[A sermon preached to Hinckley Unitarians on Sunday 7th of August 2022]
(Readings: Sacrifice by Zosh Barton and an except on Lemas Bread from J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings)
In 2001 a group of people gathered outside a church in the in town of Alamogordo, New Mexico and started a fire. They did not set fire to the church – this was not some sort of anti-religious arson attack – far from it. In fact, this group gathered to set light to a large pile of books that they deemed to be anti-Christian, satanic, and corrupting the minds of the youth by promoting witchcraft. All of these books in the pile that went up in smoke that day by one author J. R. R. Tolkien. Yep, they burned Lord of the Rings. Which is somewhat ironic as, if they had bothered to read it and comprehend what they were reading, they would soon have discovered that, for all its talk of wizards and magical creatures, it is one of the most Christianity influenced stories to have ever sat on a bookshelf.
Tolkien was a rather traditionally minded Roman Catholic. So traditionally minded that when the reforms of the Second Vatican Council allowed for the words of the mass to be said in English, Tolkien continued to reply in fluent Latin until the day he died.
With Tolkien’s devotion to the traditional form of the Eucharist, one would expect that it might be present in some form in Lord of the Rings and indeed it is, in the from of Lembas bread – a miracle bread capable of sustaining someone like no other substance can.
‘Lembas bread’ bears striking written and vocal resemblance to ‘Lammas bread’ and I do not think that this is coincidence. Tolkien’s academic specialism was in Middle English and he taught Old English to a high standard too. While at Oxford he was Professor of Anglo-Saxon. That knowledge of past language and cultural traditions combined with his knowledge of Christian liturgical tradition means that he was very likely to be aware of Lammas.
Lammas, or “Loaf Mass Day” is the old Christian liturgical festival celebrated in early August. The high point of the celebration of Lammas Day is the use of a loaf of bread created from the first grain of the new harvest at a service of communion.
This would have very much been seen as a festival of thanksgiving. Before the harvest began supplies in most towns and villages would have been running low and food would have been at its most scarce. The beginning of harvest however would have meant the begging of a season of hard work for most of the population but it would also have been a time of rejoicing as the first fruits of the harvest were successfully gathered in and barns began to fill up. The feeling was likely one of “work hard – play hard!” One would likely have been out working in close proximity to others all day and would likely have partied with the same crowed of people for a good part of the night!
A lot of the customs that these people might have engaged in as part of broader folk traditions around Lammas might well have had older, pre-Christian, origins as part of a festival known as Lughnasadh. This being the older festival, its origins are far murkier but we do have good documentation for it being celebrated around the same time as Lammas is today in Ireland. This Pagan festival, still celebrated by Neo-Pagans today in revised forms, originally celebrated the god Lugh. These celebrations were often, for the time, vast gatherings lasting several weeks with sporting and cultural events similar to a modern Olympic games. The festival of Lughnasadh was so significant that waring tribal kings would commonly call a truce in conflicts to allow people to head to the festivities. This festival was, of course, also deeply connected with the beginning of harvest – without ample food, it is doubtful that large gatherings could have been sustained.
But why should these Lammas and Lughnasadh traditions matter to us today? Simply put, because daily bread still matters.
As our economy became more industrialised we lost our connection to the process of creating what sustains us. Do not get me wrong, I do not want to cast industrial and technological progress in a bad light at all. I for one am quite glad that I do not have to commit to back breaking manual labour in a field for half the year every year before dyeing in my late thirties without having seen what lies beyond the next village.
Yet, while the industrial revolution created many good things (including, arguably, this very congregation) it also created many discontents for the modern world – including our alienation from the land and what comes from it. I personally tend to associate a loaf of bread more readily with Tesco branding then I do with fields of wheat or those who harvest it. I will also confess that much of it is left to go mouldy in our kitchen cupboard before being thrown away.
Bread has always been treated with as an everyday essential by most cultures but many value it more than we do today – simply put, many others in less developed parts of the world know how much effort goes into making it and sourcing it.
When Jesus or faith is compared to bread in our prayers and songs this is what it means – an every day essential that is hard work to form and find but worth celebrating as something we cannot hope to live without. Something that is sustaining but also as something that is self-sustaining.
The miracle of grain that is celebrated in both Christian Lammas and Pagan Lughassadh is that grain resurrects. As Jesus himself is recorded as saying in the Gospels, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies it bears much fruit.” Not only that but the fruit bares seed that can be sow and harvested and fruit yet again.
It is no wonder then that the Anglo-Catholic mystic Evelyn Underhill in her poem ‘Corpus Christi’ likens the death and resurrection of Christ to the harvest fields.
It is when we see the sacred in the mundane and everyday wonders around us that we open up wonderous possibilities within ourselves for how we see the Divine and how we see our world. It is then that we can see the bread of life within our daily bread and be thankful for it.
Amen.
