I am the Bread

This past Sunday, our stake high council speaker said something that struck me as interesting. I should be clear that I am not a high council speaker basher and therefore I will not point out that this is a rare enough occurance to warrant its own post.

Instead, I will focus on what he said, sort of. In the course of his sermon, he brought up the miracle of feeding the multitude. Generally, when people talk about this miracle, they talk about how many people were fed. This speaker chose to emphasize the small amount of food.

Consider at how little food there was. A few loaves of bread and a couple fish. The implication of the miracle is that the people ate their fill and, explicitly, that there was plenty leftover. In the Gospel of John, this incident precedes Christ’s declaration that He is the bread, that we must eat his flesh and blood.

Going Synoptic, we are the leaven. We spread through the dough, raising it (or filling it with hot air). The scriptures consistently teach that the church in the last days will be small, but widespread. The truth we bear (or that we embody) will be spread to the ends of the earth. Like bread in a crowd.

Some people have argued that the threefold mission of the church is impossible. We are too few to spread the gospel to all the world or to teach it to every creature. We are too few to even get everyone baptized who needs it. They are probably right. But we have a precedent. Few, in the hands of Christ, become more powerful than many.

Welcome to the crowd.