Food in the Bible: Matthew 12:1-8

Matthew 12:1-8 At that time Jesus went through the cornfields on the sabbath; his disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. When the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, ‘Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the sabbath.’ He said to them, ‘Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests. Or have you not read in the law that on the sabbath the priests in the temple break the sabbath and yet are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. But if you had known what this means, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice”, you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.’

Sabbath has been a pretty regular part of the conversation here about Food in the Bible. How do we read this passage in light of extending the sabbath to include the Sabbatical year (Deut 15) and Jubilee (Lev 25)? Or in light of the Sabbath being about remembering our place within the creation story?

I’ve read this passage in the past as another exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees (which it is) in which Jesus triumphs over those legalists showing them who’s boss. The sabbath is primarily about taking a day off and following the rules and Jesus is breaking the rules in order to show them how stupid their rules are. But this is not quite what’s happening is it?

Jesus is not getting rid of the sabbath. He’s reclaiming and redeeming it for its rightful purpose. He uses two examples from the Hebrew scripture (the only Bible around at the time) to show them that had missed the point of the sabbath. In fact, the disciples plucking heads of grain is reminiscent of the sabbatical command to allow the poor and wild animals to glean from the fields.

Jesus’ example of David taking the bread of the Presence when he was hungry reminds me of the way we treat the elements of communion. Denominations have different versions of the same thing. Basically the “bread” and “wine” are considered “holy” and off limits except during the particular ritual of the Eucharist. In some churches the bread and wine have to be finished off, poured down a particular drain or disposed of properly because of their sanctity.

In light of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 11 about divisions at the agape meal and his warning about taking communion unworthily which follows, he seems to imply that taking Eucharist unworthily means not sharing your food with the hungry. If that is the case then every time the elements (especially if it’s a loaf of real bread) are disposed of or gorged on by someone in order to fulfill the letter of some traditional ritual, we may be partaking unworthily of the Lord’s Supper. (further discussion will be shelved until we get to 1 Corinthians sometime in 2050).

Finally, Jesus reorients the understanding of sabbath by putting the commandments in light of God’s desire for “mercy and not sacrifice.” This is a helpful guiding principle for following Jesus and interpreting the Bible. If mercy is not the driving force and guiding principle then we will end up with empty legalism and broken relationships. Jesus identifies himself as “lord of the sabbath,” meaning not only over the particular command to rest on the sabbath day, but also over the command to let fields rest, to free slaves and return land, in essence over the equality and justice of the created order as God intended.

The Last Supper

I wrote my first farm song this weekend. In other words the first song that I’ve written at the farm, but also the first song about all that I’m learning at the farm. Here’s the lyrics. Perhaps a rough cut will follow soon.

I went to church and I ate a meal
To keep me safe it was hermetically sealed
I ate a meal and I was all alone
I ate a meal over the telephone

Stuck my hands in the earth
And i was born again

I ate a meal while I was watching TV
No one was even sitting next to me
I ate a meal while I was driving my car
One day I realized it had gone too far

Stuck my hands in the earth
And i was born again

I ate a meal that I grew myself
I ate a meal that gave me new birth
I ate a meal and I was justified
I ate a meal and I didn’t lie

Stuck my hands in the earth
And i was born again

Transforming the Body

“We are transforming the body of the world into our bodies and minds.” Michael Pollan The Omnivore’s Dilemma

“God is not a vending machine” (seen on a church sign in Lampasas, TX)

I saw/heard both of these quotes on a trip a while back and they’ve been hanging out in my brain since then. Pollan has perhaps given us the most succinct of eucharistic theologies in this little statement, and the church sign unpacks it through a cultural phenomenon in relation to our food.

In the process of eating, we take in the body of the world, the dirt, water, air and sun contributing to grow plants, some of which are eaten by animals. In turn we consume the plants and animals to nourish our bodies. We are at the top of the food chain so the cycle ends with us. There is no one to benefit from our consumption. Because we are at the top it is our natural obligation to give back in order to keep the thing going.

The Eucharist is a sacred ritual in which we take the body and blood of Christ into ourselves in order that we might be transformed into his likeness. The form that this ritual takes is a meal of bread and wine. These are the products of grain and fruit (Notice that the Eucharist is vegetarian. Probably only for practical reasons, but nonetheless, interesting). The consumption of Christ is also a consumption of the body of the world. The incarnation seems to insure this. Consuming the body and blood connects us to the earth and each other. How could we make this sacred ritual mean this again?

One way, I think, is to use real bread and real wine. While I would never limit the Spirit to a particular form of Eucharist, I do think that the act of making bread and wine, or whatever the elements are, connects us to the ritual and its meaning in a powerful way. If we use wafers or hermetically sealed cups, then we should include in our prayer all of the lives and materials that it took to produce that convenient meal.

The idea of the all-in-one hermetically sealed communion package brings us to the idea that “God is not a vending machine.” The necessity of this sign indicates that some people treat God as a vending machine, a deity who dispenses blessing and spiritual wisdom on command. Doesn’t it also signify a connection between our consumer lifestyles and our notion of God. Could it be that the way we live our lives impacts our theology? The reduction of communion to a consumer activity in which the elements of the ritual are essentially expendable indicates something about our understanding of the God behind this ritual.

If we understood what we did both when we eat and when we commune, we would think twice about many of the ways we partake of meals and the Lord’s Supper.

Already questions and objections are entering my mind, but I want to let you voice them. What are your thoughts? Should Eucharist be SOLE (Sustainable Organic Local Ethical)? What about contextualization? What is appropriate for communion in various cultures including ours? Where do you draw lines?

The Swine Flu Given For You

This story is the perfect convergence of theology, food issues and what I believe to be the center of a theology of food – Eucharist. This blurb from Soulpancake sums up the story.

It looks like a handful of Catholic churches across the country are changing their sacred practices in reaction to the swine flu (pardon me… H1N1) outbreak. A Beliefnet story indicates that hundreds of churches in Mexico have temporarily closed. Meanwhile, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is encouraging priests to wash their hands with anti-bacterial soap before Mass. Many churches are taking it a step further: In Austin, Texas, Catholic churches are being encouraged to dispose of holy water at church entrances and suspend Communion. Similar advice is being offered in Chicago and Green Bay, Wis. Now, the country’s largest Catholic high school—St. Francis Prep in Manhattan—has also shut down in light of swine flu outbreaks. I’ve always thought it a little unsanitary to share a gilded cup with thousands of other people. Maybe this outbreak—and the rapidity with which many diseases are spread today—will cause us to rethink communal religious practices.

Okay, I completely understand the health concerns. I respect those issues and take them very seriously. (Even though I’ve admitted I don’t believe in germs and I’m a fan of the common cup. I want to be able to drink deeply at communion and I mean that.) However, I think this is actually a symptom of something deeper that is going on.

First, it points to the continued depersonalization and fragmentation of our communities. Part of what makes us so afraid of things like the swine flu is our lack of community. We don’t know our neighbors and fellow congregants. Fear breeds and grows in a petri dish of the unknown. This doesn’t mean that just by knowing each other better we will prevent disease, but it does mean that we would react differently.

Historically, faithful Christians have often been the ones to care for those ravaged by disease and plague. Rodney Stark claims that this is an essential element of what precipitated the growth of Christianity prior to Constantine. When we embody our doctrines in acts of compassion and mercy the kingdom becomes flesh and blood. What would this mean right now for the swine flu (or future outbreaks or the financial crisis)?

Second, this outbreak has been connected over and over again to the conditions created by factory farms. It is true that there has not been an actual link established yet, but it is clear that the conditions for swine flu to develop come from our industrial food system (New Scientist).

In this sense the food system has now infected the Eucharist. Our insanity in food production has made its way into the church’s central act of worship. We should certainly care for our members and take precautions. We should also be outraged that our disconnection from each other and our food has now infected our spiritual practices.

How could we practice Eucharist in a way that would protest this system and stand against the problems that it is creating? I don’t know. I’m really asking, because I think this is what the Eucharist should be.

Scarcity and Abundance

The final short chapter of Being Consumed concerns our most basic assumptions about how the world and economics functions. Free market capitalism assumes scarcity. This is the basis of all economic theories and understanding. Supply and demand is based on the idea that there is a scarcoty of one or the other.

God’s economy on the other hand is based on the idea of abundance (Mt 6:25-34). Cavanaugh again turns to the Eucharist as source of abundance. Paradoxically the abundance of this meal begins in the kenosis, or emptying, of Christ, the divine into human form (Philippians 2:6-11).

The act of consumption of the Eucharist does not entail the appropriation of goods for private use, but rather being assimilated to a public body, the Body of Christ. As Augustine reminds us, God is the food that consumes us” (95)

This meal unites us into one universal community and also creates a sort of nervous system in which the pain of others is communicated throughout the body. In Jesus’ parable of the sheep and goats Jesus identifies himself with the poor and hungry. “For I was hungry and you gave me food” (Matthew 25:35). The market claims that it will gradually produce abundance through trade and capitalism, though it never seems to arrive. The Eucharist announces the in-breaking of the abundance of the kingdom into the present.

Cavanaugh uses the example of The Economy of Communion Project to illustrate abundant economic life in concrete terms. The profits from these business are divided into three equal parts: direct aid to the poor, education projects that further a culture of communion, and a third for development of the business (99). One participant said this:

It is not merely a question of reaching the right persons and giving priority to the most urgent needs… It also involves making sure that the assistance be part of a fraternal rapport that does not tolerate positions of inferiority and superiority because it sees the other person as “another me,” as a brother, and this is possible due to the fact that we are dealing with persons who know how to share (99-100)

This is what it means to embody an alternative to the world’s order, to base the ordering of our lives on the assumption of abundance rather than scarcity.