Eating

“Tell me what thou eatest, and I will tell thee what thou art.” It was French gastronomer Jean Authelme Brillatt-Savarin who penned these words a century and a half ago. His argument is that what and how we eat say much more about us than our constant need of physical sustenance. But today eating is an activity so taken for granted that to seek after any deeper significance, especially from a spiritual perspective, would seem to most an odd pursuit. Yet the very fact that more of us do not take advantage of the wonders of modern science—not being content with meeting our nutritional needs with pills—is evidence that our eating habits have to do with much more than simply our digestive system. What significance does eating have from cultural and biblical perspectives? What do these perspectives say to us as we live out our Christian faith in the midst of ordinary life?

Eating from a Cultural Perspective

Eating and Culture. Anthropologists argue that when one knows what, where, how, when and with whom a person eats, one can understand the nature of his or her society. Eating is a transmitter of culture. Much of who we are as social beings is determined through repetitive participation in this common event. Such basic matters as who sits where at the family table, who prepares the meal, who serves, who is served first, what is served and what is not, who dominates or directs communication and who cleans up after the meal communicate a wealth of information about social obligations and customs, authority structures and gender roles. It is also true that a society as a whole expresses its uniqueness and personality through its eating habits. Identity, passions, biases, prejudices, history, priorities and convictions are all expressed through how and what it eats.

Eating and Relationships. In all societies of the world, ancient and modern, eating is a primary way of entering into and sustaining relationships. In fact, the English word companion is derived from the French and Latin words meaning “one who eats bread with another.” Eating plays an important, if not central, role in almost every social and family gathering. Restaurants from East to West are open and thriving night after night, playing host to the fostering of human relationships. Intimate dinner parties at home communicate a welcome into the life of the host. Family dinners express solidarity with a group of people to whom we are inextricably linked—business, collegial and family relationships, friendships both intimate and casual, romantic ties, political alliances—all these and many more are recognized, ritualized and celebrated through the sharing of food. If life revolves around relationships, then it would be true to say that food and drink lubricate the cogs.

Eating and Covenant. Much has been made of the significance of the meal in the ancient Near East, where, traditionally, sharing food with a guest was equivalent to establishing a covenant. Certainly the host was obliged to offer protection and shelter to a guest who had eaten at his table. This concept of food as the seal of covenant is not confined to days gone by. Even today the Bantu of southern Africa regard exchanging food as the formation of a temporary covenant between individuals. They call it a “clanship of porridge.” In Chinese society, the giving and sharing of food is considered to give flesh to relationships. And in the West, most major business deals are sealed with the mandatory business lunch. Negotiations begin, deals are made, and contracts are signed while the parties eat and drink.

Eating and Celebration. Celebration is incomprehensible within any society without the activity of eating. So central is it that certain food items are associated with particular rites of celebration. To a North American, Thanksgiving would not be Thanksgiving without the turkey, cranberry sauce, giblet gravy and pumpkin pie. For the English, a Christmas without plum pudding is hard to imagine, as it is for the Danes without the traditional rice dessert with almonds and whipped cream. For the Russians, a baked pascha is essential to an Easter celebration, as the moon cake is to the autumn festival for the Chinese. In the West, weddings are celebrated with an elaborately decorated cake, and a birthday requires a cake with candles. Formal good wishes are made with a glass of wine or champagne. Wedding anniversaries, retirements, special awards, engagements to be married, graduations and promotions are often the cause for a celebratory feast. Even funerals are marked by the sharing of food and drink. It would be true to say that almost every significant rite of passage in every society is linked in some way to eating.

Eating in Time. While those of us who live in technological or informational societies can be drastically out of touch with the agricultural rhythms of the earth, the majority of people in the world are controlled by the foods that they produce and eat. The crops that they cultivate and the livestock that they nurture set the rhythm of their lives. Thus the farmer does not set the pace of life. Rather, he or she works to the pace set by the growth and harvest of the crops. Our habits of eating also give form and rhythm to our days and weeks. Breakfast, lunch and dinner set the pattern for each day that goes by. Each household marks the passing of certain days of the week with the eating of particular foods and the rhythms of formality and informality that surround the sequence of meals. In fact, our meals structure our year. As we move from January to December we pass through seasons, feasts and celebrations that dictate the foods we eat and enjoy.

Eating as a Spiritual Experience. Food has long been a popular and significant medium through which the human family experiences, communicates with and touches the divine. Detailed dietary rules are a part of all the major, and most minor, religions of the world. By keeping dietary rules, a devotee will summon the blessing and protection of the targeted divinity. Appeasing a god’s wrath often calls for the sacrifice of animals, or perhaps vegetables, depending on the nature and tradition of the god being honored. Annual or more regular religious celebrations commonly center around the themes of sacrifice and consequent indulgence in a celebratory feast.

Eating from a Biblical Perspective

In the majority of cases, when the biblical ties between eating and Christian faith are discussed, it is the subjects of fasting and gluttony that rise to the surface. While the Bible has much to say on both issues, our canvas must be much broader to appreciate the real significance of eating from a Christian perspective.

Eating in the Old Testament. It is difficult to avoid the subject of eating as one wanders through the pages of the Old Testament. In the story of creation, God’s role as the Creator and Sustainer of life culminates in the provision of food for “everything that has the breath of life in it” (Genesis 1:30). Of course this provision came with restrictions (Genesis 2:16-17), and it was the disobedience of eating what was prohibited (Genesis 3:1-6) that resulted in God’s words of judgment, “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life” (Genesis 3:17), and the subsequent eviction from the Garden.

In the world of the Old Testament, eating was an important step in the establishment of covenant. As two parties sat down at table together, their common meal indicated reconciliation, enabling oaths and agreements to be entered into (Genesis 26:28-31). It was by God’s initiative that covenant relationship was established with Israel (Genesis 12:1-3; Genesis 15:9-21; Genesis 35:9-15). The complex rites and rituals of sacrifice (Leviticus 1-7), and later establishment of feasts that played host to these sacrifices (Leviticus 23), were essential to the establishing and periodical renewing of this covenant relationship. Sacrifices and feasts were moments in which God and the people would sit at table together.

Throughout the Old Testament the imagery of eating signifies the presence, promises and blessings of God. As the people of Israel wandered in the desert after fleeing the Egyptians, it was God who rained down manna from heaven every day for forty years (Exodus 16). As the people gathered the manna each morning and ate it, their eating served as a daily reminder of God’s presence with them. The Promised Land itself was repetitively described as “a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 13:5; Numbers 13:27; Deut. 6:3). For the people this description came to symbolize the richness of what lay ahead of them. It was a promise they could almost taste! The Old Testament imagery of blessing and judgment is often tied to food. Satisfaction in eating was a picture of God’s blessing (Deut. 6:11; Deut. 8:10-12; Deut. 11:15), as lack of satisfaction was a picture of judgment (Leviticus 26:26; Isaiah 9:20; Hosea 4:10). Just as these more temporal of God’s blessings were tied to eating, so the ultimate deliverance of the people is described in terms of God’s invitation to an open table laden with an abundance of good food (Psalm 23:5; Psalm 36:7-9; Isaiah 25:6; Joel 3:18; Amos 9:13-14).

Eating in the New Testament. Around almost every corner of the Gospel accounts, Jesus can be found eating and drinking. He was labeled by some as a “glutton and a drunkard” (Matthew 11:19). It was not so much the fact that he appeared to enjoy eating that riled his critics, but where and with whom he chose to do his eating. In a society that drew very clear and precise social and religious boundaries through the customs of the meal table, Jesus demonstrated a blatant disregard for protocol and tradition. His willingness to eat with anyone, regardless of class, race, profession or moral record, was deeply threatening to those who saw it as their duty to enforce such customs. One commentator has even suggested that Jesus got himself crucified by the way that he ate! Through time influential Jewish groups had constructed a complex set of rules and regulations designed to protect their racial and religious purity. Jesus’ habit of sharing his meals with “tax collectors and sinners” (Luke 5:30) was threatening, for it demonstrated that his new kingdom order had little to do with religious customs and regulations. The kingdom of God was now symbolized by an open table to which all were invited to come and feast, an invitation without boundary or exclusion (Luke 14:15-24; Luke 15:11-32; Matthew 25:1-13). This imagery was later reinforced by a vision that God gave to Peter (Acts 10) in which it was made clear that the Levitical laws regarding clean and unclean foods were to be set aside. This signified the beginning of the early church’s mission to take the invitation to God’s table to the Gentile community, who had long been considered “unclean” and outside the community of faith.

Jesus also used eating imagery to define his own mission. He calls himself the “bread of life” (John 6:35-59) and the “living water” (John 4:10-14). As he met with the disciples for the last supper he established that until the kingdom of God is fully come, his presence will be made tangible through the shared meal. Jesus established this meal as a time of remembrance when he said, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance for me” (Luke 22:19; cf. Matthew 26:26; Mark 14:22), a time of covenant renewal; “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you” (Luke 22:20; cf. Matthew 26:28; Mark 14:24), and an anticipation of the messianic banquet that is to come, “For I tell you, I will not drink again of the fruit of this vine until the Kingdom of God comes” (Luke 22:18; cf. Matthew 26:29; Mark 14:25).

As we move on into the life of the early church, the community of believers found their identity as followers of Christ most profoundly and most tangibly in their eating together. It was through the breaking of bread (see Communion), as part of an ordinary meal, that the church expressed its unity, identity and destiny as the people of God (Acts 20:7, 11; 1 Cor. 11:33; 2 Peter 2:13; Jude 12).

Eating as a Christian

In the light of these cultural and biblical perspectives, how do we allow our Christian faith to affect and inform our eating habits?

Eating and Providence. Central to the prayer that Jesus taught his followers is the petition “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). As we break bread, whether in an overtly religious ritual or in the daily routine of breakfast, we are gathered up into the mystery of God’s providence. Food is, indeed, the stuff of life, and the creation and sustaining of life are God’s business. But dependence on God as our Provider is not altogether obvious for the majority of people in the developed world. In the United States, only 3 percent of the population is needed to produce more than 100 percent of the required agricultural products. If food is lacking on our table, no longer do we look heavenward. A quick trip to the supermarket solves our problem. And yet, for those who still plough the earth, await the rains, milk the cows, cast nets into the ocean and nurture the grapevines, their dependence on a power outside of themselves is a daily experience. But whether we are aware of it or not, every time we eat we express our complete dependence on a power outside ourselves. As we spoon more potatoes on our plate, butter the bread and pour the water, we handle the grace of God. For those who bow to pray before eating, dependence is articulated; those who do not so pray are still unavoidably dependent.

Those of us who are urban dwellers in the Western world need to get back in touch with our immediate dependence on the God-ordained rhythms of the earth. Perhaps growing our own vegetables, baking our own bread or being less dependent on convenience foods are good ways to begin. We could also work at being less preoccupied with convenience and the economy of time—the law of the microwave oven—and more involved in the process of preparation and creation.

Eating and Sacrament. As Jesus broke bread and shared it with his fellow travelers on the road to Emmaus, “their eyes were opened and they recognized him” (Luke 24:31). While every meal we participate in is not overtly religious in nature, each time we sit down to a meal God is present. It is an expression of the principle of incarnation. We discover God in the midst of the ordinary. When we sit down to a meal, we sit down to a God-ordained part of life in which God is made manifest.

In the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, we articulate a spiritual truth: life is dependent on death. In order that we might enter into the fullness of life, life had to be surrendered. Jesus surrendered his life to death in order that we might live. In a sense, that same principle of “life for life” is at work in every meal we eat. Every time we swallow we enact that principle. Whether we are eating a bowl of porridge, devouring a sirloin steak or sipping a glass of orange juice, life had to be laid down for us. It is part of the order of things. It is so ordinary, and yet in this ordinariness is mystery.

Nurturing a conscious awareness of God’s presence at the meal table—a daily discipline in a fragmented and fast-paced world—is crucial if we are to develop an integrated spirituality. It will call for a degree of creativity as we seek to establish mealtime rituals that make God’s presence a daily experience. It will mean consciously watching for incarnational moments when God’s presence and purposes can be named and celebrated.

Eating and Community. It has been said that to be human is to belong. The need to belong is a need that has been central to our humanity from the beginning. As we have already discovered, Jesus extended the boundaries of belonging to the community of God’s people. He proclaimed God’s kingdom open to and inclusive of all those who respond to God’s invitation to eat with him.

Wendy Wright has written, “When we break bread together, we symbolically enact the basic truth that we are most complete when we are together.” A family is that group of scattered individuals who come together at the end of the day, most commonly around the meal table. They may or may not be related, but every time they meet there, they acknowledge their identity as a family and reaffirm together their sense of belonging. There is a sense in which our meal table defines the boundaries of our community. Occasionally, or regularly, an outsider is invited to the table. In welcoming them we communicate that, for the period of the meal at least, this person is no longer a stranger. They belong with us.

In a society that increasingly values individualism, where families are sacrificing their common identity in pursuit of individual interests, the common meal-time is disappearing or shared around the television set. Our task is to reinvent the household mealtime as a time to value relationships, listen to each other, extend welcome to the outsider and reaffirm our need for community. Guarding the sanctity of the shared mealtime is crucial. Finding ways to make meal preparation a communal event will only deepen the experience.

Eating and Service. Through his words and actions, Jesus painted a picture of a kingdom in which love and self-giving are central. His proclamations were, and still are, radical. For Jesus, genuine power can be experienced only in the laying down of personal ambition. It is in the kingdom distinctive of service that we discover the greatness for which we were created. Jesus’ example shows that there are few places where this can be so demonstrated as at the meal table. Whether a ministry of compassion or of simple hospitality, it is clearly a ministry of service that is offered at the table.

Ernest Boyer Jr. calls what we offer at the meal table “the sacrament of care.” Care is offered most often in the routine and the ordinary activities of the day—washing dishes, peeling vegetables, making beds and so on. Is the one who selflessly prepares meals for a family, week in and week out, year in and year out, conscious of it as a sacrament of care? Probably not. It is routine, instinctive, second nature and ordinary. Yet if we take Jesus’ words seriously, then what this provider offers to the family day after day is as significant and valued in God’s kingdom as any glorified act of service offered by prophet, priest or king.

As a church we should be looking for ways and opportunities to recognize and celebrate these “sacraments of care” being offered daily by often unrecognized members of our communities. As household members we can nurture those who serve us by regularly voicing our thanks for revealing to us more of God’s nature and character. We could even construct simple liturgies and rituals together which give voice to our mutual dependence.

Eating and Mission. In a sense, Jesus’ eating habits embodied his mission. His sitting at table with the despised, the disenfranchised, the closed-out was a clear indication that the kingdom of heaven is a place of welcome, refuge and healing for all. It indicates that the mission of the church is not merely proclamation of the “good news” to those outside the kingdom, nor is it limited to the clothing and feeding of the outcasts. It is a mission which calls for both of these, and yet more. It calls for intimate investment in the lives of those we call to the table. Jesus could have limited his ministry to the proclamation of the kingdom from the mountaintops and the synagogues. Instead, such moments were the exception. More commonly, Jesus was to be found brushing up against all manner of people in the most domestic settings and very often eating with them. The mission of the early church clearly reflected this pattern. Mission for Jesus and the early church involved initiating relationships and clearly demonstrating the nature of God’s inclusive kingdom. According to Jesus, welcome into the kingdom will be extended to those who extend to others the same open hospitality of the table: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in” (Matthew 25:35).

Being invited into a private home for dinner is becoming the exception in American society. As a friend commented, “To invite me into your home is to invite me into your life.” Increasingly today such an invitation of intimacy and commitment is avoided. If we are intended to model the inclusive nature of God’s kingdom and yet fail to invite even those who are like us to the dinner table, then how in the world do we begin to address the call to the stranger and the alien? The mission of the church is about more than a distant proclamation or a free handout at the soup kitchen. It is about intimate investment in the lives of those around us. It is about securing our identity as a family and then opening the table to those who need the open embrace of Jesus.

While our eating may always be a very routine and ordinary part of our lives, essential to keeping us physically healthy and whole, it should not be forgotten that it is significant at much deeper levels. As those concerned to work out our discipleship in the midst of all the ordinariness of life, it is helpful to remember that the announcement of the gospel is like the ringing of a gong before the evening meal and the words “Dinner is served!”

» See also: Communion

» See also: Hospitality

» See also: Meal Preparation

References and Resources

S. S. Bartchy, “Table Fellowship,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, ed. J. B. Green, S. McKnight and I. H. Marshall, (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1992); E. Boyer Jr., Finding God at Home: Family Life as Spiritual Discipline (San Francisco: Harper, 1991); J. A. Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste (London: Penguin, 1970); A. C. Cochrane, Eating and Drinking with Jesus: An Ethical and Biblical Inquiry (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1974); S. C. Juengst, Breaking Bread: The Spiritual Significance of Food (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1992); R. J. Karris, Luke: Artist and Theologian (New York: Paulist, 1985); J. MacClancy, Consuming Culture: Why You Eat What You Eat (New York: Henry Holt, 1992); M. Visser, Much Depends on Dinner: The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos of an Ordinary Meal (New York: Grove, 1986); W. M. Wright, Sacred Dwelling: A Spirituality of Family Life (New York: Crossroad, 1990).

—Simon Holt