Food glorious food
Christmas is not far away and if ever there was a song that described our activities over the Christmas period it must be that song from the musical Oliver – ‘Food glorious food’.
We eat, drink and be merry as if tomorrow will never come.
And then afterwards we have another preoccupation to loose weight – does all this really make sense?
Ironically too many of us, including myself need to loose weight – we love the wrong type of food – too much fat or too much sugar!!
All too often the food that is said to be good for us is boring, unappetising and not very nice.
No wonder our young people love junk food but the consequences of such an unhealthy diet are all too often ignored – it won’t happen to me.
We ignore the morality of our gluttony and our irresponsible waste of food whilst a third of the world starves to death and another third is undernourished.
Food glorious food?
When we pray, ‘Our daily bread’ its all about sufficiency and balance.
The balance is all to do with energy, the energy we take in, in the form of food, should equal the energy we dissipate in the form of exercise or work.
If the food energy > work we do = put on weight
If the food energy < work we do = loose weight
That’s why those who want to loose weight count calories, but its more than that.
There is the wholeness factor to consider – we are whole human beings and for true health there are THREE factors to be considered.
Health of Body, Mind and Spirit.
We know that being excessively under or over weight can and does affect our mental process.
But the spiritual is also of concern for the person who really wants wholeness out of their lives.
Our daily bread: in a spiritual context can means three things –
• The bread of the Eucharist – the body of Christ
• Spiritual food for our minds and hearts – the Word of God
• The bread of Life – he who eats me shall live forever
The Bread of the Eucharist – from the very earliest times in the life of the Church the Lord’s prayer has been closely connected with the Holy Communion Service.
In the 1662 BCP the Holy Communion service indeed starts with the Lord’s prayer and then is repeated once the elements have been received by the people.
The Holy communion in a very real sense is enfolded in the Lord’s prayer indeed in our revised services it still holds a very predominant place before we received the body and blood of Jesus in the form of bread and wine.
The petition, ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ – is a request that we may be granted the daily privilege of sitting at the Lord’s table to eat the spiritual food which we receive there.
The daily bread meaning here the spiritual body and blood of Jesus so that through this feast we may be drawn into a closer relationship with Him - in Communion.
The daily bread has also been identified with the spiritual food of the Word of God – Holy Scripture.
When Jesus was in the wilderness for 40 days and nights, tempted by the devil the 1st temptation relates scripture to bread.
‘If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.’
Then Jesus quoting from the book of Deuteronomy said, ‘Man cannot live by bread alone; he lives on every word that God utters.’
So this petition, ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ has to be taken to be a prayer for the:
• True teaching of God’s Word for us today
• The true doctrine which leads us through the ethics mire
• The essential truth which can only be found in Holy scripture as the Word of God, which is indeed our daily food for our minds, our hearts and our souls.
Then thirdly Jesus said, ‘ I AM the bread of life, he who eats me shall live forever.’
Ironically this connects the previous two since Jesus is the Bread of life at the Eucharist and Jesus is the Word of God as St. John makes very clear in the opening to his gospel:
‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God’ … ‘And the Word became flesh and lived among us.’ … Jesus Christ our Lord.
In the 39 articles of religion, number 6 tells us: ‘Holy Scripture contains all things necessary for Salvation.’
This salvation comes to us through the grace of what Jesus Christ has done for us in His saving death on the cross.
So when we pray for our daily bread we are praying for our spiritual as well as our physical well being.
We pray for our daily physical needs, our food, our clothing our everyday needs.
We pray for our spiritual needs, our bread of life, by means of our;
• Daily invitation to the Lord’s Supper
• Daily Nourishment from the Word of God
• Daily receiving of Christ into our Lives.
There was a Gardner who had an allotment; he had to work very hard, clearing away stones more like boulders and eradicating the rank growth of weeds.
He worked very hard seemingly against all the elements that nature could put in his way.
Very often he would go home after digging, planting and weeding, exhausted and he would sit in his chair watching the tv and fall asleep.
By enriching and feeding the ground it produced the very best vegetables in the area – indeed he won many prizes for the best onions and carrots.
One evening he was showing a friend around his allotment when his friend said, ‘ Its wonderful what God can do with a bit of ground like this!’
YES said the Gardner who put in so much work and effort, blood, sweat and tears, ‘But you should have seen this plot of ground when God had it to Himself.’
God’s bounty and our toil must combine, go hand in hand.
To make the Lord’s prayer alive is not just a matter of words, a matter of saying our prayers, we have to put our words into action.
• We can never grow spiritually unless we accept God’s invitation to the Lord’s Supper
• We can never grow spiritually unless we read our Bibles daily so as to gain nourishment from the Word of God
• We can never grow in grace unless we accept daily receiving Jesus Christ into our Lives.
We have to react and do something, we have make prayer reactive in our lives so as to let Christ in.
Prayer like faith without works is dead and so we have to recognise the basic truth that without God we can do nothing and that without our effort and co-operation God can do nothing for us.
Food glorious food? The energy balance for physical food is equally applicable here for spiritual food:
If the input of spiritual energy > work we do = put on self-righteousness
If the input of spiritual energy < work we do = loose our wholeness of being
This is the importance of putting prayer into action.
So we have a lot to thank God for, especially as we approach Christmas, for the birth of His Son who did grow up to be a man and who taught us to pray in a very special way:
Remember that God is your Father and your King, and that, therefore, you go to ONE in whom Love and Power are Equally combined.
Do not hesitate to tell God about your daily needs.
Do not shrink from telling God about your mistakes.
Never forget to place the unknown future and all its perils in the hands of God.
Thank God for Jesus.. Amen
