A few months ago, I was saying grace (asking the blessing) over a meal at home. I repeated words I’d said thousands of times before: “Bless this food you have provided.” But, as I started eating, I thought about how those same words spoken by a farmer in the 1800s would have had a different context. He’d likely be thinking about the soil, planting time, rains, and lack of locusts. He knew from beginning to end in a hands-on way that his meal had been provided by God. My prayer, on the other hand, though offered from a sincere heart, was more connected to the inventory at Kroger or Aldi. Same thankfulness, perhaps, but totally different realities.
Today’s sterilized experience of grocery buying in the suburban West has little in common with those whose very lives depended on knowing when to plant and harvest, praying against pests, hail, and creditors. That nineteenth century farmer has more in common with the farmers and herdsmen of biblical times than they do with we who trail them by a mere 150 years. We get closest if we visit a farmer’s market and buy carrots with soil still clinging to them.
Sadly, we have not only lost connection to growing food, we have lost the place of food itself.
A garden paradise of food
The garden of Eden was a place of people, animals, and food—lots of food. Genesis 2 says,
And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. Then God gave them permission to eat from nearly every tree in the garden—trees that were good for food.
It is significant that the first sin humans committed had to do with food: they ate the fruit of the one forbidden tree. Adam and Eve’s sin wasn’t anger, laziness, or bitterness. It was disobedience to God, specifically by eating food they should not have eaten. The sin that condemned humanity included the misuse of a blessing God had given in abundance. Should it surprise us how often we stumble in the same way?
Two meals of blessing
The next two times we read about meals in scripture are when Melchizedek brought bread and wine to Abram, blessing him (Gen 14:17–20). It is not difficult to see—knowing that Jesus was a priest in the order of Melchizedek—a similarity to the Lord’s Table where we are blessed with bread and wine in remembrance of Jesus himself.
The next meal also involves Abraham, but this time he’s the host. As his tents were pitched at the trees of Mamre, three figures approach. Two are apparently angels who later make their way to Sodom. But the scriptures record the third is the Lord (Gen 18:1–8). After appropriately bowing himself, Abraham’s next move is to prepare a meal of curds, milk, and roasted calf, which they eat together.
After a sinful meal in the garden, the next two meals in scripture are redemptive in nature, marking fellowship between God and man. In the first, the Christ-figure blesses man. In the second, a man blesses the Lord.
Meals as a foretaste of the Kingdom
Food and meals play an important role throughout scripture. In the 23rd psalm the Lord as shepherd provides “a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” We often focus on the presence of our enemies part, but overlook the preparing a table part. The one who prepares the table is the Lord; he is the host of the meal. The Lord not only prepares the meal he shares it with us, as any host would. His presence with me in the presence of my enemies is the overlooked blessing.
Jesus eats and drinks all the way through the book of Luke. He shares meals with his disciples, pharisees, a tax collector, and all manner of sinners. So much so that he earned the nicknames glutton, wine-drinker, and friend of sinners. If you ever wondered what God would do at mealtime, just look at the ministry and life of Jesus. It seems he didn’t just eat in his incarnation, but that he loved feasting!
Following his resurrection, there is one recorded miracle (not counting his ability to come and go uninhibited by physical laws): the great catch of fish. But, there are three recorded meals: with the Emmaus disciples, with the eleven gathered, and with the eleven on the seashore. He even proved that his resurrection body was not immaterial by eating. We will not marry in the resurrection, but we will eat.
Then finally, scripture concludes with the marriage supper/feast of the Lamb (Rev 19:6–10) and the reappearance of the tree of life which bears twelve kinds of fruit (22:1–2). Given what Jesus showed us about his glorified body, there is no reason to understand either the feast or the fruit as metaphorical only.
Returning to thanks
As a result of all the biblical emphasis on food and meals, we should receive our meals as tangible expressions of the kingdom of God; he continues to prepare tables for us in the presence of the enemy.
We need food to live and most of us are totally dependent on others for every meal: someone else planted it, someone else tended it, someone else harvested it, packed it, drove it, unloaded it, and stocked it in the Produce Department at the local grocery store. When we keep these truths in mind, “asking the blessing” becomes a deep, regular expression of our absolute dependence on God and an acknowledgement of the tangible ways we receive his abundant grace.
