There are two origin stories of the sandwich, both involving John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich in Great Britain, and how he sustained himself late at night. Lord Sandwich (it’s really to say that with a straight face) was said to be a dedicated card player and gambler, and would often play for hours well into the night. To sustain himself without having to leave the table or soiling his cards during a particularly long session late one night, he ordered a servant to bring him salted beef between two pieces of toasted bread.
His gambling compatriots, noting the genius of this idea, called out 
“the same as Sandwich!” and the rest is history. The other origin story, suspiciously advocated by his official biographer, argued that this was a slanderous rumor started by his political foes, and that he actually invented the sandwich while working late into the night at his desk as First Lord of the Admiralty. In either case, the sandwich, as an meal usually distinguished most by its expedience in both preparation and consumption, is credited to him, despite the fact that putting meat inside some form of bread can be traced all the way back to the Ancient Near East. Still, the Wall Street Journal once called the sandwich “Great Britain’s biggest contribution to global gastronomy” on the basis of these stories, which is one of the best back-handed compliments I’ve ever heard, so I’m going to let it stand.
It’s not surprising that the U.S. loves sandwiches, as well, because they appeal to the pragmatism and impatience that is (no pun intended) baked into our culture. With a sandwich, you can assemble and consume a meal in just a few minutes; you don’t even have to sit down. And it is through the lens of the sandwich that we have most often looked at bread in the United States: as an often-bland delivery system for some kind of protein in a sandwich, or maybe at most as something you try not to fill up on at a restaurant while you’re waiting for your actual food to arrive.
That is NOT, however, how bread has been understood for most of human history in almost every culture outside of Asia, which generally has an analogous understanding of rice. Bread, for much of Europe and the Middle East and, to a lesser extent, Africa, is considered so essential the word is often a stand-in for food in general, like “give us this day our daily bread.” Many cultures are symbolized by their particular bread: the baguette of France, the pita of the Mediterranean and the Middle East, the tortilla of Mexico, the injera of Ethiopia, the soda bread of Ireland…you get the picture.
It’s true in families, too. How many of you have some kind of a breadmaking tradition that is essential to your family? Mine had two, actually: my granny’s buttermilk biscuits and my father’s buttermilk pancakes (which were adapted from a recipe of my granny, so she’s involved in both). For the sake of time, I’m just going to talk about the pancakes, which I could still do until at least mid-to-late afternoon (though I won’t!), because my father makes the best pancakes on the planet.
Seriously; they’re so good that I basically can’t eat pancakes anywhere else. I mean, forget about Perkins and IHOP; I once went a famous pancake house in Vermont that people drive hours out of their way to eat at. It was written up in every travel guide, so the wait was over an hour; clearly, these were considered world-class pancakes. While I sat at the table waiting for my order, people all around me were so exuberant about the joy of eating these pancakes that it honestly reminded me of a Pentecostal Christian worship service. And when mine came, I took a bite, paused, took another bite, and put my fork down.
The waiter came over smiling broadly: “So, how are you finding those pancakes?” he prodded, clearly expecting a rapturous reply. “Meh; they’re not without their charm,” I said…to myself. To the waiter, I managed some polite compliment, but against my Dad’s pancakes, these were like comparing a ripe, well-aged wheel of Camembert cheese direct from the farms of Normandy to a particularly good block of Velveeta.
The thing is, while I stand by everything I just said, it is not just the ridiculously high quality of the pancakes that make them special. It is the rituals that go along with them, from my dad insisting that the eggs be brought to room temperature before even thinking about starting, to the smell of them cooking throughout the house before they ever come out, to the way they come out in wave after wave, culminating in what me and my brother called “funny pancakes” when we were growing up: pancakes made into shapes and symbols that either we requested or he offered for us to guess, sometimes related to the season we were in, sometimes capturing the thing we were most interested in at the time: a Christmas tree, a Star Wars spaceship, a baseball player with a bat and ball.
And when I grew up and then brought my son Liam to visit, he not only did the same things with him, but he made Liam his apprentice and taught him to make pancakes the same way from an early age, and so we have them sometimes on the rare weekend when we both have a lot of free time. But as good as they taste (and they taste good), it’s never the same as it is when my Dad, his Grandaddy, is there making them. Because as good as they are, it’s not just about the pancakes, and it’s not about the rituals themselves, either; it’s about making and sharing them together as a family.
What’s really amazing about all this is how Jewish hospitality and mealtime practices pull all these threads together. Bread plays a role in hospitality traditions of many cultures. In Eastern and Northern Europe as well as the Middle East, a guest is welcomed into one’s home with a tradition of “bread, salt, and heart.” Bread, symbolizing the sustenance of life, is dipped into salt, symbolizing the preservation of friendship in all of its flavor and zest, and the guest is then welcoming into the heart of both the home and the host. It’s significant that this ritual crosses so many language barriers and cultural gaps without much change, so powerful and essential is its message.
But Jewish life takes this all to a new level. In Judaism, the very definition of a meal is eating when bread is consumed, meaning that it is NOT a meal if there is no bread. And at such a meal, the Hamotzi, the blessing of the bread, is traditionally said by the host, not simply on shabbat, the Sabbath Day, but at any meal: “Baruch ata Adonai Eloheinu melech ha’olam hamotzi lechem min ha’aretz” – blessed are you Lord God, creator and ruler of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth. And traditionally, before anything else happens in the meal, each person tears a piece of bread off and consumes it, so that all have received the blessing of bread and hospitality before the meal begins.
This is what is happening toward the end of our story today, when the two disciples walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus welcome Jesus into their home and invite him to share their bread. Now there are a number of things here that are surprising. First, they’re talking about him, but they don’t recognize him when he joins them on the road. But Luke tells us that “their eyes were kept from recognizing them.” It’s not clear what kept them from doing that.
It could be something supernatural, but it doesn’t have to be; it’s dark, they’re hardly expecting to meet him on this road or anywhere else since they think he’s dead, and as anyone who has lost someone they loved knows, grief does all kinds of strange things to your perceptions of yourself, the world, others, time, you name it. But in any case, they don’t recognize him, and they tell Jesus their understanding of what has happened the last few days. Jesus finally responds, telling them that this was necessary for the Messiah to enter his glory, and then gives them a Bible lesson to show all the ways in which it shows that is the case.
The disciples are really into this lesson, and when he moves as if to leave them, they beg him to come into their home and share shelter and a meal. This isn’t just them being nice or eager to have more time; they are fulfilling the responsibility of hospitality to strangers that is both culturally and religiously expected there. He accepts, and then something even more surprising happens: when Jesus sits at the table to which they have welcomed them, he takes the role of host, not guest. It is Jesus who takes the bread, blesses it with the Hamotzi, breaks it, and gives it to them. And it is in this ritual that they recognize him.
Now, there are many Biblical scholars who argue that this is really just a way of establishing the sacrament of the Eucharist in the text, and so it is an anachronistic insertion of that practice into the story of Jesus from a later time. And clearly, it does mirror the act of celebrating the Eucharist, Communion, in Christian worship. But that argument also misses something extremely important about Communion in the first place: the whole point of Communion is that it is based one of the most basic activities of life: gathering around the table and sharing bread in a community of welcome and hospitality. The ritual elements of Communion were developed from the practices described in this story, not the other way around.
What’s really interesting and most important about this story, I think, is that it is in this shared experience of community and hospitality through the blessing and sharing of bread that these disciples finally recognize Jesus. Not from walking and talking with him; not from the teaching he does about why it was necessary for the Messiah to die and be raised again from the dead on the third day, as interested as they were in that. It is sitting around a table, receiving the blessing of shared bread, that enables them to recognize Jesus among them.
It is the very opposite of having a sandwich, a quick and pragmatic solution to hunger which allows you to attend to your own business with a minimum of time and effort, often without even stopping, whether you’re gambling or working or traveling or whatever. The occasional delusional grilled cheese apparition aside, Jesus is never seen in a sandwich. No, we can see and recognize Jesus in the most basic elements and activities of community: gathering together, welcoming one another, and sharing the essential sustenance of life together, which is both food and relationship. It is that combination that turns what might be bland or basic into something of joy and satisfaction and savor.
As the French writer Antoine Sainte-Exupery once wrote, “we have learned to see in bread an instrument of community – the flavor of bread shared has no equal.” It is that flavor, that experience, that sustenance, which Jesus has intended his followers to have and share from the very beginning, pulling more and more chairs to the table so that everyone may be welcomed and fed.
That is the most basic responsibility of the church, of any community of those who seek to follow Christ. And in fulfilling it, we can be assured that we will always see Jesus among us, as well. So whether your journey has been long or short to get here, whether this is a familiar home or a strange new world, whether you are fresh and rested or crawling across the threshold in exhaustion, you are welcome. Jesus is here; he’s been waiting for you; come, take your place.