Some images of the Church do not occur in more than one or two passages. Some do not have a direct, explicit statement that labels them as such but are nonetheless meaningful metaphors or analogies about the people of God. As a result we can easily overlook them and, in doing so, miss out on some aspect of truth about the Church. This week’s image of the Church as a loaf of bread is in the category of an easily overlooked one, but nonetheless is suggestive of an important aspect of being the Church in our kind of world.
Preparations for the Feast
The background for this image of the Church may be seen in the Passover Meal and the accompanying Feast of Unleavened Bread. Preparation for the Feast involved purging the household of yeast in preparation for baking the loaves of unleavened bread used in the meal itself.
The admonition to the Corinthian church in 1 Corinthians 5:7 was, “Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch,” a reference to a batch of dough destined to become loaves of unleavened bread used in the Passover celebration. Yeast was often equated with evil influences, as when Jesus warned the disciples against the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadduccees (Matt. 16:6). The imagery of an unleavened loaf is based on the common knowledge captured in the question, “Don’t you know that a little yeast permeates the whole batch of dough?” (1 Cor. 5:6).
Unleavened quality
The unleavened loaf used in the Passover Meal and then in the Last Supper suggests that, in a spiritual sense, an unleavened quality should characterize the Church.
The imagery of God’s people being a new lump of dough or a new loaf is given specific application by calling malice and evil the old leaven that needs purging, while naming sincerity and truth as qualities of an unleavened Church (1 Cor. 5:8).
One take-away truth about the image of the Church as an unleavened loaf might be expressed in the single word “pureness.” Evidences of the lack of moral purity in the Corinthian church included tolerating immorality by failing to discipline an immoral member (1 Cor. 5) and the suggestion that some Christian men still visited prostitutes as they had done in their pre-Christian years (1 Cor. 6:12–20).
In a context of calling members of the Corinthian church to resist idolatry, 1 Corinthians 10:16–17 draws specifically upon the Lord’s Supper’s focus on the bread and the cup to make the appeal against idolatry, saying, “Because there is one bread we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” The imagery of one body partaking of the one loaf suggests community or fellowship as well as common nourishment and mutual dependence.
Church ‘oneness’
A second take-away truth about the image of the Church as a loaf might be expressed in the single word “oneness.” The fractured fellowship in the Corinthian church (1 Cor. 1–4) belied the imagery of a church as one loaf. Divisions in the church were all the more grievous when they showed up in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11).
Each time a church shares in taking bread at the Lord’s Supper, the imagery of a common, unleavened loaf serves as a visual reminder of the twin ideals of a congregation being together in oneness and distinctively set apart in moral pureness. The reality of our life together needs to match the symbolism in our worship.
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