Disciples, Apostles, and Saints!
This summer, I’ve made a big deal of eating. The way I’ve put it is “eat well, preferably together.” You might take this as me being a bit food-obsessed, but it is based on two related concepts that are central to Jesus’s teaching and ministry.
Jesus eats with so many people and with so much gusto that his critics call him glutton and a drunkard. You don’t usually earn that reputation by eating out once and maybe having a couple sips of wine. He keeps “getting caught” eating and drinking with people. Food, and particularly eating with other people, is a central aspect of his ministry. Eating together allows us to embody that ministry. Every meal can be a feast and every feast bears the marks of the holy.
I’m also conscious that not everyone has someone to eat with. And I’ve tried to make this call to eating together something that all of us can try to do. But I think even this bears a second quality of Jesus’s ministry I think everyone can embrace. And that is to find the joy that can come with eating well. And what I mean by well is by choosing to make one’s meal into a feast. A drive-thru burger can be a feast if treated as an opportunity to find joy, because what makes a feast a feast is not expense, volume, or participants, but the desire to celebrate and en-joy what we are doing.
These are two spiritual disciplines we can cultivate to enrich our faith. By eating (feasting) and preferably, doing so together.
With love,
Drew