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The well-known text from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (chapt.11) tells of how early Jesus followers, in their meeting together, came to understand that in consuming everyday food (wine and bread) Jesus’ life was continuing to abide in and among them. They shared and ate his presence.

Later New Testament authors would weave this understanding’s origin into the stories surrounding his death. What we now know of as the Last Supper is incorporated into the Passion Narrative of Easter week. So, Jesus himself was given credit for instigating this idea of eating and drinking his life and presence on the eve of his death. His farewell gift if you like.

Hal Taussig, in his seminal book, In the Beginning was the Meal, details how Jesus groups met and ate together in the years following Jesus’ death. Hal posits that it was from being together and eating together over a lengthy but simple meal that the tradition of what we call Communion grew. In plain speak: his disciples created the bread and wine ritual, not Jesus.

The author and mystic who wrote the 4^th Gospel, writing maybe 60 years after Paul, creatively expanded that tradition with a lengthy meditation on Jesus being the ‘bread of life’. He linked the bread called Jesus with the manna bread, from the Moses saga, that miraculously appeared and sustained the Israelites in the wilderness.

It is also in the 4^th Gospel where the title ‘I Am’ is used in relationto Jesus. ‘I Am’ is a reference to YHWH, the Jewish name for God. It is this 4^thGospel that reflects the emerging divinisation of Jesus that will find its full voice in the Nicene and later creeds. So, for this Gospel, eating the ‘bread of life’ is in effect eating God.

The Jesuit Anthony De Mello tells a story:

God decided to visit the earth so sent an angel to survey the situation prior to God’s arrival. The angel returned with her report: ‘Most of them lack food,’ she said, ‘and most of them lack employment.’ God said, ‘Then I shall become incarnate in the form of food for the hungry and work for the unemployed.[i]

DeMello suggests that God’s life and presence is experienced in the meeting of human needs, especially the needs of the poor, hungry, and vulnerable. And rather than God being the acts of food providers or employers, the suggestionis that God is that which literally satiates the need.

I remember reading years ago a meditation by James K. Baxter of watching a priest at Kopua monastery break the eucharistic bread. As a Catholic he heard the liturgical words, adapted from 1 Corinthians 11, as literally eating Jesus, but he also heard the challenge for us (vessels of God) to allow ourselves to likewise be eaten, to be consumed by the needs of the world.

Most of us I suspect follow the Swiss Reformed theologian Zwingli in his understanding of eating and drinking Jesus as being symbolic, rather than literal. The bread and wine (or juice) symbolize Jesus’ life and presence,rather than is some sort of metaphysical magic. And similarly ‘Jesus the bread of life’ as a symbol points to things like the extraordinariness of the ordinary, the ready availability of the numinous, and the importance of physical as well as spiritual sustenance. Or put more simply: God is all around, even in what we eat, here for all, here to sustain life.

And, following Baxter, as Christians, Christ-bearers, we bear witness to the presence and life of God, and we too, like bread, are here for all, here to sustain life.

So, we don’t erect checkpoints to allow some to have communion and others not. And we don’t make wars that kill people, livelihoods, livestock, and land. And we don’t regulate world trade to privilege the powerful and people who look like us. And we don’t make cheap edible junk to slowly poison the health of children and the poor.

You see, if we take this cluster of ideas seriously – that God is bread of life,Jesus is bread of life, and we (followers of God and Jesus) are bread of life –then there are ethical, social, and political consequences.

And the Last Supper tradition of eating bread and wine becomes so much more than a debate about what ‘this is my body... this is my blood’ might mean.

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Here’s another De Mello:

A farmer whose corn always took the first prize at the state fair had the habit of sharing her best corn seed with all the farmers in the neighbourhood. When asked why, she said, “It is really a matter of self-interest. The wind picks up the pollen and carries it from field to field. So if my neighbours grow inferior corn, the cross-pollination brings down the quality of my own corn.This is why I am concerned that they only plant the very best.[ii]

This parable encourages the listener away from the normative ideas of competition, market edge, etc., into considering what might be good for all, all consumers.

It’s also a story about food quality. The farmer wants all corn, no matter who grows it, to be of the finest quality.

Which takes us into the danger zone. For like a previous era’s nervousness in about talking sex, talking about what is healthy to eat (and by inference or intent what’s unhealthy) can be today a fraught subject, with opinions strongly held,and in the background vulnerability about body image (in our image-conscious and image manipulated world).

Yet religion and faith have often been, and still are in many places, closely aligned regarding how, when, and what we eat. Think Ramadan. Think Lent. Think Buddhism and vegetarianism. Think Halal and Kosher. Think fish on Fridays.

I remember being on a silent retreat years ago at a monastery. The retreat conductor, a wise old monk, suggested that when we gathered for our silent meal in the refectory that we eat slowly, being aware of the source, the smell, the taste and texture of the food. What nowadays could be called being mindful.This slow eating has long been a Christian form of prayer. It’s also good for our bodies digestive processes and appetite control.

One of the few disciplines around Christian faith and food that in many places endures is that of saying Grace. Grace is fundamentally a pause. A space into which we pour gratitude. A pause that holds back for a few moments desire or hunger, and a pause that holds back pressing time demands that we eat, get up,and go. A pause where we deliberately stop the clocks to realize the Sacred present.

As an aside, I do this at weddings. After the excited gather and be seated, after the grand fanfare entrance and the joyous welcome, I stop everything with a ‘let us pray’ and leave a silent pause. A pause for holiness, for something more than the apparent.

But faith with food is more than just how we eat; it can also include when we eat. Fasting has long been a spiritual discipline. A sort of exercise where one restrains the desires the body in order to focus the mind. So the purpose of a Lenten fast was not to lose weight, or cut back on expensive foods, but to focus the mind on God. I suspect Ramadan is similar.

And, like eating slowly, nowadays dietary scientists have discovered in fasting (and in intermittent fasting) significant benefits for our physical health, not so much in reducing calories but in what it does to the cells in our bodies.[iii]

Lastly religions also venture into that more contentious area of what we eat.  What food is godly, and what food isn’t?

Personally, I like bread. Heavier, seedier, the better. And so, with some coaching, I’ve learnt to bake bread, particularly recipes that specialize in complex rather than simple carbohydrates.

Fun fact: there’s a recipe for bread in the book of Ezekiel (4:9) “And you, take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt; put them into one vessel, and make bread for yourself.” The inclusion of legumes (read: protein) makes it seem quite contemporary.

And, you probably guessed it, Ezekiel bread has become ‘a thing’ in some Christian circles. I looked up the recipes. They’ve added water, olive oil, and honey. And some have sprouted the grains. Whatever. I’m pretty sure though that Ezekiel didn’t have an electric or gas oven. (Indeed you might want to careful how much read of the chapter, for when it comes to what he cooked it on…)

Let’s return to my question: what is godly food?

One of the myths of Western post-Christian culture is that we can eat whatever we like. And so we have.

And unlike in the past, when the wealthier got better food and had better health,today the relative wealth of the western world is not preventing us eating ourselves to ill-health and death. While we might scoff at the Americans (the most obvious example of wealth eating itself to ill-health and death), we are not far behind. Our obesity rates for children aged 2-14 years are currently around 13%, up from 9.5% in 2020. So that’s 1 in 8 children.

In part, it is our myths that are killing us. Myths like you can eat anything you want,but in moderation. Read: there is no such thing as bad food. Myths like what you eat is an individual choice, or a parental choice. Read: if you’re obese it’s your choices that have got you there. Which then leads into a series of myths about poverty being a choice.

But we know now, or are learning, that such myths, while maybe holding a skerrick of truth, are largely false. The proliferation of sugar in food, the comparative low price of simple carbohydrates, and the ready availability of high fat takeaways - all with significant marketing attractiveness - are political and macro-economic choices. Choices that change diets and therefore the health of large numbers of people. Choices that affect hospital bills we all pay for. We also know that fresh vegetables and fruit, ironically that New Zealand can produce relatively cheaply and in abundance, through price, image,and marketing, are not as attractive to consumers.

When it comes to food, letting market forces have unbridled control is bad for all of us.

Some years ago the Trustees of Dingwall agreed to fund a garden-to-table programme for our cottages in Papatoetoe. The children were taught to grow vegetables. The caregivers were taught how to cook differently. The type of food purchased (and grown) for the cottages, and visible at shared meal events, changed. And little by little we saw other changes: Frequency of doctors’ visits changed. Dental hygiene changed. Less tangible things like children’s concentration and general wellbeing (including body image) changed. All by macro-planning decisions,rather than by assuming that food should be solely left to the choices of the children and their caregivers.

So what is godly food? Here’s an attempt to answer that:

-       food that is healthy for our bodies and minds. (So we need more science and less ‘influencers’.)

-       food that is shared for the wellbeing of our communities and us in community. (Food is a social language and also a pathway for the growth in fairness, justice, and the common good).

-       food that is offered in one season or event, and not in others. (The feasts and the fasts of the past,need to be revisited and maybe repurposed for today. Hot cross buns and chocolate Easter eggs are not the only foods we do.

[i] P.99 Song of the Bird, Anthony De Mello

[ii] P. 134 The Heart of the Enlightened, Anthony De Mello

[iii] You may like to readValter Longo’s The Longevity Diet: Discover the new science to slow aging,fight disease, and manage your health.

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