Scholars agree that quite a few of the letters attributed to Paul in the New Testament were not written by Paul, or even during his lifetime. They can sometimes tell because the letters address issues and structures in the life of the church that came decades after Paul’s death. They can also tell because of word choice and grammar, for even through the pen of the scribe, we can hear a very distinctive voice that we know to be Paul. The challenge, of course, is that Paul’s belief, his theology, probably evolved during his year’s of ministry. He is likely to have picked up new vocabulary in his travels as well, something that seems even more likely as he was a polyglot, someone fluent in multiple languages, Aramaic and Greek at the very least, and probably classical Hebrew and Latin as well.
Even with Paul as a moving target, a living human who changes, we can still apply the duck rule. If it waddles like a duck, has a bill and webbed feet like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is probably a duck, and if it is egalitarian like Paul, universalist like Paul, grounded deeply in the Hebrew narrative like Paul, and even a little combative like Paul, for he is always a little combative, then it is probably Paul.
Like Paul, we often move in a space of fluid language, adding new words, some constructed for new things and new ideas, others borrowed or learned from other languages. If anyone ever bothered to try to figure out my authentic voice as a preacher, one marker would be my use of an unusual word, one not found in the daily speech of most folks, which is ironic in its own way, as you will see. And it is all thanks to a Belgian baker.
Alain Coumont named his first bakery after an expression he remembered from his father, “moi, ce n’est pas mon pain quotidien!,†which translates roughly as “this is not my daily bread.†And so Le Pain Quotidien was born. Today, Coumont has bakeries in twenty countries, a testament to the quality of his product. And it was the New York City location that introduced me to the word, which I eventually discovered in its anglicized spelling, with an “a†instead of an “e.â€
Quotidian comes from the Latin cotidie, for daily. It might even have been a word Paul knew and used. Today, it is both an adjective of time, retaining the meaning “daily,†as well as an adjective of status, meaning “ordinary†or “mundane.†But, as in that expression by Coumont’s father and the name of the bakery, it evokes the spiritual as well… give us this day our Pain Quotidien.
Of course, Paul also says that everyone who can work should work, so he is not passive before the divine, expecting mana from the sky, the delivery of daily bread as if by magic. We are active partners in the quotidian abundance of creation, the sacred mundane.
And here is this man at table with his disciples, this man who is an embodied thin place where the divine seems to pour out of him. His mere touch transforms what is broken, disease, sin-sick, into what is whole. And he takes the bread… he touches the bread, and it is revealed as sacred…
This is not the elaborate ritual we would make it with a cardboard approximation of bread and grape juice that will mostly be wasted. This is daily bread, Pain Quotidien, and this is the cup, his cup, which he shared with them. He blesses this bread, this cup, things that would be at every meal, and then asks that we remember him.
At every meal.
This is not holiness dispensed by a human mediator or locked up in the Temple, the Holy of Holies hidden behind a curtain, the flow of holiness stoppered and contained. This is the sacred quotidian, for every day they would eat bread and drink from the cup. Every day, we eat bread and drink from the cup. Okay, maybe you don’t eat the bread if you are on a no-carb diet, but you eat something, and it is sunlight and soil and water and stardust, just like the bread, just like you, ordinary and sacred at the same time.
Is there room in our lives for ordinary sacredness? Is there room for us to encounter divine gift at table with loved ones, in our homes, at a Belgian cafe in Manhattan, maybe even in McDonald’s?
Recuerda me… the Oscar winning theme song to Disney’s “Coco,†asks that we remember one another even when we are apart. “Remember me,†the words Jesus says to his disciples as he transforms the quotidian into the extraordinary. Bless the bread or the burger, the cup or the coke. Bless the beautiful mundane of God’s abundance, and remember him. Something extraordinary is happening right in the midst of the ordinary.
May we remember him daily. Amen.