Read part 2 here.
It might sound odd to say that our eating is in need of reconciliation. But as I already argued in the last post, every act of eating is a form of sacrifice. We kill anything we eat. We, at least in America, don't think about this because our food comes to us pre-killed. And it's in such tidy packaging that it takes work to remember its original state -- i.e., what kind of animal or plant it once was and what form of life it enjoyed.
Now, this sacrifice of itself is not wholly bad. For God speaks of food as a a gift to humans and animals (Genesis 1.29). And yet it is hard to doubt that we now exploit and damage the animals, plants, and environments on which we rely for food.
Our eating practices have become destructive. Consider recent documentaries, like Food, Inc, that reveal horrific treatment of animals, genetic modification of plants and animals, and unsustainable economic practices. In America, our desire for more food at lower costs has led to the exploitation of the earth, farmers, and the global economy. Our "free market" has invaded other countries and subjected them to produce for our insatiable cravings with such low compensation that the locals cannot even afford to buy the food they formerly lived on.
Here are two more claims to explore the brokenness we experience and the reconciliation offered through Christ.
III.1 By participating in practices that destroy and exploit the sources of our food, we eclipse the sense of God's grace in our eating; consequently, our fellowship is compromised, between God, one another, and non-human creation.
The classic sin of eating is gluttony. We have so lost a sense of the connection between our eating practices and the good of those around us and the environment that we think of gluttony only in terms of individual physical health. Gluttony, in these terms, is eating more than is good for one's own body. No doubt this is not good.
And yet the Old Testament prophets are consistent, if not unanimous, in their condemnation of gluttony as a social sin. Gluttony is the sin of self-indulgence that disregards the good of those in need (Amos 6.4-7, 8.4-6). Ezekiel even charges that gluttony is the real sin of Sodom: "Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy" (Ezekiel 16.49).
When we recognize that our principal sin of eating is really a social sin -- a failure to share with others and care for the source of our food -- then it becomes clear how it breaks fellowship. Food is one of our primary ways of fellowship with other people and non-human creation. When our eating reinforces or fosters indifference to others, we fail to live into the fellowship God desires. And further, we thereby reject the very gift of God's own self to us through the gift of food.
Gluttony could easily be extended beyond its indifference to the needy other. In gluttony, we place our (insatiable) desires ahead of the rest of creation. That on which we depend for our food is turned into a mute object with no inherent value. And this is a double sin: it is a failure to acknowledge the inherent good of creation and it is to disregard what God delights in.
III.2 In Christ, God breaks bread for our sake as a gift of Christ's body and blood; in the Eucharist, we receive God's generosity and offer it to one another as God performs a fraction that results not in destruction but in sharing, so that we might learn to receive ourselves from and offer ourselves back to God.
As I have emphasized, in our eating we break things. This is a sacrificial breaking, in which the life of one thing is given up for the sake of another. Unfortunately, this sacrificial breaking often becomes destructive. However, in Christ we see a non-destructive form of breaking -- a breaking-as-sharing. There's no doubt that Jesus loves to eat. In fact, he practically eats his way through the Gospel according to St Luke. And how he eats is central to his ministry.
Two things characterize Jesus' table practices. First, while Jesus had no home of his own he almost always acts as the host at a table. So in Luke 14, Jesus initiates a topic of discussion and performs a healing in someone else's home, effectively assuming the role of host. And then in the feeding of five thousand, he takes the disciples’ bread, breaks it, and serves it in abundance of the need (Luke 9.12-17). Before he is crucified, he has a meal with his disciples in which he offers bread to interpret his coming crucifixion: Breaking the bread he says, "This is my body which is given for you" (Luke 22.19). And then the disciples recognize him after his resurrection by his hosting and breaking bread (Luke 24.30-31).
Second, when Jesus hosts he welcomes all. Jesus' "hosts" are constantly frustrated by who Jesus is willing to share their table with in the gospel accounts. Jesus welcomes prostitutes, tax collectors, and sinners to the table. As Marcus Borg memorably put it, Jesus' table fellowship reveals that holiness is more contagious than uncleanness (Conflict, Holiness, and Politics in the Teachings of Jesus, p. 147).
So, when Jesus breaks bread, it is to host and to share -- to transform our patterns of exclusion and alienation into hospitality and generosity. Consequently, in Jesus we see a pattern of breaking that is not a form of violence but rather of self-giving. And this is fulfilled and repeated in the practice of Communion. In Communion, Jesus offers his body and blood for the life of the Church, to form us into his one, holy, catholic, and apostolic body.
And though we often think of Communion as something we do, we find in the practice that once again Jesus takes over the role of host. We offer bread and cup -- the fruits and products of human labor -- only to find that it is actually Jesus who is offering them to us. We eat and drink his body and blood only to find that Jesus actually takes us into his body. So we also call communion "Eucharist" (from the Greek eucharisteo), which means "to give thanks" or "rejoice". We receive the bread and cup as an occasion for giving thanks for Christ's action of joining us to his body. When eating is transformed into an occasion for communal identification, receiving, and sharing, our destructive patterns of breaking are improvisationally transformed as the one who was broken for us gives without loss. In the Eucharist we learn to not be discriminating hosts, for the real host is Christ whose very welcoming is the gift of sanctification. We learn to not be ungrateful to the source of our food as we realize we are not creation's lords but its peers as recipients of divine favor.
So we learn that the renewal of good eating comes through the meal Christ offers his Church, but perhaps we still perceive the brokenness of our present economies. When Christ breaks bread for us, there is abundance beyond our myths of scarcity (Matthew 14.13-21, Mark 6.31-44, Luke 9.10-17 and John 6.5-15). Which brings us back to the question that concluded the second post: How do we remake our destructive breaking of creation so that we might share in Christ's breaking-as-sharing, his giving-as-abundance? How might we learn to offer ourselves back to the created other in love for creation? How might this be a form of abiding with creation as a way of returning our lives to God. In the next post, I hope to make some progress in thinking through these questions (though I by no means expect to resolve them).
____________________
The title of this blog is taken from Charles Wesley's Eucharistic hymn, "O the Depth of Love Divine".
It might sound odd to say that our eating is in need of reconciliation. But as I already argued in the last post, every act of eating is a form of sacrifice. We kill anything we eat. We, at least in America, don't think about this because our food comes to us pre-killed. And it's in such tidy packaging that it takes work to remember its original state -- i.e., what kind of animal or plant it once was and what form of life it enjoyed.
Now, this sacrifice of itself is not wholly bad. For God speaks of food as a a gift to humans and animals (Genesis 1.29). And yet it is hard to doubt that we now exploit and damage the animals, plants, and environments on which we rely for food.
Our eating practices have become destructive. Consider recent documentaries, like Food, Inc, that reveal horrific treatment of animals, genetic modification of plants and animals, and unsustainable economic practices. In America, our desire for more food at lower costs has led to the exploitation of the earth, farmers, and the global economy. Our "free market" has invaded other countries and subjected them to produce for our insatiable cravings with such low compensation that the locals cannot even afford to buy the food they formerly lived on.
Here are two more claims to explore the brokenness we experience and the reconciliation offered through Christ.
III.1 By participating in practices that destroy and exploit the sources of our food, we eclipse the sense of God's grace in our eating; consequently, our fellowship is compromised, between God, one another, and non-human creation.
The classic sin of eating is gluttony. We have so lost a sense of the connection between our eating practices and the good of those around us and the environment that we think of gluttony only in terms of individual physical health. Gluttony, in these terms, is eating more than is good for one's own body. No doubt this is not good.
And yet the Old Testament prophets are consistent, if not unanimous, in their condemnation of gluttony as a social sin. Gluttony is the sin of self-indulgence that disregards the good of those in need (Amos 6.4-7, 8.4-6). Ezekiel even charges that gluttony is the real sin of Sodom: "Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy" (Ezekiel 16.49).
When we recognize that our principal sin of eating is really a social sin -- a failure to share with others and care for the source of our food -- then it becomes clear how it breaks fellowship. Food is one of our primary ways of fellowship with other people and non-human creation. When our eating reinforces or fosters indifference to others, we fail to live into the fellowship God desires. And further, we thereby reject the very gift of God's own self to us through the gift of food.
Gluttony could easily be extended beyond its indifference to the needy other. In gluttony, we place our (insatiable) desires ahead of the rest of creation. That on which we depend for our food is turned into a mute object with no inherent value. And this is a double sin: it is a failure to acknowledge the inherent good of creation and it is to disregard what God delights in.
III.2 In Christ, God breaks bread for our sake as a gift of Christ's body and blood; in the Eucharist, we receive God's generosity and offer it to one another as God performs a fraction that results not in destruction but in sharing, so that we might learn to receive ourselves from and offer ourselves back to God.
As I have emphasized, in our eating we break things. This is a sacrificial breaking, in which the life of one thing is given up for the sake of another. Unfortunately, this sacrificial breaking often becomes destructive. However, in Christ we see a non-destructive form of breaking -- a breaking-as-sharing. There's no doubt that Jesus loves to eat. In fact, he practically eats his way through the Gospel according to St Luke. And how he eats is central to his ministry.
Two things characterize Jesus' table practices. First, while Jesus had no home of his own he almost always acts as the host at a table. So in Luke 14, Jesus initiates a topic of discussion and performs a healing in someone else's home, effectively assuming the role of host. And then in the feeding of five thousand, he takes the disciples’ bread, breaks it, and serves it in abundance of the need (Luke 9.12-17). Before he is crucified, he has a meal with his disciples in which he offers bread to interpret his coming crucifixion: Breaking the bread he says, "This is my body which is given for you" (Luke 22.19). And then the disciples recognize him after his resurrection by his hosting and breaking bread (Luke 24.30-31).
Second, when Jesus hosts he welcomes all. Jesus' "hosts" are constantly frustrated by who Jesus is willing to share their table with in the gospel accounts. Jesus welcomes prostitutes, tax collectors, and sinners to the table. As Marcus Borg memorably put it, Jesus' table fellowship reveals that holiness is more contagious than uncleanness (Conflict, Holiness, and Politics in the Teachings of Jesus, p. 147).
So, when Jesus breaks bread, it is to host and to share -- to transform our patterns of exclusion and alienation into hospitality and generosity. Consequently, in Jesus we see a pattern of breaking that is not a form of violence but rather of self-giving. And this is fulfilled and repeated in the practice of Communion. In Communion, Jesus offers his body and blood for the life of the Church, to form us into his one, holy, catholic, and apostolic body.
And though we often think of Communion as something we do, we find in the practice that once again Jesus takes over the role of host. We offer bread and cup -- the fruits and products of human labor -- only to find that it is actually Jesus who is offering them to us. We eat and drink his body and blood only to find that Jesus actually takes us into his body. So we also call communion "Eucharist" (from the Greek eucharisteo), which means "to give thanks" or "rejoice". We receive the bread and cup as an occasion for giving thanks for Christ's action of joining us to his body. When eating is transformed into an occasion for communal identification, receiving, and sharing, our destructive patterns of breaking are improvisationally transformed as the one who was broken for us gives without loss. In the Eucharist we learn to not be discriminating hosts, for the real host is Christ whose very welcoming is the gift of sanctification. We learn to not be ungrateful to the source of our food as we realize we are not creation's lords but its peers as recipients of divine favor.
So we learn that the renewal of good eating comes through the meal Christ offers his Church, but perhaps we still perceive the brokenness of our present economies. When Christ breaks bread for us, there is abundance beyond our myths of scarcity (Matthew 14.13-21, Mark 6.31-44, Luke 9.10-17 and John 6.5-15). Which brings us back to the question that concluded the second post: How do we remake our destructive breaking of creation so that we might share in Christ's breaking-as-sharing, his giving-as-abundance? How might we learn to offer ourselves back to the created other in love for creation? How might this be a form of abiding with creation as a way of returning our lives to God. In the next post, I hope to make some progress in thinking through these questions (though I by no means expect to resolve them).
____________________
The title of this blog is taken from Charles Wesley's Eucharistic hymn, "O the Depth of Love Divine".