A Dozen Bakers

“The Dozen Bakers”
By Dayle K. Barrett
Sunday, February 15, 2026
Reading: Acts 2:40-47

I'd like to bring you some belated greetings. Yesterday was the feast day of the late great Saint Valentine, a champion of the faith, a bishop in the Lord's Church, who was brutally martyred for his incessant proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This gospel he refused to stop preaching right until the very end when it cost him his life. And he did all this in the hopes that one day all people would know the joy… of eating too much chocolate and buying heart-shaped goods for that girl you fancy… or something like that.

I'm not knocking Valentine's Day, but it is interesting, isn't it, how things change over time. It once meant one thing and now it means something completely different. We go from recognizing a martyr to thinking about love. There's nothing wrong with that by itself, is there? I mean, there's lots of great things that come out of the modern Valentine's Day. It encourages you towards filial piety, loving those around you, sharing that kind of romantic love that might strengthen the bonds of holy matrimony.

There are lots of goods but sometimes when we focus on the novelty, we forget the roots of something, we don't realize what we've missed. Perhaps we're not really asking, is it either about martyrdom or is it about love? But maybe we should be asking how one can help us better understand the other. Maybe it's not just an excuse to do more love of neighbor, but it's also an opportunity to think about the source of love, the love of God. What sacrificial love looks like. What it means to love your wife as Christ loves the Church. Now those things might bring us closer to what was intended with this great feast day.

And so, I see this as a bit of a microcosm of everything that happens as we continue our journey through modernity and post-modernity and the world that we live in today. That sometimes it's really easy to hang on to a tradition and have no idea what that tradition is really about. We kind of do things because they're done. And without understanding the roots of them, they can lose their meaning and therefore their effectiveness in our lives.

That's one of the reasons why we've been doing a series on the Holy Sacraments, which I'm completing today. In this series, we've been looking at some of the most central and powerful rituals and traditions in the Church and asking the question: What is it and why do we do it? Lots of people know when their child is born, hey, I've got to do something here and get this kid baptised, but why?

Every so often you come into church and there's bread and wine on the table and we take the Lord's Supper, but why? When we do the things without understanding where they come from, there's some meaning lost there that we're trying to recover. And there's a sense in which when we think about sacraments, the question we're really asking in all of this is, how is God present in the church today?

What does it mean when we say that baptism saves or that you're taking of the body and blood of Christ? How is God in the room with us when we worship? And how might that help us understand who we're supposed to be at church? Well, as a Pentecostal, I can't help thinking about the presence of God without going all the way back to, well, Pentecost. Because for me, in my mind, the presence of God is all based on the Holy Spirit. That's how God is present among us. And so here we are in Acts chapter two, looking at one of my pet stories in the scripture. One of the greatest stories in the entire Christian tradition, the coming of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the church.

I'll give you a bit of a background. This happens after Jesus has died for the sins of the world and is risen from the dead. He spends 40 days with his disciples talking about who he is and helping them understand the law and the prophets so they can see him there within them. After those 40 days are passed, he ascends into heaven, but before he goes up, he gives them a promise. He says, I'm going to send you the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit's going to give you power so that you can preach this gospel of the kingdom of God to the whole world. And then “poof”, he goes up into the sky.

So now the 12 are in an upper room with Mary and the other women and they're praying together. They're waiting for the Holy Spirit to come. And boy, does the Holy Spirit show up. There's a sound like rushing mighty wind. It fills the whole room where they are sitting. They see visions of flames of fire upon their heads and suddenly they start speaking in languages they never knew. People are coming from all directions.

Jews from every nation are appearing around this upper room hearing the disciples proclaim the gospel in all these different languages. They are absolutely amazed, drawn to the gospel and the presence of God. Then, once God has all their attention, the apostle Peter stands up and preaches the gospel to them all. And I must say friends, Peter's sermon here is a master class in evangelism. Because he doesn't stand up and say, “hey everyone, why don't you visit our church? We've got great programming!” He doesn't say, “hey, you know what, everyone, Jesus really loves you!”

That's not the sermon he preaches. He preaches about the glory of God revealed through the power of the Holy Spirit. He preaches about Jesus, a perfect man who they persecuted and put on an old rugged cross. He preaches the resurrection and the new life that is available to all. Then he ends his sermon with something pivotal. He says, “therefore, let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ.” The gospel that Peter preached wasn't the gospel of ‘we've got some great stuff for you to enjoy.’ The gospel that Peter preached was God is glorious and amazing and fantastic and all powerful and you're a bunch of sinners who crucified him.

And when the people heard that, in our text it says, “they were cut to the heart.” And they said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “now what shall we do?”

The birth of the church, my friends, began with repentance. It began with people realizing that they were far from God and they had a desire to draw near to God. And so, when they asked what they should do, Peter turns to them and says, “repent and be baptized every one of you for the forgiveness of sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

God acts among the people, people are drawn to the sound of the gospel, they recognize their need for repentance, they're washed in the living waters of baptism. And we're told that 3,000 people joined the church that day.

If that happened today, we would call that a great revival. It would be a historic revival, right? But this isn't a re-vival. This is the original vival. It's the birth of the church. It's the time where God begins to make himself known among the Gentiles and the gospel goes forth to the whole world. So, if we're asking ourselves what it means to be in the presence of God and what it means to have God present in the church, we might want to study what happens here.

Maybe if we go back to the roots of who we are, we can understand how we're supposed to go on. I think there's a clue in verse 42, where we can learn something about the priorities of the early church and what that tells us about what our priorities should be today. Verse 42 says, “and they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and in fellowship and in the breaking of bread and in prayer.”

What happened after the Holy Spirit descended upon 3000 people and they became children of God? They became devoted, committed. One translation says, “obstinately persistent” in the apostles doctrine, fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayer.

Martin Luther called these things the four marks of the church. They were to him the way you would recognize a real church, a real body of believers. But to him all these things weren't equal. He really emphasized the importance of the Word. In fact, Martin Luther said that the bread has not truly been broken unless it's broken aside the preaching of the Word.

This is why in our weekly services during the week, we have midday prayer services where we pray, and we chant psalms, sit in silence and have God speak to us. But at the communion services on Tuesday evenings at seven and on Thursdays at noon, there's always a little homily. Why? Because it's important that we receive the body and blood of Christ in faith. The body and blood of Christ is God's grace to us. It's a free gift of grace that He offers to everyone. But the way we cooperate with God's grace, the way we receive God's free gift is by faith.

Now, as we look at these four things, we see that there's this commitment to the breaking of bread. They're constantly meeting and breaking bread together. It really made me think about what the role of the apostles are in this community. Because we often think of the apostles as a dozen teachers, a dozen preachers, a dozen miracle workers, a dozen community organizers. But considering the fact that they didn't have a Loblaws a few blocks down the street like we do, perhaps it's useful to think about the 12 as a dozen bakers. People who God had called to feed and equip the community of faith so that they could be strong and nourished to feed and equip the world.

If these were indeed a dozen bakers, then perhaps these four marks of the church that Luther identified are something like a recipe. A recipe we could use to understand how to nourish the church, how to nourish each other, and how to nourish a world that is hungry for righteousness.

Let's begin with the apostles' doctrine. The first ingredient in any loaf of bread is flour. Flour is the substance. It's the thing that makes bread, bread. It's the nourishing part of it. It's the foundational substance of the food. So according to Luther, the apostles' doctrine was the foundational substance of the church because the preaching of the Word, the preaching of the New Testament, the apostles' doctrine is that which engenders faith within the faithful. It's no surprise therefore, that when Peter turns to Jesus and says, “you are the Christ, the son of the living God!” Jesus replies, “flesh and blood reveals this not to you, but my father who is in heaven.” And then what does he say? “Upon this rock,” (upon this faith that you've expressed, Peter,)  “I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”

The foundation of the church, the main ingredient in the bread is the faith, the apostles' doctrine, the Word of God. That's what gives it substance. That's what gives it something worth holding onto. But the fact is, friends, if all you had was the apostles' doctrine, if all you had was flour and you put it in a pan and you threw that in the oven, all you'd have when it came out again was burnt flour. If you want something that's cohesive, if you want something you can actually eat, if you want something that's going to be nourishing for you, that flour needs to be bound together. That's why the second ingredient in any bread recipe, second most important ingredient, is water.

Water binds together these little grains and makes them one dough. Just as fellowship binds together the church, so we're one people. It matters not if you all individually know the apostles’ doctrine, if you don't know it alongside your neighbour. It matters not if you understand your Bible back to front, if you don't have anyone to share it with in the life of the community. This is why we call ourselves a community of faith. What's our dough made of? The community, the water, the binding together, of the faith, the flour, the thing that gives it substance. Without those two things, we're pretty much nothing useful at all.

There's a bit of a trap we've fallen into, isn’t there? Especially after COVID. It's so easy to access church. You can go to any church you want all over the world from your living room right now. The upside of that is when people can't get here because they're traveling or they live too far away now or have mobility or health issues of some kind, we can continue to be church together because they can watch and be part of us. So, if you're watching, we love you. Thanks for joining us today here at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church.

But there is something uniquely special about being joined together in person, in community, and as much as I don't want to guilt trip anyone who joins us at home, it would be remiss of me not to tell you as a pastor, that if you aren't coming to be among the people, you are missing something. Because as much as you might enjoy a great sermon or listen to some incredible music, what you won't experience in the same way is the fellowship. Looking into the eyes of other believers who love you, sharing a coffee at coffee hour, being able to tell people what your prayer requests are so that they can support you in prayer, being built up in your faith among the community of faith. If we want those pieces of flour to stick together, we need water in there. That's what makes it something better than the sum of its parts when we're bound together in fellowship.

The fact is, with those things alone, you'd still have something you could make bread with. If you got flour and mixed it with water and threw it in a pan and fried it, you could eat that and it would be edible. It just wouldn't be very nice. The things we enjoy most about bread are its flavour and its texture. The fact it's crunchy on the outside but soft on the inside. And what it gives it that texture, what causes it to rise is yeast. Similarly, what causes the church to rise is the breaking of bread. Eucharist. The Lord's table nourishes us so that we don't just become something that we can be sustained on, but we become something greater than that. We become more like Jesus, soft in the places Jesus is soft, comfortable for people to be around. It's a really important thing for us to spend time in God's presence in that way because it nourishes the church and it causes us to rise.

The bread without yeast in it is still bread, but it's almost like there's no life in it. It's kind of flat. Similarly, Jesus says to his disciples, “unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you.” The Lord's table, the Eucharist is like that yeast in the bread that causes us to rise and makes us something better than we would otherwise be. We're blessed here at this church because unlike many churches that only have communion a few times a year, under Jason's leadership, we've started having it once a month in our Sunday services. We continually call you to the table so that you can experience it more often. This year we went even further and we've started having regular communion services twice a week. Once on a Tuesday and once on a Thursday. And as we were getting ready for that I did have some people come up to me and say, “Dayle, why would you want to do communion that often? Isn't it a lot of work? You got to get the wine and the bread and the people. Why would you want to do it that often?”

Here's one really obvious cliche answer that might hit home: You are what you eat. And if we want to be like Jesus, it really helps to consume Jesus as often as possible. If God offers us the free gift of himself, why wouldn't we take that opportunity as often as we can? Because life's hard, man. It's cold out there. Sometimes it's not easy to go through your day to day. You watch the news and you're like, what is going on? And then God offers you this reminder that His body is broken for you, that His blood is shed for you, and that He wants to live inside you every single day of your life.

So, as we approach Lent, if you're wondering, what's something I can do to deepen my faith, to draw closer to God in preparation for the passion, maybe stop by in middle of the week and have communion. If the waters of baptism are like the amniotic fluid that birth us into the church, then the communion table is something like the mother's breast. It's how the child of God is nurtured and fed so that we can grow in Christ. The eating, the consuming of Christ's body, so we might grow into Christ's body. They were devoted to the apostles’ doctrine, to fellowship, and to the breaking of bread.

There's one more ingredient you really need to put in your bread if you're trying to bake something anyone wants to eat. If you have the flour, water and yeast, you'll have something with good texture, but it might not taste very interesting at all. Any recipe worth its salt, (see what I did there) will also tell you to add some salt to your bread. That's prayer. Salt is what gives the bread flavour. It's what makes it enjoyable to eat.

Similarly, prayer is what makes the walk with God enjoyable, because it gives us true communion with God. It makes us know that we know God and God knows us. It gives us relationship with God. It makes our walk more that satiating, it becomes satisfying.

In the first century salt also had another function, because they didn't have fridges like we do, so salt was important to put in everything because it's also a preservative. It helps things last longer. It protects the bread against microbes and impurities that might make it unsafe to eat. Similarly, prayer protects us against the wiles of the enemy, against deceit, depression, despair, against the things that might threaten to take you off this path that God has you on. And so, a necessary ingredient in the church is that we go before God on a regular basis, that we speak to him together, not just privately, but in fellowship, and we petition God for our needs, that we might enjoy our life together as church and be protected from harm and from danger. Prayer is the salt of the Church.

So now all the ingredients are in a bowl. You have everything you need to make your bread, but there's still another step. If all those things are just sitting in a bowl together, they won't do much all by themselves. In order to become a dough, to become more than just what they are, they need to be kneaded. There needs to be pressure. There needs to be mixing. The ingredients need to be integrated with one another. In the same way, friends, we are called to fellowship, but we're called to more than that. We're called to get involved in each other's lives, to know each other's stories, to become so deeply integrated with each other that you can't tell one part of the dough from the other.

In the early church, it happened like this. It says:

Now all who believed were together, and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need. So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart.

If we want to be the church God is calling us to be, we need to be mixed in with each other. Not one clique over here and here and here. But let's know what each other's needs are so we can pray. Let's know what each other are going through so we can be there. Let's be deeply integrated with one another so that when we go before God we can go as one people. This is how the church was born.

After you've made your dough and it looks great. If you broke a piece off and ate it, you'd find that nothing you'd done really means anything. Still doesn't taste good. It still doesn't have any texture. It's still not going to sustain you. The reason for that, friends, is that we can only do so much in our own power. Just as a dough needs to be placed into the oven so that it can become bread.

So, everything I mentioned to you can only happen by the power of the Holy Spirit. For it is the Holy Spirit that takes the apostles’ doctrine and causes it to pierce your heart that you might be changed. It's the Holy Spirit that pours out his living water upon us that we might be bound together in fellowship. It's the Holy Spirit that descends upon the bread and the wine that they might become for us the body and blood of Christ. It’s the Holy Spirit that hears our prayers and makes intercession for us so that they might be acceptable to the ears of the Father.

You can make a great dough by your own works, but if you don't put that bad boy in the oven, it's never gonna be bread. We need the power of the Holy Spirit. We need the fire of the Holy Spirit to transform everything we do into something that can feed the world. And so, we pray for God's Holy Spirit to descend upon us, to empower us, to make us more than we can ever be by ourselves, so that we can feed this hungry world.

You know a great thing that happens when you put that bread in the oven? The aroma starts to rise. If you ever had this experience, you walk past a bakery and you're not even hungry, but you suddenly you need something. You had a plan, you were going from point A to point B minding your own business, but you smell that aroma coming from the bakery and suddenly you need baked goods. And you don't even care what they are.

Something happens when the Holy Spirit moves among God's people. People notice. It attracts them from near and far. Three thousand people joined the church on the day od Pentecost. Not because of great programming, not because of outstanding sermons, or wonderful music, but because these people were full of the Holy Spirit of God.

So how do we create an environment like that? Devote ourselves to the apostles' doctrine, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. Spend time and effort and energy integrating these things, and ourselves, together. And ask God to, by His Holy Spirit, transform all of that into true bread - the true body of Christ.

Let’s pray for this:

Come Holy Spirit.
Come and nourish us by your word.
Come and bind us together.
Come and feed us that we may rise in your spirit.
Come and intercede for us in prayer.
Come and empower by your Holy fire.
that those who are hungry might be fed in your presence.
Through Christ our Lord. Amen.