Food and Faith Summary
2009 SPIRITUAL GROWTH STUDY
This study is about how our faith is nurtured, strengthened, and enhanced, by food and all the ways food touches our lives.
It is no accident that our most profound sacrament, Holy Communion, is food. In this study, we explore how the bread and fruit of the vine illustrates the magnitude of God’s love for us on multiple levels, and how God’s presence is invoked and the divine and the ordinary connect in a mystery created by Christ and ordained by God.
The presence of God in our lives is shared in community when the faithful gather for sustenance in the form of fellowship and food. It is an extension of the Communion Table when the church family gathers around coffee and cookies, a benefit dinner, a meal of celebration, a meal for healing the grief of the bereaved, or in many other ways.
Our relationships with food are complex and individual. The study explores how food can be a companion, a comforter, a quiet, friendly presence that can fill empty moments in our lives, and yet food can become an enemy, also, in a fast-paced life. It is a cruel addiction that must be managed, controlled, and overcome.
Living our faith in all the aspects of our lives can lead to healing, growth, and a deepening relationship with God. The relationship between food and faith is also found in our hospitality to others. Hospitality has deep, profound meaning for our spiritual lives and is more than a simple offering of refreshment to a neighbor. The relationship between food and faith is also found in our hospitality to others. This study explores the biblical imperative to offer hospitality—to our friends and to the stranger. In Greek, the word for hospitality is philoxenos— a combination of philo (love) and xenos (stranger). This is the same kind of love (philo) offered to Jesus by the woman or stranger (xenos) who bathed his feet and anointed them with her tears in the gospel of Luke. It is the act of moving beyond oneself for another. Hospitality has deep, profound meaning for our spiritual lives and is more than a simple offering of refreshment to a neighbor.
Finally, the rituals of feasting and fasting remind us of our need for God. This study gives information on reasons to fast and healthy ways to fast, and grow from the ritual of fasting. We have John Wesley’s words to remind us that we can be both empty and full for God. “Let me be full, let me be empty. Let me have all things, let me have nothing.” This study reminds us that when we can take the time to explore the spiritual benefits of being full or empty, the food given to us by God for our well-being will satisfy more completely.