Lectionary readings: Proverbs 9.1-6
and John 6.51-58
I wonder, what is your favourite
meal? [This is not a rhetorical question.]
And what is it about that meal that makes
it your favourite? [Again, not a rhetorical question.] Perhaps it has to do
with the flavours and textures of the food. Perhaps associations with
particular people or special memories are factors too.
I wonder whether there is a meal that
you like to make, to share with others? That is, of course, a labour of love.
And I wonder whether you have ever taught someone else to make that meal; or,
indeed, whether someone else taught you? There is a world of difference between
following a recipe from a cookbook and a family meal passed down from
generation to generation.
In our reading from the Old Testament
today, wisdom is personified as a hostess. Again and again throughout the Bible
relationships between people, and between people and God, are built around a
table. This is the place of encounter, to which we are invited, and to which
anyone who wants to live in harmony with their neighbour comes.
There is something we need to note
and take to heart here. We need to learn to eat with others, not simply to feed
others. When we feed people but do not eat with them, we create a power dynamic
that places them in our debt; but when people eat together the barrier between ‘us’
and ‘them’ is dismantled. I appreciate that some people are shy around folk
they don’t know, and the kitchen is a safe place to hide in—I am one of those
people myself, and my neurodivergence is a big factor; whenever I spend time
with other people, I need to go away and recharge. But, collectively, we need
to learn to eat with people, not just feed them. It isn’t, primarily, about
physical hunger, but about our common need for connection.
There is a proverbial saying that You
Are What You Eat. At a physical level, a healthy diet increases our fitness,
while, over time, an unhealthy diet harms us. The same is true spiritually
speaking. What we consume shapes us, for good or evil. If our daily diet is a
particular newspaper or other news source, it will shape us in very particular
ways, and largely, in a context of constant and instant news, towards anxiety. If
our daily diet is social media, we will be intentionally shaped by algorithms
to be quick to judge, harshly, on matters about which we are very largely uninformed,
and to never be satisfied but to always want more. Social media might be an
alien world to you, but we all consume something, and we are all being consumed
by the thing we consume, whether by hate or by love.
Jesus says, make me your daily bread.
Eat of me. Take me into you, and see how you will be transformed, over time,
into the fullness of what God intends for you.
How do we do that? By building our
lives around him. By finding, through experimentation, daily, weekly, and less
frequent patterns that enable us to eat his flesh and drink his blood. Patterns
such as setting apart some time each day to prayerfully read and meditate on scripture,
perhaps a psalm or Gospel passage, perhaps using the daily prayer resources of
the Church of England so that we are reading along with many others, or perhaps
using resources prepared by 24/7 Prayer or Scripture Union or BRF with people
of different ages and stages of life in mind. Patterns such as taking communion
week by week; and by eating food with others, at a table, on a weekly basis. I
know of at least one member of our community, who lives alone, who goes out or breakfast
with friends every week. And patterns such as reducing or restricting less
healthy food. Watching television is not wrong, but if we are watching too
much, perhaps we need to set ourselves limits, not in a legalistic way, but in
a way that sees it as a treat rather than a staple of our diet.
Wisdom says come to the feast. We
feast on God in worship, in acknowledging that God is good all the time, in
every circumstance and situation, and in contrast to the impact of sin and
death in the world, which is insubstantial in comparison and fleeting, but gets
a lot of attention.
And if this is already your pattern,
who might benefit from what you have learnt?
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