1 Samuel 14:24-30, 43-44; John 6:41-58
August 14, 2022
- Experiencing God through our taste/eating
Here we are, again, friends in our journey though the senses and our God. We have considered touch, sight, and hearing, and now we are into the next sense – the sense of taste. Today, we will consider how we relate to God through our eating and our sense of taste. I should come right on out and tell you that this is my favorite way of relating to God. I cannot tell you how many potluck dinners I have enjoyed through the decades. Yes, I am Presbyterian for the food.
Seriously, however, we certainly do connect to God through our eating. In case you did not realize it, one of our two holy sacraments is actually a meal. Our participation in communion or the eucharist doesn’t seem like much of a meal, however. I would say that is a disservice to us. Honestly, communion should be sitting in a group and eating together, resembling much more what Jesus was actually doing at the time and what early Christians did. The sacrament should certainly be more than just words and a couple of tastes. We have largely divorced the experience of eating and taste from the presence of God in Christ. Jesus offered himself IN the food. One of the greatest failures in my experience of God is not savoring those holy moments, lingering at the table with the food (and even in the water with baptism, for that matter). Taste and touch are ignored if we hurry our way to the end.
Eating with God is huge in Scripture. Consider the Garden of Eden and all the things to eat or not eat, or manna in the wilderness, or the bread of presence, or offering sacrifices which were to be eaten, or the role of drunkenness, or fasting, or eating laws, or wedding feasts, or Jesus eating with sinners, feeding thousands of people at once, the Last Supper, being revealed in the breaking of bread on the road to Emmaus, eating fish with the disciples post resurrection (Jesus did a lot of eating), or what to do with food offered to idols, or the abuse of the Lord’s Supper, or the wedding feast at the end of human time in Revelation. 1 Peter chapter 2 even invites us to follow into salvation if we have tasted that the Lord is good. There can be no doubt that food, eating, and our God-given sense of taste are essential to our experience of God through the centuries. So what?
In 1932, Ghandi began using starvation as a method of passive resistance to enact change in his home country, India. His first time fasting was for the sake of the lowest caste of people who were to be cut out of societal opportunities by the British constitution which would have further enshrined the infamous Indian caste system. Only the higher-up people would be given advantages. Ghandi was committed to starve unto death for the lower people left out that he called “Children of God.” After six days, the government relented. Ghandi was successful. For the next 16 years, he used intentional starvation to enact positive public change. His last fast in 1948 was to bring Hindus and Muslims into a peaceful relationship in New Delhi. Two weeks after he succeeded, he was assassinated. He was an effective force for righteous change in an unrighteous world.
A different kind of starvation drove King Saul and his forces to take drastic action in their war with the Philistines. Saul got this notion that food might be a distraction or that they should not eat food in a pagan place or who knows what. Saul was not satisfied with how things were going in the war, so he commanded a threat through an oath to eat nothing or be executed. The solitary person who did not hear Saul’s promise and threat was his beloved son Jonathon who found the great pool of honey and enjoyed the gift of energy and taste. It tasted great! Who would not want to eat while at war? Why not take the nourishment? The Bibles notes how famished they were. Saul was not known for his brains.
When Saul found out Jonathon had eaten, though, he was beside himself and committed to Jonathan’s execution. Jonathan even seems resigned. That must have been some honey. Thankfully, the people rallied to Jonathan’s defense and Saul relented. Here taste nearly led to death.
I have tasted wonderful things around the world and some not so wonderful things. It is hard to pin the most delicious thing I have ever eaten. If I were smart enough, I would say everything my wife cooks. I am able to say the worst thing I have ever eaten, though, was that cold octopus on a ferry between Greece and Italy. I have only lost my appetite a few times in my life and only once because of the food. When I got to the ink sack, I could go no further.
The offense I took was nothing, though, compared to the offense that the Jews took to the words of Jesus that I read in John’s Gospel. This may be a passage that you have not spent much time in before. John is less about telling stories and more telling us things about Jesus and God. This book is a little denser than the other gospels, but it is also delicious and full of other flavors such as in this passage. Jesus has just shared in the feeding of the five thousand, and the people are bent on making Jesus king right then and there, so Jesus had to get away from them, but food is still on the mind.
Then, Jesus begins this strange teaching where he talks about being the bread of life, even more than the manna that came from God in the wilderness of the Exodus – God’s bread for God’s people those 40 years. Jesus is even more. Everyone who ate manna eventually died. He is the true bread of life that has come from heaven. With him, we will not die.
What? Did we just hear that right? Jesus just said that he is bread and that he came from heaven. For us, that would be akin to someone saying that they are from another planet. “But we have known you for years and watched you grow up. We know your parents and grandparents.” This is the thought going through their minds when Jesus really gets going: “Not only am I the bread of life, but you MUST eat me and drink my blood or you have no life in you.” How many people passed out right then, do you think? “Bob, did he really just say we have to eat him to have life?” I’m not sure Jesus fits the kosher list or ANY grocery list.
AND HE ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT! That’s the point. He is pushing them to think about themselves in relationship to God in a way they never have before. Obviously, the Jews were not cannibals. Also, they would never consume blood because it was sacred to God. Anathema, horror of horrors, no way, Jose, yet Jesus was standing before them offering himself to be eaten and consumed – body and blood. It was disgusting but also beautiful.
You might say he is just pointing us toward Holy Communion. John’s Gospel is the only one that does not record the meal the night Jesus is arrested, so some think this is where John refers to it. Maybe, but I see something even more amazing happening here.
Taste is part of eating and we NEED to eat. It must happen. If you do not eat, you die. If you do not drink, you die. Jesus is pushing this idea so hard that they are stunned by the power of his idea. Food is gift from God and something upon which we completely depend. Only a few percent of the entire world’s water is even drinkable. The ability to drink is also a gift from God, but have forgotten and continue to forget just how much eating and drinking is a gift of grace. We literally starve without God.
Jesus is painting a picture of just how much we need God’s help, God’s support, God’s sustenance, God’s salvation, God’s Son. It is a life-or-death issue. We absolutely NEED Jesus. With something as simple and mundane as food and drink, we are face to face with how powerless we are in this world without God’s goodness. Jesus is our life just like food.
In fact, it might be that the act of eating itself is something of an act of worship. Many of us may pray before meals, but are we worshipping God with our eating? It is no accident that Jesus had such a good time with the sinners and outcasts around tables. For him, that was glory to God and true worship. I was joking about potluck dinners before, but there is something deeply good about those wonderful table fellowships. Rejoicing as people of God with food is holy time.
The folk back in Jesus’ day got hung up on his impossible demand to chew on him and to drink from him. The horror must have been laughable. Even today, some of our brothers and sisters in Christ believe Jesus is physically present in the Eucharist. While we do not subscribe to such an idea, before you breathe that sigh of relief, we can certainly be feed by our Lord, sustained by our Christ, nourished in our faith when we give ourselves to him in grateful trust. He is as close to us as our food, and he tastes delicious when we receive his goodness.
One of the most amazing movies that I have ever seen is Babette’s Feast. A young woman becomes a refugee and ends up in another country, among another people, who thrive on hard, bare religiosity, and if she is going to live with them, she must abide by their ways. It is brutal to her spirit, but she is glad to have a safe place to live. One day she learns that she will receive a great amount of money. Basically, she won the lottery, and she wants to give the people there a great banquet. They are not very excited but agree to go along. They even try to not enjoy it for fear of temptation. She pulls all the stops and fixes them the best meal they will ever eat, and through the meal, it comes out that she was the greatest chef in Paris before she had to flee the political unrest in her country. She spent all of her money on this meal that they fought to even appreciate, but at the end, they realized the mercy and kindness and the goodness that God gives. They tasted their way literally to new faith and deeper living.
My prayer is that we will use our eating to the glory of God. When we do share in the Lord’s Supper, again, or even the next luncheon, may we taste God’s goodness together. Most importantly, may we truly recognize our need for Jesus in the same way that we need our food and drink. He is our life both today and for all time. He is our life together, and he is the most wonderful food we will ever know. To God be the glory. Amen.