Come and Dine – Digesting Word and Sacrament
Come and Dine – Digesting Word and Sacrament.
FOOD: Any nutritious substance that people eat or drink in order to maintain life and enable growth. Any substance that provides nourishment for survival and nutrition for maintenance of life. Food is consumed in order to keep oneself alive and healthy.
[In this article, the terms soul and spirit are used interchangeably, as in Mary’s Magnificat in Luke 1:46-47: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”
God has created our bodies to depend on food, and He has done the same for our souls. And the reasons are the same, as you can read above. Each of us has been born with a God-given spiritual digestive system. By not feeding our souls, we can be assured of spiritual death. Many of us are on a starvation diet, in fact we all are until we fill our souls with the required spiritual food. In the Christian faith, there are three spiritual food groups that enable us to grow, to live, to find our purpose in life, to live the way God intends. These three sources of soul food are to be consumed with regularity, or we are back on our starvation diet. Make no mistake the spiritual Daily Nutrition Value (DNV) of these three food groups are made in heaven.
In fact, our very spirits were made to digest these three foods, and any substitutes will not be spiritually digestible:
(1.) Digesting Scripture. The Word of God is comprised of profoundly healthy substance. Scripture is solid food with more substance than we could ever fully take in. We are to ingest the Bible by chewing, swallowing and then exercising the faith by the energy and vitality provided by these life-giving words. The Word is solid Truth, and each of us has a spirit that depends on truth. Just as John on Patmos (Rev. 10), Jeremiah in Jerusalem (Jer. 15) and Ezekiel in Babylon (Ezekiel 2-3), we are to imagine God’s words as spiritual food, and take them in. “When I discovered your words, I devoured them, and they are my joy and heart’s delight, for I bear your name, O Lord God of Heaven’s armies.” (Jer. 15:16).
(2.) Feeding on Jesus Christ. He is the Word of God made flesh, and we are created to feed on Him as the Bread of Life for us. Manna in the wilderness for the Israelites was a picture of Jesus, the hidden manna who has come down from heaven. No other person or god will satisfy our spiritual hunger. Believing He is the Truth, following Him as our Lord, and doing His will of love is equivalent to feeding on Him, swallowing Jesus into our soul and consuming a spiritual meal that will last for eternity. “I AM the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again.” (John 6:35).
(3.) Feasting on Communion. The holy Eucharist is our heavenly banquet. There is a spiritual reality to God’s presence in the Body and Blood of Jesus in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Through those physical elements we contact a divine reality, we encounter Jesus through the actions of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps we could look on Eucharist as the mystery of combining both metaphor and reality. This sacrament is a remembrance of Christ’s death, a celebration of our forgiveness, a memorial to His passion and sacrifice. But then again there is also a reality to Communion, a spiritual reality. “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the feast!” (BCP). The Incarnation revealed to us the miracle of how something physical could be spirit-bearing, so why not the elements of Communion as well? The Bread and Wine are indeed spiritual food for those who receive in faith. “Truly, truly, unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.” (John 6:53).
Jesus said that no one could come to feed on Him unless the Father drew him (John 6:44). How does the Father draw us unto Jesus? How can the Father help us each to develop an appetite for spiritual food? The Father is perfectly adept at helping us to hunger for the Lord. Of course, it takes an open spirit on our part to try to fill that hunger. But as G. K. Chesterton said in his autobiography, “The whole point of opening your mind, and opening your mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.” The same goes for our soul as we look for something solid and substantial to fill our spiritual hunger pangs.
Our search might look something like this, in which the Father is trying His best to draw us to Jesus and the Word through producing an appetite for spiritual food.
We’re starting to feel hungry. But we’re not sure what would satisfy our hunger. Nothing is particularly appetizing, and we wonder what food would hit the spot out of all the options available. All of a sudden we see a beautiful round loaf of artisan bread. We smell the rich, yeasty sourdough aroma. We touch the thick, crusty, warm loaf. And we feel the empty rumblings in our stomach. Earlier we didn’t realize we were hungry for fresh bread. But now we know. This is what we were hungering for all along. And after one small taste of its delicious flavor and texture, with a thick layer of melting butter on top, our hunger is satisfied. All it took was one mouthful to convince us.
Like those hungry people above, we were all born with an appetite, a spiritual appetite for God. Only sometimes we aren’t sure what we’re hungering for. You live your life, you seem more or less content. You’re basically a good person, you wouldn’t want to intentionally hurt anybody. You love, and you are loved, for the most part. Why look for more? Life seems just fine the way it is. You just aren’t all that hungry. But you have a vague dissatisfaction, a hint of hunger for something that would bring you more substance. You are starting to feel a hunger for something else in your life, something to sink your teeth into. You sense you need something to stick to your spiritual ribs. You ask yourself, Am I feeding my soul with something it could chew on? You sense you might be having spiritual hunger pangs.
And then, like the hungry persons above eating the sourdough bread, you start to experience something that makes you hungry for spiritual food.
You see. Maybe you saw someone who radiated joy and peace, and you wanted just a taste of that in your life. Maybe you witnessed an act of compassion that seemed to sum up the whole point of life. Maybe you met someone who seemed to have an intimacy with God that was like spreading a banquet right in front of you. Perhaps in this way you have seen the fresh bread available to you, your mouth waters, and you could almost taste it.
You sniff. Maybe you walk into a home and you inhale peace in that place. Perhaps you talk with someone and you smell a fragrance from another world, a better world. Maybe you read something that brings a flutter to your heart, a jolt to your mind, a sweet desire to your spirit. This aroma from another world, God’s world, has awakened your taste buds and whets your appetite for fresh bread.
You touch. Maybe in your hunger you shake hands with an old saint, or you get a bear hug from someone who loves you. Perhaps you are holding what might be a holy book, and you love the feel of its pages as you read them, one after the other, food for thought and the spirit. In some mysterious way, maybe a single touch has brought to mind something transcendent, a hunger for the source of such grace.
You feel. If you’re honest with yourself, your sense of hunger is now more pronounced. There is no denying your hunger pangs for something to satisfy you at a deeper level. You feel the rumbling in your spirit, the quiet growling of your soul for something with substance to chew on. Your longing for soul food points to the bread of life, and nothing else will satisfy you.
You taste. You are tentative at first. Will this bread feed my soul and satisfy my hunger? You decide to dig in with just a taste. You chew and swallow this spirit-food, and you acknowledge that your soul is somehow fed, your spirit has a glimmer of satisfaction. You wonder if your good life will now progress to a holy life. You tasted the fresh bread and now nothing else will taste as good. You know that you will want to fill your mind and spirit with this bread, and draw all the nutrition possible from it. The good life wasn’t good enough. You are now convinced that you were craving this spiritual bread all along. You seem to remember from the past someone saying something about a Love Feast. Well, this seems to be quite the Love Feast, fit for royalty.
“All of us, if we only knew it, are on a hunt for the holy, for a life that cannot be reduced to the way we look or what we do or what others think of us. We are after something – more life than we get simply by eating three meals a day, getting a little exercise, and having a decent job. We’re after the God-originated and God-shaped life: a holy life.” (Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way).