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2007-09-18 issue:

Food is a gift

In our concrete, day-to-day experience it seldom comes to our awareness that our food is a gift from God.

by Ron Flaming

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As the Lord the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.—1 Kings 17:1

These are the words of Elijah, a prophet of God who appeared in King Ahab’s court one day in Samaria to declare God’s displeasure at Ahab’s worship of Ba’al.

As the story unfolds, we see that God sends two ravens to bring food to Elijah in the wilderness. Later God provides a never-ending supply of flour and oil to feed Elijah and his hostess throughout the time of drought and famine.

The fact that the food people eat is a gift from God is plain to see in a Bible story like this, set in times of drought and kings who seek their own way instead of God’s. But such a story from ancient times seems foreign to us today.

You may protest if I suggest we are like Ahab in our belief about the source of our food. Afterall, he believed that crops grew because of rain sent by the storm god Ba’al. Unlike Ahab, we know correct theology. We know that God sends rain and causes food to grow.

However, concretely speaking, “commonsensically” speaking, we live like Ahab. If I ask you where you get your food, what pops into mind? From our day-to-day experience we know that food comes from a grocery store, a farmer’s market or a restaurant. Ask any 3-year-old. If we’ve taught that child to be politically aware, maybe she will know that food comes from farmers.

We are like Ahab. In our concrete, day-to-day experience it seldom comes to our awareness that our food is a gift from God.

If you are in the habit of praying before every meal, and if you know what you are doing, then you are making a strong symbolic acknowledgment of God’s gift of food. But there are two significant barriers in our daily living that act as blinders, making it difficult for us to see that our food is a gift freely given us by Creator God.

One, the food we eat is manufactured in factories, bakeries and dairies or comes to us in trimmed bunches of produce without blemish. The divine source of our food is hidden from us by modes of production, packaging and distribution.

Second, the divine source of our food is hidden from us by a consumer attitude of entitlement. It doesn’t matter to us where food comes from because we deserve it; food is our right. Food is something we buy with our hard-earned money.

Food comes to us as a natural result of our hard work. To say food is a gift is to denigrate the efforts of our hard work and that of people in the food industry who labor in the fields, factories and retail sector to provide our food. We do not see food as a gift.

Even in our efforts to feed the hungry of the world, we speak of food as a “right” for every individual. Given the framework of our Western worldview and socioeconomic system, which places high currency on “individual rights,” saying “food is a right” is an effective way to get food to hungry people.

In our economy it is by attributing rights to people that we acknowledge they are valued as human beings. In our economy the highest human values are enshrined as rights. We claim food as a right, and in our best charity we attribute that right to everyone.

We live in our mortal economy, where food has been treated as a weapon, a commodity and a right. We live in our economy and are blinded to God’s economy, in which food is a gift.
The truth is that food is a gift from Creator God. People receive food in as much as we work as co-creators with God in the divine economy of Creation. If God provides food so freely, why is there hunger in the world?

There are at least two factors at play in famines of the world today:
(1) hunger caused by natural disaster or war, where food is nonexistent or destroyed, as is evident in food shortages in sub-Saharan Africa, and
(2) hunger caused by our human economy, as is evident among the hungry in our own community or among poor campesinos in Latin America, who hunger while living in agriculturally productive areas.

One afternoon, as I volunteered at a local food bank, a woman came in looking for food for herself and her two young children. She asked if there were any fresh fruit or vegetables. But all I could do was offer the canned goods in the emergency food package and augment that with some donated bread. As she talked about the need for diapers for their young child, a van pulled into the driveway. There had been a charity fund-raising event and this van was bringing the leftovers. The leftovers included about two dozen full and half-full cases of fruit.
I didn’t see any raven’s wings or “widow from Zarephath” painted on the sides of that van, but that fruit came at the right time to help this small family.

I saw a type of event stretching all the way back to that widow in the village of Zarephath who shared food with the prophet Elijah. Food is a gift from God that is meant to be regifted. Food is a gift. Food is a gift to be regifted.

Every once in a while, something happens and the reality of God’s reign bursts into our awareness. Then we are aware of being citizens of God’s Creation economy. The trappings of our society and economy are stripped away. Then we see our daily food for what it is, a gift from God. Those who have eyes to see will see it.

How do we act as creatures of God’s economy—an economy based on gifts freely given?
If we follow the example of the man of God and the widow of Zarephath, we will receive our food as a gift from God. We will treat this gift with respect due such a life-giving substance.

We will treat it in a manner set by the example of the the Word made flesh. Remember what Jesus did when he ate with his friends. He gave thanks for the food, shared it and ate. Let us go forth and do likewise.

Ron Flaming is a member of Waterloo (Ont.) North Mennonite Church. This article is adapted from a sermon he preached there on Sept. 3, 2006.

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