I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you,
that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over,
took bread, and, after he had given thanks,
broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you.
Do this in remembrance of me.”
Let’s talk about food.
Perhaps, a part of our nature, our cultural heritages, or just because we live our faith in tangible ways – we love to feed people and to feed them well. We love to carry food into the community through the giving of food. There is our parish food pantry and our food collections.
There is also our food centered fundraising efforts, Polish, food sales, goulash and soup sales. No one approaches these things with a grumpy attitude. Rather we come together to do the work and most importantly we serve with smiling faces.
When we have guests over at home, whether it be family or friends or members of the church family none of us would likely serve corned beef hash from a can with a side of cheese whiz (although I love cheese whiz). Rather, we pull out the best. We spend the extra. We take the time to present something lovely. We hear people say, they really pulled out all the stops, they went over the top in preparing that food.
Take a moment to reflect on some of those special moments in our lives, the looks on people’s faces, the way they really dug into that food. We could call it joy, pure pleasure, happiness. Following Thanksgiving dinner my father-in-law always tells me: “You can cook for me anytime.”
Thinking of all these things, the food, the experiences, let’s ask: What would we feed Jesus if He was coming over?
One of the best places to start planning is to get an appreciation for what Jesus ate and drank.
When we read through scripture we tend to place a lot of our own experience into the moments. Jesus ate bread and drank wine. Jesus liked figs and grains in the field. We think of the stuff we can get at a local farm or down at the supermarket.
Jesus did not eat like that at all.
First, we must consider what was available. God made promises to Israel about the produce the land would yield. There were seven essential foods, or species, that God promised. These were wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and dates.
In Deuteronomy 8:7-8 we read: For the LORD thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths, springing forth in valleys and hills; a land of wheat and barley, and vines and fig-trees and pomegranates; a land of olive-trees and honey.
Some of these were a regular part of Jesus’ diet, but not all. For ordinary Jews, and especially itinerant preachers like Jesus, their diet was at the bottom of the economic ladder. The foods Jesus ate were produced locally. It was really farm to table for Jesus.
The poor only ate barley bread. Barley was less expensive since it was ground roughly, not fine like wheat flour. We see this at Jesus’ miraculous feeding recorded in John 6:9, “There is a boy here who has five loaves of barley bread and two fish with him.”
Most ordinary people’s diet in Jesus’ time was bread, barley bread, up to seventy percent of daily calories. Bread was essential, important to each person. As such, Jesus’ teaching us to pray included a verse that resonated for everyone because it came from their need: Give us our necessary bread today. (Matthew 6:11)
While there was bee honey in Israel, that was also expensive and unavailable to ordinary people. They ate a honey produced from figs. Grapes produced juice and wine. Olives gave every form of oil from oil for burning in Temple worship (the best), to oil for cooking and healing as in Luke 10:34 “And he came and bound his wounds and poured wine and oil on them and set him on his donkey and he took him to an inn and cared for him,” to the lowliest oil used to light homes.
Jesus certainly enjoyed fish which was inexpensive and abundant in His seaside headquarters in Capernaum. Even after His resurrection we see Jesus preparing fish at His seaside barbeque: But when they came up to the land they saw burning coals, which had been set, and fish were lying on them, and bread. (John 21:9) As far as other meat protein sources there was likely none. Lamb was super expensive as was cattle. If anything besides fish, proteins were derived from beans and other legumes.
Jesus used food as symbolic objects in His teachings, referencing things from everyday life. In addressing the hypocrisy of the leaders of the time He says: “Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees, impostors, for you tithe mint and dill and cummin and you forsake the weighty things of the law: Justice, mercy and faith!” (Matthew 23:23)
We see from all this that Jesus was well versed in Scripture and in food. Both Scripture and food were key to Jesus’ feeding of the disciples.
Finally, we arrive at the ultimate meal, the Last Supper and the gift we celebrate in this Octave. Archeologists suggest that the items on the Last Supper table included a bean stew, lamb, olives, bitter herbs, a fish sauce, unleavened bread from wheat, dates and aromatized wine. The seven species of Israel are there, and most importantly, it is all top-of-the-line stuff – the best.
In having the best prepared for that supper Jesus foreshadows the best food gift of all, His very Body and Blood which is for us.
Jesus understood our need for Him, our need for nourishment, for what is best, for what is simply comprehended and gloriously deep.
What would we prepare for Jesus?
The best dinner we can prepare for Jesus is that of our very selves, the giving of our hearts and lives to Jesus in all things and in every way. “For as often as we eat this bread and drink the cup” we place our lives, families, work, courage, trust, and future into His hands. Don’t give Him anything less than what He gave us.
