Food
What’s so important about food?
Written by Mark Grapengater & Joshua Burdette
“Give us this day our daily bread.”
Matthew 6:11
“Food is a gift of God given to all creatures for the purpose of life’s nurture, sharing, and celebration. When it is done in the name of God, eating is the earthy realization of God’s eternal communion-building love.”
—Norman Wirzba, Faith and Food
We were born hungry. Each one of us entered this life crying out for food—for something to fill the emptiness in our bellies. Since that first meal of colostrum, we have relied on countless combinations of calories to quell the pangs of hunger. First there were mashed bananas and pureed pumpkin. Then came avocados and apples. Eventually our pallets expanded to include nearly everything under the sun.
Lamb biryani, raw tuna poke bowl, hamburgers with bacon and cheddar, almond croissants, smoked brisket, cacio e pepe, Ethiopian coffee, hummus and olive oil, shrimp paella, pad see ew, chana masala, single malt Scotch, lechon, skirt steak fajitas with guacamole, buttermilk fried chicken, lomo saltado, grilled venison, California pinot noir, pureed cauliflower, caramelized onions, apple pie, mango smoothies, falafel pita, mushroom risotto, dark chocolate, grilled cheese, home-churned peach ice cream, hazy pale ale, gumbo, butter chicken, bratwurst and sauerkraut, fresh baked bread dipped in dukkah, ripe blackberries, and a myriad of other mouthwatering, belly-filling, life-sustaining proofs of God’s love now grace our tables.
We know that we need food to live, but why is it so significant to our lives, families, and cultures?
In the Ancient myths, the mechanics of food production came from the gods, and the reason why is simple—the gods, like us, were hungry. In the Sumerian myth, the gods gave humanity the gifts of the Ewe (animal husbandry) and Wheat (domesticated agriculture) so that human slaves could feed them lamb and bread. In the Christian and Hebrew story, however, God was full. Full of life; full of love; full of the creative impulse to bless. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit created a world rife with foods for humanity to cultivate and enjoy simply for the delight they bring. From the beginning, God revealed himself as a Host who set the table with foods recognized for both their aesthetic and culinary value.
“And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.”
In those days, humanity received each meal as a gift of divine grace. Every ripe loquat plucked from the tree, every blood orange bursting with flavor was pronounced “good” both by the God who made it and the humans who put it to their teeth and ate. In this blessed giving and receiving, love was expressed. Eating was worship.
Now, if you know the story, you know that God’s love was also rejected through tasting and eating as well. Through that act of rebellion, food became both a blessing and a curse. Paradise was received and lost over a meal.
At the fall of humanity, the production and distribution of food was cursed along with the bodies that consume it, but food itself remained a divine gift to be given and received in love. It was a sign of God’s provision and presence in both the inhospitable wilderness and the land flowing with milk and honey. It came to both the righteous and the wicked.
In his book Faith and Food, Norma Wirzba put it this way:
“Food is a gift of God given to all creatures for the purpose of life’s nurture, sharing, and celebration. When it is done in the name of God, eating is the earthy realization of God’s eternal communion-building love.”
In other words, food is not just for fuel or pleasure, but faith. Throughout the story of the Bible, worship is eating. It is more than eating of course—it is also singing, sacrificing, praying, waiting, blessing, confessing—but worship without a meal would be incomplete. Eating is more than just incidental to worship in the Biblical story; it is essential. Eating with God in both the Old and New Testament is the consummation of all the cultic and liturgical practices. To put it more starkly: without food, there would be no worship. Famine is as much an ecclesial catastrophe as it is a physical one.
It comes as no surprise then, that when the eternal Host took on flesh and became human in the man Jesus of Nazareth, his life and ministry would center around a series of tables. The inaugural sign of his kingdom was to make a wedding party flow with fine wine in a time of scarcity. The finale to his ministry was meal with his disciples—a meal which ended when Jesus drank the bitter cup of God’s wrath in order to redeem this world from the curse. From beginning to end, the Son of Man ate and drank to the glory of God. Just try to imagine the gospels without the table scenes. It makes for a very different story.
Jesus didn’t just use food as a forum for ministry, he also taught us that our relationship to our food is a mark of our relationship to God. There is a Jesus way to eat. It’s right there in the prayer he taught us: give us this day our daily bread.
Why does God care how we eat?
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It is a curious thing for Jesus to say right in the middle of his instructions to his disciples on how to pray. He’s just instructed them to pray to their Father in heaven, for his name to be revered, and for God’s kingdom to manifest itself on earth as it is in heaven. And then, in a sweeping shift from the cosmic to the mundane, he says: ask God for food. It almost seems disconnected from the rest of the prayer, which talks about sin and temptation, evil and forgiveness. How does bread make it into this foundational prayer?
As we have reflected on why, this little phrase acts as a bridge between the high and lofty God in Heaven and the lowly man who needs, not first his sins forgiven, but bread. God offers so much to us in bread. It gives life and delight. It nourishes and comforts. The smell, touch, taste, sight, and, yes, even the sound of freshly-baked bread has the ability to delight us to our souls. Bread is the basic food of much of the world (rice in non-wheat centric parts of the world).
Our daily bread is certainly food, but it is also more than food. In fact, food itself is almost always more than food because preparing and eating meals is culture, which means it involves the way we relate to our broader community.
We celebrate with food. Holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, and vacations are all marked by special meals. Turkey equals Thanksgiving; ham equals Christmas and Easter, as does lamb; chocolate is Valentine’s Day; wings, pizza and beer is the Super Bowl; summer is the time for barbecue and grills (and yes, those are different food apparatus). For our anniversary, my wife and I (Mark) always make a reservation at a restaurant that has a prix fixe menu, and makes all the food choices for us. When our kids have a birthday, we ask them what they want to eat—it’s their special day!
But we also mourn with food. Often that same ice cream that was for a celebratory occasion becomes comfort in our grief. After our (Stacey and Mark’s) first miscarriage, we bought out Ben and Jerry’s at our local grocer. We load up on fat and sugar and carbohydrates at funerals because it’s so often easier than opening our mouths to express our sadness.
We define culture with food. Middle Eastern, Jewish, Pakistani; Italian, French, German, Irish; Mexican, Cuban, Costa Rican; Indian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese; Southern, Midwestern, Californian—and so many more—are particular cuisines that have been defined by centuries of eating in particular places. Their food is defined by whether they are located near the sea or land locked; whether they have endured wars or persecutions; whether they live in a food desert. Who we are as people becomes woven into what we eat.
But it’s not just the food that is important. It’s not just what we eat or how it got to our table or even how we eat that matters. It also matters who is included at our table; who we eat with is important to God. Jesus thought so. The Religious Leaders of the Jesus’ day thought so. It was a scandalous act to eat with the sort of people Jesus broke bread with. They had backstories, pasts, and rumors. But Jesus didn’t exclude them. He invited them to his table, or more often he invited himself to their tables. When most people thought the sin was contagious, Jesus knew that his righteousness was contagious. He used food, meals, and time spent around the table to spread his righteousness (and ultimately remove their sinfulness).
We still believe this today, even if we don’t profess it. We want to eat with important people. We want to be invited to the feasts. We want to sit at the cool table. We don’t often consider eating with those who have nothing to give us back. Yet, the gospel of Jesus Christ offers us another way. To see our daily bread as a gift from God requires us to share it freely with others, especially the hungry. Eating with people allows us to begin to get to know them, to hear their stories, to share ours with them, and they begin to become friends, sometimes even family, in sharing our table with them. Eating our daily bread with others is one of the most sacred and intimate acts we can do. Eating together is love.
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Remember, it was at a table, a meal of bread and wine, that Jesus showed his disciples what love and friendship looked like in action. He loved them—and not in some esoteric or internal way, but in real, costly actions like washing feet and giving his body and blood. He loved his friends to the end—the end of himself.
You could say that the Church itself was born that night around the table. The meal Christ instituted that night still nourishes pilgrims in grace, strengthening them for the journey to a future kingdom. That kingdom to come will be consummated by a banquet; a marriage feast. We imagine it now as a long table stretching from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth, with room for every tribe, nation, and tongue, and hopefully more than a few of their culinary offerings. If you do not see a real table with real food and real people, you may be in danger of making a metaphor out of the whole thing. Be assured, a table will be prepared; foods will be prepped, cooked, and plated for real, resurrected bodies to masticate and swallow with joy. Real glasses will be filled with real wine, and we will hold them high and raise a toast to the Host of the table, the Ancient of Days, the Slain Lamb, the Holy Breath of God. And we will worship God, with all the sounds and smells and sights of the table around us; with song and sup; with our voices as well as our forks and knives.
The story of this world began with a meal; so will the story of the next world. But we will not eat from a hunger that fears death as every meal here has been. On that day, our hunger will be filled and the curse will be no more. We will no longer cry out for someone to nourish us, but we will ask for daily bread with full confidence that we will receive a banquet. Until that day, every crumb we eat in this world and every table we set is a foretaste of the world to come.
Let us keep the feast!
