
The same week that Time made that announcement, the Hostess company announced that it was ceasing the production of Twinkies. Hostess had declared bankruptcy earlier in the year, and it was planning to shut down all the Twinkie-producing factories.
Do you remember that?
Time magazine mentioned the widely-held belief that Twinkies never went bad, due to all the preservatives in them, and hinted that people might want to stock up.
Well, people were distraught. They just couldn’t imagine a world without Twinkies.
Fortunately for Twinkie fans, another company bought the Hostess company out of bankruptcy, and in less than a year, Twinkie production resumed.
According to the Hostess website, two Twinkies equal one serving. Apparently no one can eat just one. And in that two-Twinkie serving, there are 280 calories and 32 grams of sugar. Sugar is the number one ingredient.
In addition to sugar, a Twinkie also contains bleached flour, high fructose corn syrup, and a bunch of other ingredients that are very hard to pronounce. As Time magazine mentioned, there is no nutritional value whatsoever.
I can’t remember the last time I ate a Twinkie. It’s been a long time. I try to avoid cheap junk food as much as I can, although I admit, that’s not always easy, and I’m not always successful.
But I have, for some time, been able to avoid Twinkies…
Perhaps the complete opposite of a Twinkie, would be a loaf of homemade bread made with whole wheat, and perhaps other natural grains, like the loaf of bread I bought at the Bloomington Farmers’ Market last week. It was whole wheat sourdough, actually. (Sourdough is a big thing in California.) And it makes the best grilled cheese sandwiches…
The week I was at Camp Walter Scott, we had all the fifth grade kids who were in their last year of JYF Camp spend part of an afternoon one day baking bread in the camp kitchen, which we used that evening for communion. It was a simple recipe, but the kids did a good job, and boy, was that communion bread good when we had it that evening! I think it was the best communion bread I’ve ever had.
It reminds me of something I heard in seminary, when we were discussing the various beliefs different denominations have concerning communion. Some believe that the communion bread literally does become, upon partaking, the body of Christ; others believe that it becomes the body of Christ spiritually, if not literally. And still others believe that the whole thing, while full of deep meaning, is mostly symbolic.
And the comment I heard was that, for today’s Christians, for whom communion is often a tiny, tasteless wafer, the difficulty isn’t believing that the bread is actually the body of Christ; the difficulty is believing that what they were being given was actually bread.
Well, the bread those fifth graders baked for us at camp was truly bread. It was fresh, wholesome, nutritious, tasty, and satisfying.
Homemade bread, or any type of bread made with whole grain, has a higher nutritional value than a Twinkie. Obviously. And it has no preservatives or other artificial ingredients. It’s all real.
And bread that is made with whole grains, the energy it contains is released slowly, gradually, into the body. That means your body can use that energy as it’s released, and that you stay full longer; it’s longer until you are hungry again.
A Twinkie, on the other hand—like any high-sugar, processed carb treat—those calories are released right away. You get this sudden rush of energy, all at once. It comes so much faster than your body can use, so the body stores the excess energy as fat.
And because it all happens relatively quickly, it’s not long before you’re hungry again.
That’s the difference between processed junk food, and real food. The junk food gives you a momentary high, but the real food gives you lasting satisfaction. The real food sustains you. The real food nurtures your body; it nurtures your life.
As a pastor, I often wonder what kind of bread we’re serving at church. No, I’m not talking about the donuts after worship, or even the bread we use for communion. What I mean is: are we offering bread that endures for eternal life, or bread that perishes? Are we offering the kind of bread that sustains people’s souls, the kind of bread that nurtures life? Or is it junk food that has no nutritional value whatsoever?
Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry.”
In comparing himself to bread, I can only assume that Jesus is talking about good, nutritious, homemade whole grain bread. He couldn’t possibly be talking about a Twinkie. Whoever eats of a Twinkie will be hungry again, very soon; the energy from a Twinkie comes quickly, but it won’t sustain you for long. But whoever eats of the bread of life will find a lasting satisfaction.
In running a church, we have a lot of decisions to make. Decisions about worship and styles of music, decisions about building maintenance, decisions about programming, decisions about outreach, decisions about fellowship and membership and stewardship…
And these are all important decisions.
But the most important decisions we make are about the bread we offer: are we offering the bread of life? Are we offering that which endures and sustains life? Are we offering Jesus?
It’s easy to spend too much of our time on recruiting new members and promoting our programs and stuff like that; and it’s easy to spend too much of our time on styles of worship or the color of the carpet, and stuff like that; and it’s too easy to neglect the one thing—the one thing!—that we’re really here for, which is to share the good news of Jesus Christ with the world.
And people who are drawn to a church because of its programming or because of its worship style or (God forbid!) because of the pastor’s personality, but who don’t experience a life-changing encounter with Jesus, they don’t usually stick around. Because anything other than Jesus is bread that may satiate your hunger for a while, but only Jesus will keep you from never going hungry again.
Now, it’s OK to have a Twinkie every now and then. A donut after worship isn’t such a bad thing. But you can’t live off of such things. You need better nourishment than that.
And the true nourishment that the church can provide is rooted in Jesus.
As Christians, our aim is to be Christ-like in every aspect of our lives; but to be Christ-like, we need to know Christ. We need to know what Christ stood for, what he taught, how he lived, who he hung out with. We need to know why Christ willingly submitted to Roman authority, allowing himself to be arrested, tried, and crucified. We need to know what it means that not even death could stop him, but that he lives and reigns now and for all time.
A lot of people who talk about Jesus and profess to be followers of Jesus— for some reason, they don’t always sound like Jesus. Jesus, as they describe him, doesn’t sound like the Jesus I find when I read the Bible. Sometimes, it sounds like they’re misrepresenting Jesus; other times, there just doesn’t seem to be much substance to what they say.
The late Marcus Borg once compared the church to a swimming pool: most of the noise, he said, comes from the shallow end.
That’s a different way of saying that most of the bread being offered by the church is nothing but a bunch of Twinkies. It won’t sustain you. It won’t nourish you. Too much of it might even cause you harm.
And William Barber once said that too many Christians “say so much about what God says so little, and… say so little about what God says so much.” They’re not focused on the heart and soul of Jesus’ teachings. Their concerns are these peripheral things that Jesus rarely or never mentioned.
Maybe they’re that way because they haven’t really tasted of that nourishing, life-giving bread themselves. Maybe all they’ve ever been given is Twinkies, and that’s all they know to give to others.
I think there’s a lot of things we don’t understand about Jesus. I think there’s a lot of things people get wrong about Jesus.
And I don’t get everything right all the time. I’m still learning. I’ll always be learning.
But I know that the bread Jesus offers is LIFE. I know that the bread Jesus offers is GOOD NEWS. I know that the bread Jesus offers contains a list of ingredients that includes LOVE, HOPE, AND HEALING.
And if someone is presenting a version of Jesus that isn’t full of life, that isn’t loving, that isn’t good news, and that doesn’t list love, hope, and healing as the top ingredients, then that isn’t the bread of life.
A book I just finished reading, about the apostle Paul, talks about how, for Paul, the most important thing was christoformity, which is allowing ourselves to be conformed to the way of Christ; to live out in our lives the ideals of the Sermon on the Mount, and to work towards those ideals in our society; to allow the Spirit to work through us to create a world where the poor and other vulnerable persons are lifted up; where those who have been denied a seat at the table are, instead, given the place of honor.
It’s a world where every person whose labor contributes to the economic wellbeing of the society is able to share in the blessings of that society. It’s a world where every person is cared for, where every person is fed, where every person receives health care, including mental health care, because it is made affordable and accessible to all.
We are called to be healers, and in this day and age, that’s how we can do it.
It’s a world where we stop making such a big deal over so-called sins that Jesus never talked about, and instead focus on the real evils of society: those who seek to withhold God’s love from any person for any reason.
“Love your neighbor,” Jesus said. “Welcome the stranger,” Jesus said. “Feed the hungry,” he said; “heal the sick.”
All these things are borne out of love. We act with love toward others, because Jesus loves us.
And if we take the time to really get to know Jesus, and to understand just how great, how big, how unlimited, his love is, for us and for all the world, only then will we have moved away from the junk food of no nutritional value whatsoever, and toward the living bread that fills and satisfies.
The prophet Isaiah asked: “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread? Why do you spend your labor for that which does not satisfy?”
God’s desire is for you and for every person to be filled. God’s desire is for you and for every person to be satisfied.
And the two things are connected. Your satisfaction is connected to your neighbor’s satisfaction. You can’t really taste that bread of life unless your neighbor is able to taste it, too.
That’s just how God created the world; I don’t make the rules! Can you really enjoy that bread while the neighbor next to you is starving?
The good news is that there is enough to go around—more than enough! Two loaves, five fish—it’s more than enough, if we share! If we share, there will even be leftovers. Everyone will have their fill. Everyone will eat. Everyone will be satisfied.
This is what we’re about. We’re about following a man from Galilee who had access to this bread of life, who became the bread of life, and who offers it to us. There is nothing that satisfies us as well, nothing that nourishes us as well, as this bread of life.
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