Day 21, Friday, Book of Faith – Lenten Journey
What would Thanksgiving be without the meal? What would a birthday celebration be without the cake? What would family reunion be like without the big meal? What would Christmas be like without the parties and the food? This is why Holy Communion is a central part of our worship.
I like how the author lifts up the holiness of our mealtime, how these times are not just about getting the nutrition down our gullets. They are about the fellowship that occurs with the meal. Connecting that fact to all the meals Jesus had with such a wide variety of people helps to bring home new dimensions of what it means to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” It also stresses the necessity of something that has been getting more scarce in our society lately: the family meal. As we ask our Father for daily bread, we are asking for more than physical sustenance. We are also asking for spiritual sustenance, which happens in community and most significantly around a meal.
As the writter says “could there by anything more important than food in making life worth living?” Well certainly not for me although love really runs almost side by side with food! I simply cannot imagine what life would be like without either of these two components.
Think about the great joy we get from food. It brings to mind Zion’s pot luck dinner that we have in October and the Soup Suppers we are currently experiencing. All the tasty food that is laid before us and the many people with whom we dine. What a blessing it is to be able to eat so joyfully and with such gusto while enjoying a wonderful conversation with one, two or more of God’s children.
It makes me wonder how welcoming our congregation would be to a homeless person who showed up at worship, or someone else who might make our heads turn because of something they might be wearing or someone who has lots of tatoos, piercings, or strangely colored hair. I would like to think I’d be as welcoming as Christ was, but would I really?
I never had the family dinners when I was young. It was just mom and I, we would eat in front of the tv. One of my favorite holidays is Thanksgiving. Joe and I have our friends that have no family around here or none at all for this great day of Thanksgiving. There are people that come from different back rounds and beliefs. But one thing we all give thanks for, our faith and family. That’s what Jesus came here to do, bring us together for food(in many different forms) along with the love of our fellow humans.