Turning the Tables

SAYING GRACE (FOOD IN THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT)

Jesus is remembered in paintings, statues and stained-glass windows as a thin man. I've seen black Jesus, white Jesus, yellow Jesus and red Jesus, but I've yet to see fat Jesus. And yet for a skinny guy, he thought about food a lot (unlike the Buddha, who never thought about food but somehow got fat anyway). It's hard to know where to begin addressing all the things Jesus said about planting, harvesting, cooking, serving and eating. But I think we can get a pretty good overview of Jesus' thoughts on food from his first big sermon in the New Testament: the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew's Gospel. Critical and conservative scholars tend to agree that Jesus did not say “Blessed are the cheese-makers,” but as we'll see, he said a mouthful about food.

“You who are starving have dignity, and you will eat!” (Matthew 5:6, Paraphrased) Jesus begins the Sermon on the Mount by throwing honor around like candy to the crowd, redistributing dignity. In Jesus' time, as in ours, people who were healthy, wealthy and clever were considered “blessed” with honor and dignity, while people who were sick, poor and simple were considered “cursed” with impurity and shame. In the parable of the rich man and the beggar in Luke 16:19-26, the rich man hosts a banquet while Lazarus begs for scraps at the gate with dogs licking his open sores – which of these men would we consider more dignified?

In the Beatitudes, Jesus hands out dignity to the destitute and bereft, the helpless and hungry, the evicted and unclean, the collaborators, the battered and slandered. (Matthew 5:2-11) We can hear this as a sort of roll-call, greetings to the types of people Jesus was speaking to: You (unemployed, undocumented, unwashed and unwanted nobodies with nowhere to go and nothing to do right now but listen to me) have dignity! And you will have food! This wasn't just generous, it was also dangerous: if food and dignity existed in limited supply, promising these things to the poor would have meant taking them away from someone else (implicit in Matthew, explicit in Luke 6:25 - “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry,” something Jesus probably learned from his Mom.) Sharing dignity put Jesus in conflict with the official brokers of dignity, the chief priests and scribes.

In Matthew 5:23-24, we read “When you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.” In Jesus' day, the Jerusalem Temple was the big bank, the DMV and the credit bureau: life itself was considered a loan from God, and regular payments had to be made. The Temple was also God's cafeteria, and if you broke a Torah rule, you had to buy God lunch to make up for it. This is what's meant by a “gift at the altar” - an animal to be butchered and served by a priest. Then you, the priest, and God would sit down and eat together (God's portion would be burned). Jesus is saying here that before you restore your credit history with the big Temple-bank, give your sister back that two bucks you borrowed. You've got a lunch-conference scheduled with God, Moses and David. Tell them they can wait while you go pay your brother back for the loaf of bread you ate yesterday. They'll understand.

This short saying also highlights Jesus' central conflict with the religious system of his day: the Temple priesthood focused on peoples' individual debts of impurity, while ignoring the laws of communal support. Instead of promoting cooperation, they encouraged divisive competition for personal salvation (we see this in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, Luke 18:10-14, also in modern fundamentalist Christianity). Spiritual debt, like economic debt, fosters isolation and rivalry: every man for himself. We could read this passage as Jesus' response, that strengthening ties with kindred and community is more important than covering one's own debt to a supposedly stingy accountant God.

“Our Father in the heavens, your name be revered. Impose your imperial rule, enact your will on earth as you have in heaven. Provide us with the bread we need for the day. Forgive our debts to the extent that we have forgiven those in debt to us.” (Matthew 6:9-12, Miller Translation) Robert Miller translates the “Kingdom of God/Heaven” or “Reign of God” as “Imperial Rule,” to contrast God's just social order with Caesar's imperial rule of hierarchy and domination. No-one was forgiven for failure to 'render unto Caesar,' with his pyramid-scheme of extraction, extortion and eviction. But Jesus here prays that God's Reign will not be like that: if peasants can refrain from bullying each-other over small debts, God who owns all things can forgive greater debts.

At the center of the prayer is the request for daily bread – this is not a prayer for barns full of wheat, not a prayer for a healthy bank-balance and well-stocked supermarket, it's not even a prayer for a plot of land to farm. The Empires of Hammurabi, Pharaoh and Caesar were built on locking up food and forcing people to work for it. But Jesus hopes that the Reign of God will be different, a return to living one day at a time in the hands of God.

“Look at the birds above your head. They neither plant nor reap. They neither store nor hoard. Yet day by day God gives them food...So why worry about your life? What you will get to eat?” (Matthew 6:26, 31 Crossan Paraphrase) Many of us today believe in a separation of food and faith, sustenance and saintliness, salivation and...you get the point. I was once about to give a sermon and someone said “Remember, a lot of people out there are already thinking through a menu for Sunday brunch, so keep it brief.” They didn't need to say that. I never get to eat before church - I was starving. But they made a good point: Christianity is something some people do between toast and brunch once a week, and then spend the other hundred and sixty-seven hours asking “What am I to eat?” Jesus said it is the nations that worry about these things, the Empires that organize peoples' lives around these anxieties. Instead, work for God's Reign of justice on earth, so that nobody will have to worry about their next meal. (Matthew 6:32-33)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INVITATION

1. Revolutions

2. Galilee, The Little Breadbasket

3. Galilee In The Time Of Jesus

4. Wake Up And Smell The Kingdom

JOHN THE APPETIZER

1. Locusts And Wild Honey

2. Are You Now, Or Have You Ever Been, A Member Of The Baptism Party?

3. On A Platter

4. A Monk And A Drunk

SAYING GRACE

Food In The Sermon On The Mount

SEEDING AND REAPING

1. Lock, Stock And Barrel

2. A Prosperous Land-Owner

3. An Absentee Landlord

4. Managers

5. Sons And Slaves

6. Tenant Farmers

7. Day-Laborers

8. Subsistence Farmers

INGREDIENTS

1. Daily Bread

2. Wine

3. Fruit

4. Fish

5. Sheep

6. Water

EATING AND FEEDING

1. Dinner At Home

2. Fancy Banquets

3. Friends In Low Places

4. Wedding Feast

FEASTS AND SEASONS

1. The Sabbath

2. New Year, Atonement, Tabernacles And Lights

3. Passover And Pentecost

4. Dietary Restrictions

PRIESTS AND LEADERS

1. Pharisees

2. The Temple, Chief Priests And Scribes

3. Kingpin Of Judea

4. Tiberius, Lord Of The Flies

RECEIVING AND BELIEVING

1. The Fig Tree

2. Free Food

3. Outsiders

4. Kingdom Delivery

5. New Wine

6. Wealth And Poverty – Turning The Tables

Down And Out In Galilee (About The Writing Of This Book)

Leftovers

Appendix: The Gospel Of Thomas