Such a Sunday it is. On the liturgical calendar, it is the third Sunday after the Epiphany. On the calendar of festival days, it is the feast of St. Titus, pastor and confessor. On the synodical calendar it is “Sanctity of Life” Sunday. And of course, on the calendar of American civil religion, it is Super Bowl Sunday. And the readings are equally diverse. In today’s Gospel, four fishermen are made fishers of men by the Word of Jesus. In the OT reading, a reluctant prophet named Jonah, who was fish food for three days, preaches the Word to Nineveh. And the Word of God has its killing and making alive way.

Words are powerful. They don’t seem like much when you stop and think about them. Sound waves pushing on air molecules that bounce off each other like billiard balls and eventually find their way into ear holes and bounce off eardrums. Or shapes and squiggles in the form of letters on a printed page. But the right word at the right time can bring great comfort to someone in distress. The wrong word at the wrong time can deliver distress. With our words we make promises, we marry, we encourage, we hurt, we build up, we tear down, we destroy.

Linus Pauling died of cancer this past Friday. As a chemist I remember him as the father of molecular biology and much of modern chemistry. Most of you will likely remember him as the guy who promoted megadoses of vitamin C as the preventative and cure of everything from the common cold to cancer. He is the man that made vitamin supplements the big thing, and if you’re in the habit of taking vitamin C tablets, you can thank Linus Pauling for that. But in the end, Dr. Pauling died, ironically of cancer, albeit at the age of 93, and no amount of orange juice could have prevented that.

Imagine a bread that would not only fill your hunger but would cause you never to hunger again. I’m not speaking here about whole-grain health food that helps the digestive processes, or holds out the promise of long life, or simply “is good for you”. I’m speaking about a bread that promises eternal life. Eat this bread and will live forever. Eat this bread and even though you die one day and your body is buried in the ground, the life in this bread will raise you from the grave.

Bread embodies and incorporates everything of life. The vitalities and energies of life are all baked and incorporated into bread. Bread contains the energies of the sun and the rain, the vitalities of the soil and the seed. In bread there is the plow of the farmer who sows seed and harvests grain, the stone of the miller who grinds grain into flour, the hand of the baker who kneeds flour into dough and shapes dough into loaves, the heat of the oven that bakes loaves into bread. All of that, and more, is baked into what we commonly call “bread.”