You Give Them Something to Eat 8-2-11

Anderson, South Carolina


In her A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackermann provides her readers with a luscious literary foray into the human experience of our five senses. Her description of our shared experiences with taste is no exception; leaving us wondering how we ever manage to eat anything mindlessly. Eastern practices of mindfulness often include exercises in eating consciously, savoring flavors, textures, and colors. In a frantic multi-tasking world eating has devolved into snatching bits of fuel while waiting at red lights. The fast food industry understands for many people, eating is something to be done quickly while driving; waiting for food to be prepared is often anathema to the American life style.

In ancient Rome eating vast meals extending over several days was the height of luxury. Emperors spent enormous resources to stage meals of inconceivable opulence. Little changed over the next twenty centuries. The overly corpulent Henry the Eighth was right in line with Romans emperors. The kitchen wing at Hampton Court Palace in London is staggering in scale. Hundreds of workers spent their lives preparing vast spreads consumed by those privileged to manifest gluttony in excess. Whole forests of magnificent oak trees were burned in the great fireplaces of Hampton Court’s kitchens. One’s ability to stage immense meals was a hallmark of ultimate wealth throughout history before the advent of consumer goods allowed wealth to be manifest in other ostentatious ways.

Festival meals remain the centerpiece of most religious traditions. The Passover meal is central to Jewish religious experience. Countless other festivals and feasts fill in the Jewish calendar. Christianity is even more focused on festival meals and the metaphors eating provides. Jesus’ last recorded act with his disciples was the convening of what has become known as the Last Supper. In Eastern churches and all of our Western liturgical churches, Holy Eucharist is the highest sacrament and central to religious practice.

Communion takes metaphors of dining to the highest level. At the completion of Communion, millions offer a thanksgiving prayer which includes “We thank you for feeding us with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ, and for assuring us in these holy mysteries that we are living members of the Body of your Son.” The metaphor is intended to bring us to a place of complete union with the Trinity. The Roman Catholic Church through the doctrine of transubstantiation insures the strength of the imagery by declaring consecrated wine and bread to be the actual body and blood of Jesus.

Critics often make pejorative comments about Christians practicing cannibalism. Ackerman in her extensive chapter on taste reveals history to have been immensely more tolerant of this practice than any of us want to admit. Cannibalism is one of the strongest cultural taboos in the present era. Extensive human sacrifice and cannibalism were mainstream in many cultures of the Old and New Worlds. Those partaking of the sacraments of Eucharist certainly do not perceive themselves as violating such taboos. Dogma and theological thought surrounding Eucharist steer the faithful away from such pejorative views of something embraced by billions. Inarguably, no matter one’s view, sharing meals of any kind carries huge emotional, spiritual, and social significance in the human experience. Little is more intimate in human commerce than the sharing of meals.

The recorded miracles of Jesus during his three years of public ministry most prominently involved the miraculous production of copious amounts of food and drink. In His first public miracle Jesus made one hundred thirty eight gallons of wine for a wedding reception. It was of such high quality as to capture the wonder and attention of the chief steward in a very wealthy household. Other miracles included the feeding of as many as five thousand men plus women and children. Small amounts of snack food ultimately fed countless thousands with as many as twelve large baskets of leftovers being picked from the grass. On one occasion Jesus told hapless fishermen to recast their nets after a fruitless night of labor. The subsequent catch was so vast as to risk the boat capsizing and priceless nets being torn asunder.

In Maslow’s need hierarchy food is our most important primary need. Without food everything else becomes moot. Without adequate food intake, our lives become miserable experience of eking out survival. For hundreds of millions, procurement of adequate food is a 24/7 effort, often ending in failure. Billions more are food insecure; enough to eat is a never a sure thing. Throughout most of history food inequity was a marker of wealth and power. Kings and emperors ate to excess while millions died of starvation. During the Irish potato famine of the 1840s, one third of Ireland’s population succumbed while the republic remained a net exporter of food. Much of the exported food went to the wealthy in England and elsewhere.

The US Department of Agriculture spent millions to conduct a multi-year Food Loss Study to assess food use and waste in America. The findings were rather astounding. More than half the food produced in America is never consumed by humans or animals. Fourteen percent of wasted food is discarded in unopened containers still within date. Six million pounds of hot prepared food is discarded every day by restaurants. Food waste is the single largest component of municipal solid waste facilities. These thirty four million tons of waste would feed 100 million people in perpetuity. Often this food is put into dumpsters and laced with ammonia so as to prevent food insecure individuals from making use of it. The value of food lost in America is estimated at $100 billion annually.

Perhaps the most flagrant waste of food is seen on cruise ships competing much as did the ancient emperors and kings to outdo each other. Obesity is an American epidemic putting health and public finance at grave risk in coming years. Strangely, in a land awash in too much food, many are dying from overeating while millions more stand in line at public pantries hoping to gain food security.

Daniel Quinn wrote his best selling Ishmael series to highlight many of the inequities and resultant insecurities modern cultures find themselves confronting. He describes a civilization where “Takers” extract many of the resources leaving the majority of individuals without enough to sustain meaningful quality of life. Haunting descriptions were given of the incredible power consolidated when people figure out how to control food chains. Putting an economic lock and key on the food chain has made a small number of Takers amazingly wealthy while leaving billions of people economically and food insecure.

As far back as twenty centuries people were beginning to show callous disregard for food welfare. Even Jesus’ disciples were not concerned about food for those sitting at His feet; asking Him to send everyone away to buy themselves something to eat. He told the disciples “You give them something to eat.” ‘Them’ was five thousand men plus women and children. The well-known account in Matthew’s gospel includes the detail of twelve baskets of scraps being left over. Perhaps Jesus’ imperative “You give them something to eat” is one we need to take to heart in an era of rampant food waste and food insecurity.

Is what we do with the food in our refrigerators and restaurants perhaps more indicative of our commitment to sacramental living than what we do with the wine and wafers in our pretty silver and gold chalices, ciboriums, and patens?