Read part 3 here.
God shares God's life with us. This is the gospel -- that despite our self-destructive and creation destroying practices God effects union with us in Christ. Our union with God is our being received into the triune fellowship, so that we are transformed from glory to glory, being made holy by God's holy love.
In the last three posts, I've been exploring how God communicates God's life to us in our eating. This has been a tumultuous exercise, as the good and the bad of our eating have oscillated before our vision. Throughout all three posts, our hazardous eating practices began to look very bleak as we see that this means of grace, this provision of God's life for us, is abused and misappropriated. Yet even in our eating God has effected union with us through Christ by inviting us to the table of his broken body and spilt blood. God disrupts our gluttonous devouring by introducing a new economy of abundance in the Eucharistic breaking-as-sharing.
This is good news for us because it allows us to receive God's life through the gift of food. Yet the biblical witness is clear that the final goal of redemption will include the renewal of all things (Revelation 21) and not only us humans. And in the Church, we have received the Spirit of resurrection -- the Spirit of new creation -- and therefore anticipate the final restoration of all things (Romans 8.11; 2 Corinthians 5.17-21). How then do we enact presently the fellowship with all creation that will characterize the new creation? How do we love -- abide with -- non-human creation, the creation on which we depend for our food and sustenance?
I will explore this through two biblical images, Sabbath rest and the eschatological banquet.
IV.1 In the fellowship of the Spirit -- who is the perfecter of creation -- the Church anticipates the final Sabbath rest; and in this Sabbath rest the Church learns to grant rest to non-human creation and to abide with all creation in the gift of Jubilee.
Sabbath is a dominant theme in Christian Scripture, especially the Old Testament. From the first pages onward, Sabbath rest is a sign of God’s indwelling of creation and of the eschatological completion of all things. In the Genesis 1 account, God creates humanity and the other land creatures on the sixth day, appraises the whole as “very good,” and then rests (Genesis 2.1-3; it's now commonly recognized that 2.1-4 is of one literary unit with chapter 1, so that 1.1-2.4 comprise the first account of creation and 2.5-25 form the second).
As John Walton has convincingly argued, the account in Genesis 1 uses temple language (The Lost World of Genesis One). This conveys the sense that God is creating a great cosmic temple, within which God will dwell -- a theme that finds fulfillment in the tabernacling of the Word in Jesus Christ (John 1). Sabbath, then, is resting in fellowship with God. The Israelites were told to honor the Sabbath and keep it holy, because by so doing they inhabited creation as God's cosmic temple.
In Leviticus 25, this Sabbath practice is expanded. Every 7 years there is to be a Sabbath year, in which the land is also allowed to rest. God tells the people that they are to live only on what the land naturally produces (Leviticus 25.6). This is a sign that God's creative temple-making includes all creation -- God desires to dwell in all the universe, and consequently God desires that we abide with the whole creation in love.
We can practice this Sabbath rest in simple ways by finding opportunities to allow the land to rest. This will necessarily vary depending on context, but even simple acts can stir our memory to remind us that the universe is God's dwelling place, a not-yet-completed temple in which the fullness of God will dwell. Further, we can give back to creation through simple acts like composting. Rather than wasting our leftover organic material, we can use it to enrich the earth around us. In so doing, we are anticipating the day when creation is renewed and all creatures mutually share in God's triune fellowship.
IV.2 In the Eschaton we will be received into the Great Banquet, the Triune God's festal life; in this final banquet our eating will be transformed so that predators and prey abide together and all creation shares in the mutual love of God.
There is another biblical image that seems a fitting conclusion to this exploration in the theology of food: The final Great Banquet. The banquet is a common eschatological theme in both the Old and New Testaments, including scenes like the three messengers dining with Abraham (Genesis 18), times of feasts (i.e., Leviticus 23), the return of the prodigal son (Luke 15), the two eschatological parables of the banquet (Matthew 22 and Luke 14), and the wedding banquet in which Jesus turns water to wine (John 2).
As I discussed in the last post, when Jesus is at a meal he inevitably becomes the host. This is what is so remarkable about Jesus' first public act in the Gospel of John. He is at a wedding when the wine runs out. His mother turns to him to help — though we have no reason to think it is Jesus’ problem. And yet, Jesus assumes the role of host by providing enough wine that the festivities can proceed — in style — on into the night. As with all Jesus’ signs and wonders, this is an act in which Jesus shares the triune life with those around. He grants the life of God, God’s festal life, to all. Because the triune life is like a wedding banquet, in which the Father and Son are united in their mutual love as the Spirit joins them and celebrates this union.
The vision that we receive of the End of all creation, then, is of all things being drawn up in the dynamic wind of the Spirit to share as witnesses and celebrants of the union of Father and Son. We are drawn into the final banquet of God's own wedding feast! In this banquet we receive the food of God's celebration as a gift of union and grace, a gift worth sharing and celebrating in its own right.
In anticipating this final reality -- the banquet we will share in God's festal life -- we turn to our fellow creation with fresh eyes. We see it not as mute, fungible "stuff" but as saturated with God's glory and holiness, signs of the great feast we await. It's no wonder that Christians have throughout history painted cornucopias and lavish table spreads. Painting "still life" is to view non-human creation as valuable and suffused with meaning and beauty. By painting it, we take time to attend to its unique actuality.
But our appreciation is not reducible to a set of actions, for to love is to enjoy a state-of-being of abiding with the other. Learning to love non-human creation is a way of being with and seeing this world in which we live, to recognize it as the site of God’s good creation and the temple of God's dwelling, and to anticipate its final consummation in the great banquet of God's festal life.
______________________
The title of this blog is taken from Charles Wesley's Eucharistic hymn, "O the Depth of Love Divine".
God shares God's life with us. This is the gospel -- that despite our self-destructive and creation destroying practices God effects union with us in Christ. Our union with God is our being received into the triune fellowship, so that we are transformed from glory to glory, being made holy by God's holy love.
In the last three posts, I've been exploring how God communicates God's life to us in our eating. This has been a tumultuous exercise, as the good and the bad of our eating have oscillated before our vision. Throughout all three posts, our hazardous eating practices began to look very bleak as we see that this means of grace, this provision of God's life for us, is abused and misappropriated. Yet even in our eating God has effected union with us through Christ by inviting us to the table of his broken body and spilt blood. God disrupts our gluttonous devouring by introducing a new economy of abundance in the Eucharistic breaking-as-sharing.
This is good news for us because it allows us to receive God's life through the gift of food. Yet the biblical witness is clear that the final goal of redemption will include the renewal of all things (Revelation 21) and not only us humans. And in the Church, we have received the Spirit of resurrection -- the Spirit of new creation -- and therefore anticipate the final restoration of all things (Romans 8.11; 2 Corinthians 5.17-21). How then do we enact presently the fellowship with all creation that will characterize the new creation? How do we love -- abide with -- non-human creation, the creation on which we depend for our food and sustenance?
I will explore this through two biblical images, Sabbath rest and the eschatological banquet.
IV.1 In the fellowship of the Spirit -- who is the perfecter of creation -- the Church anticipates the final Sabbath rest; and in this Sabbath rest the Church learns to grant rest to non-human creation and to abide with all creation in the gift of Jubilee.
Sabbath is a dominant theme in Christian Scripture, especially the Old Testament. From the first pages onward, Sabbath rest is a sign of God’s indwelling of creation and of the eschatological completion of all things. In the Genesis 1 account, God creates humanity and the other land creatures on the sixth day, appraises the whole as “very good,” and then rests (Genesis 2.1-3; it's now commonly recognized that 2.1-4 is of one literary unit with chapter 1, so that 1.1-2.4 comprise the first account of creation and 2.5-25 form the second).
As John Walton has convincingly argued, the account in Genesis 1 uses temple language (The Lost World of Genesis One). This conveys the sense that God is creating a great cosmic temple, within which God will dwell -- a theme that finds fulfillment in the tabernacling of the Word in Jesus Christ (John 1). Sabbath, then, is resting in fellowship with God. The Israelites were told to honor the Sabbath and keep it holy, because by so doing they inhabited creation as God's cosmic temple.
In Leviticus 25, this Sabbath practice is expanded. Every 7 years there is to be a Sabbath year, in which the land is also allowed to rest. God tells the people that they are to live only on what the land naturally produces (Leviticus 25.6). This is a sign that God's creative temple-making includes all creation -- God desires to dwell in all the universe, and consequently God desires that we abide with the whole creation in love.
We can practice this Sabbath rest in simple ways by finding opportunities to allow the land to rest. This will necessarily vary depending on context, but even simple acts can stir our memory to remind us that the universe is God's dwelling place, a not-yet-completed temple in which the fullness of God will dwell. Further, we can give back to creation through simple acts like composting. Rather than wasting our leftover organic material, we can use it to enrich the earth around us. In so doing, we are anticipating the day when creation is renewed and all creatures mutually share in God's triune fellowship.
IV.2 In the Eschaton we will be received into the Great Banquet, the Triune God's festal life; in this final banquet our eating will be transformed so that predators and prey abide together and all creation shares in the mutual love of God.
There is another biblical image that seems a fitting conclusion to this exploration in the theology of food: The final Great Banquet. The banquet is a common eschatological theme in both the Old and New Testaments, including scenes like the three messengers dining with Abraham (Genesis 18), times of feasts (i.e., Leviticus 23), the return of the prodigal son (Luke 15), the two eschatological parables of the banquet (Matthew 22 and Luke 14), and the wedding banquet in which Jesus turns water to wine (John 2).
As I discussed in the last post, when Jesus is at a meal he inevitably becomes the host. This is what is so remarkable about Jesus' first public act in the Gospel of John. He is at a wedding when the wine runs out. His mother turns to him to help — though we have no reason to think it is Jesus’ problem. And yet, Jesus assumes the role of host by providing enough wine that the festivities can proceed — in style — on into the night. As with all Jesus’ signs and wonders, this is an act in which Jesus shares the triune life with those around. He grants the life of God, God’s festal life, to all. Because the triune life is like a wedding banquet, in which the Father and Son are united in their mutual love as the Spirit joins them and celebrates this union.
The vision that we receive of the End of all creation, then, is of all things being drawn up in the dynamic wind of the Spirit to share as witnesses and celebrants of the union of Father and Son. We are drawn into the final banquet of God's own wedding feast! In this banquet we receive the food of God's celebration as a gift of union and grace, a gift worth sharing and celebrating in its own right.
In anticipating this final reality -- the banquet we will share in God's festal life -- we turn to our fellow creation with fresh eyes. We see it not as mute, fungible "stuff" but as saturated with God's glory and holiness, signs of the great feast we await. It's no wonder that Christians have throughout history painted cornucopias and lavish table spreads. Painting "still life" is to view non-human creation as valuable and suffused with meaning and beauty. By painting it, we take time to attend to its unique actuality.
But our appreciation is not reducible to a set of actions, for to love is to enjoy a state-of-being of abiding with the other. Learning to love non-human creation is a way of being with and seeing this world in which we live, to recognize it as the site of God’s good creation and the temple of God's dwelling, and to anticipate its final consummation in the great banquet of God's festal life.
______________________
The title of this blog is taken from Charles Wesley's Eucharistic hymn, "O the Depth of Love Divine".