For over sixty years M.F. K Fisher wrote about food, cooking and eating as human and cultural metaphors. She published fifteen books and many essays. One of her stories appeared in her book, The art of eating, in which she remembered a dinner shared with her father and younger sister that even 25 years later was seen as one of her favorite meals.
“We sat on a rough bench at the table, the three of us in the deep green twilight, and had one of the nicest suppers I have ever eaten…Father says that all his nervousness went away, and he saw us for the first time as two little brown humans who were fun. Anne and I both felt a subtle excitement at being alone for the first time with the only man in the world we loved…
That night I not only saw my Father for the first time as a person…I saw food as something beautiful to be shared with people instead of as a thrice-daily necessity…
I forget what we ate, except for the end of the meal. It was a big round peach pie, still warm from Old Aunt Mary’s oven…It was deep, with lots of juice, and bursting with ripe peaches picked that noon. The crust was the most perfect I have ever tasted.
And there was a quart Mason jar, the old-fashioned bluish kind, full of cream…And we ate the whole pie, and all the cream…and then drove sleepily toward Los Angeles, and none of us said anything about it for many years, but it was one of the best meals we ever ate.
Perhaps that is because it was the first conscious one, for me at least, but the fact that we all remember it with such clarity must mean that it had other reasons for being important. I suppose that happens at least once to every human. I hope so.”[1]
This meal describes a moment when around a table filled with food, a time of communion took place. A time when the people gathered were offered gifts that they received, shared, and were thankful. Eating joins people to each other, to other creatures and the world, and to God through forms of “natural communion.” It introduces us to the grace of hospitality. It establishes a membership that confirms that all creatures are profoundly in need of each other and dependent upon God to provide life’s nutrition and vitality.
In our reading this morning from Mark’s Gospel, Jesus comes home to Nazareth. He has been followed by large crowds who press in on him to hear him preach and receive his healing touch. But here in Nazareth, when Jesus sits to teach in the synagogue, his hometown folks speak against him. They ask, “Where did this guy get all of this? Isn’t he a laborer Tektōn? Isn’t he Mary’s boy?”
So here where Jesus should have a hometown advantage from those who have seen him grow up and knows his family, rather faces rejection. But Jesus in an act that young people may recognize, “brushes” off his rejection or in a custom familiar in ancient Israel, he shakes the dust from his feet as a testimony against their faithlessness and a separation from their rejection. He heals “a few sick people” and is “amazed at his kinsmen unbelief.”
And then he continues his ministry. He sends his followers, “the twelve” out, two by two, to heal and to teach. They are sent out with very little for their journey. They are to take nothing except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money. They are only to wear sandals and one tunic—nothing extra. They are to travel simply depending totally on God and on the hospitality of those they will meet on their journey—hodos literally “for the way.” These disciples will depend for their lives, their safety, and their ability to share the word of God on others. Hospitality then becomes central to our faith.
In Mark the word hodos also means “the way of discipleship” so these instruction are not only intended for traveling, but also to symbolize the demands of discipleship. To go out, offering ourselves, receiving in gratitude the hospitality of others, living simply and trusting in God alone.
This is the time of year when hospitality rises to a high pitch. And at the center of hospitality is the sharing of food. No gathering is quite complete without food. It may be light fare or it may involve great varieties and large quantities served in an exquisite manner—but being together is blessed when food is present.
And aren’t we blessed with bounty this time of the year? Taft Farm and other local farms are filled to overflowing with fresh fruits and vegetables just picked from the garden.Local farm stands can be found on almost every road where people put their produce out for sale and an honest box is nearby for people to leave their payment. Those of you who garden are working feverishly to stay ahead of the ripening lettuce and kale. And more is yet to come.
Visitors tend to come now. Families and friends arrive from far away and close at hand to spend time with you and visit the beautiful Berkshires. And food is always a vital factor. Planning and gathering and preparing food takes up much of our time as we seek to offer our love and our welcome through heaping plates of delicious morsels.
And food is a central part of our life together at Grace Church. Every Sunday morning generous members of our community prepare and present food for us to share together as we reconnect with one another, hearing stories of the past week and plans for the future.
When I arrived last fall, you were offering dinners where people in the community could come and share good things being done and invite all to participate. Two weeks ago several members of our church traveled to Springfield to worship with and offer a meal to people whose only food that day may have come from our bounty. Every week we offer food to people who are hungry through our pantries in Lee and Great Barrington and you generously share through your contributions each Sunday. And in two weeks from today on July 19, we will gather near our Gideon’s Garden to worship and then have a picnic together, celebrating the goodness God has given us to share with others.
Food is something that is essential to our lives. It is necessary for us to live, it is a powerful symbol of community, and it is a holy and humbling mystery. For it draws us into the reality that we and all of creation are interconnected in a vast web of mutuality.
When we pause in our planning, gathering, preparing, and consuming we recognize that every time we eat, we participate in God’s life-giving, yet sacrificial ways, ways that simultaneously affirm creation as a delicious gift, and as a divinely ordered membership of interdependent need and suffering and help. Whenever we gather for a meal, we establish that we are not independent self-sustaining divine beings. We must eat to live and so we are dependent on God’s many good gifts: sunlight, photosynthesis, fertile soil, bees, chickens, cows, gardeners, farmers, cooks, strangers, friends. Eating reminds us that we live in a grace-saturated world—a blessed creation worthy of attention, care and celebration.
And despite advertisers attractive adds—there is really no such thing as “cheap” or “convenient” food. Real food, the food that is the source of all creature’s health and delight, is precious because it is a fundamental means through which God’s love and nurture for the whole creation is expressed.
To eat is to be a part of a vast, complex, interweaving set of life and death drama of which we are only one character among many. Food is about the relationships that join us to the earth, fellow creatures, loved ones, guests, and ultimately God. How we eat testifies to whether we value God’s creation and all living creatures that we depend upon. To eat is to savor and struggle with the mystery of creatureliness. When we eat mindfully we celebrate the goodness of fields, gardens, forests and waterways, and the skill of those who can nurture seed and animal life into the food that sustains us. We acknowledge God as the giver of every good and perfect gift. As Wendell Berry says, “To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of Creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it is a desecration. In such desecration we condemn ourselves to spiritual and moral loneliness, and others to want.”[2]
A thoughtful relation to food makes possible the discovery that eating is among the most intimate and pleasing ways possible for us to enter into the memberships of creation and find there the God who daily blesses and feeds life.
To receive food as a gift and as a declaration of God’s love and joy is to receive food in a theological manner. It transforms the way we eat. While it is true that we eat to live, eating with God in our hearts and minds means that we eat to share and nurture life. Eating, in other words, is an invitation to enter into communion and be reconciled with each other. To eat with God at the table is to eat with the aim of healing and celebrating the membership in God’s creation.
And when we eat in this way we guard against idolatry, we move away from magnifying and promoting human power.The goal of food is not to worship food or ourselves. Our call is to avoid turning food into simply our exclusive possession or the way we demonstrate our power. We must recover the sense that food is a gift to be gratefully received and generously shared.
It is helpful to place eating within the practice of a spiritual practice. The purpose of people who gather for a meal is not simply to throw food into our bodies. Eating should regularly be an opportunity for people to learn to be more attentive and present to the world and the people around them.
Eating demonstrates that we cannot live alone. Growing food reminds us that we do not create life. Food connects us to the memberships of creation and to God. Thoughtful eating reminds us that there is no human fellowship without a kitchen, no kitchen without a garden, no garden without viable ecosystems, no ecosystems without the forces productive of life, and no life without its source in God.
When our eating becomes sacramental, we have the opportunity to turn membership into communion. God calls creatures made in the image of God to be hospitable, to participate in Christ’s reconciling ways with the world, to eat with justice and mercy, and in doing so participate in the divine hospitality that first brought creation into being and daily sustains it.
And so as we enter into this time of plenty, we will spend time reflecting on the connection of the food we need to live and offer in hospitality to others and our faith. I have invited into our community a local farmer, Annalise Clausen, who will share her story of how her work nurtures the earth that nurtures us all, and an activist and religious leader, The Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, the Missioner for Creation Care whose ministry is to challenge us to pay attention as we consume the gifts of creation—to call us to reverence in the presence of all that gives us life.
The idea of changing the world so that it can sustain us, our neighbors, and the children and grandchildren of all God’s people is a massive topic. So let us begin with something that touches each of us intimately—food. Let us see this precious gift for what it is—a grace saturated gift that sustains life and offers love and beauty, connecting us with all that lives in a mutual circle of life and sacrifice. And then, depending completely on God, we can go out to share what we have learned—what we have experienced and have practiced— into the world rejoicing in the power of Christ.
[1] M.F.K. Fisher. “A thing shared,” The art of eating. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004, 356.
[2] Wendell Berry. “The gift of good land,” in The gift of good land: Further essays cultural and agricultural. New York: North Point Press, 1981, 281.