More than our daily bread

The General Synod of the Church of England has been grappling with some hefty issues of late, along with the congregation of Holy Trinity Richmond (thanks Dan for your excellent sermon series) and many other Christians in the UK. The message from the pulpit most Sundays is that the Bible is as relevant to our lives in 21st century Britain as ever.
 
I wanted to put to the test a couple of topics, close to my heart, but trivial in comparison to what the Bishops have been pondering. The first, which I consider here, concerns food. I enjoy food enormously and it’s something that interests me from a consumer, health and culinary perspective.
 
Food plays such an important part in our lives. Obviously. As we were reminded after the recent earthquakes in Turkey, humans can generally only survive a couple of weeks without food. Food provides the fuel to power the extraordinary engine that is our bodies. Without it our muscles don’t work, our brains don’t process and vital organs stop functioning. When we say the Lord’s Prayer we ask God to provide our daily bread.
 
We are living, though, in an era where we have an increasingly complex relationship with food that goes way beyond basic survival and bodily functioning.
 
Looking at how food is referenced in the Bible, things may not be that different now. Food played an important part of the lives of the ancients and was way more meaningful than being the vital source of calories. Old Testament prophets, Jesus himself and the apostles referred to food literally and metaphorically, in narratives, in psalms, in parables and in the Beatitudes.
 
Food is at the heart of so much of our economy and lifestyles - from agriculture, farming and food production to supermarkets and restaurants. Not forgetting the entertainment provided by Bake Off, Masterchef and the like and the shelves of cookery books in Waterstone’s (and my kitchen.) It’s a key element of relationships and celebrations.
 
Then there’s the more negative associations with food, the variety of mental health-related illnesses such as anorexia and bulimia. Food is also a political issue. While public health policy debates how to tackle the obesity crisis, globally, people continue to be malnourished and die of starvation. Hunger is said to affect 10% of the world’s population, a situation made worse by climate change, the Covid pandemic and conflict.
 
Again, that’s nothing new. People eating together lies at the heart of most cultures and traditions and no less so among the Jews of the Old Testament who had to navigate myriad dietary laws before sitting down at table. Many stories in the New Testament refer to Jesus sharing food - with sinners, with tax collectors, with his disciples and with 5,000 complete strangers.
 
Farming and agriculture were the main way of life for the ancient Israelites and Egyptians - growing grain, tending vines and herding sheep. Jesus’ frequent use of farming allusions suggests he was familiar with what was involved, despite being a carpenter’s son.  Nonetheless, hunger and famine are recurring themes, with the Israelites being at the mercy of droughts and other natural disasters. Old Testament authors, moreover, use famine as a way of showing God’s power, suggesting it is a result of disobedience - God tells David the three-year famine in Israel is a result of Saul’s wrongdoings - or it becomes a catalyst for change - as in the rationale for Jacob moving his family to Egypt. Either way, food in the Bible, or the lack of it, was used as a device to grab the readers’ attention, and perhaps, to make it into a political issue.
 
While the Bible doesn’t appear to make many sizeist judgements, references to gluttony are associated with disobedience towards God, idolatry and even laziness. Church leaders in the Middle Ages went further by defining gluttony as a form of greed resulting from a lack of self-control and was, therefore, sinful. Nowadays, gluttony would probably be evident in the term obesity.
 
So, having learnt that my pre-occupation with food is not a modern trope and unless I eat far too much, it’s not a bad thing, and after examining it briefly through a biblical lens, what should I take away (pardon the pun) and apply about food as I go about my daily life?
 
These are the verses that I hope to hold fast to:
 
Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35)
 
and
 
So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31)

Photo by Tommaso Urli on Unsplash