Revd Sue Pegg writes:
Sing the young Orphans in the Musical Oliver who dream of some relief from the gruel they are served day in day out by the kitchen staff of the Orphanage they are forced to live in.
The story is one of many written by the author Charles Dickens in an attempt to draw Society’s attention to the terrible conditions of the poor in Victorian England in the hope to improve them.
Food of course is something we all need in order to survive and our bodies can only live for a few weeks without it. However in modern day western Society we’re constantly warned not to over indulge in food and to ‘ eat the right sort’ cutting down on fats and sugars as too much of them can result in health complications.
In Church life, I have to say, I’ve found ‘cutting back’, isn’t an easy thing to achieve as tea and scrumptious home baked cake appear at every opportunity, and for me it takes a great deal of will power to limit consumption – a lovely problem to have but not so easy to refuse excess food.
Whilst working in rural churches, particularly in the arable crop growing lands of Yorkshire, Harvest Festivals I found were times of great celebration as the crops are safely gathered in and, as one farming friend explained, “here in England although there are good years and not so good, the Harvest has, as yet, never failed completely” as is the case in many parts of the world. So, with that in mind our Christian communities continue to celebrate Harvest whilst acknowledging the importance of sharing our prosperity with those less fortunate in our Society and worldwide still goes on.
But I’ve become interested in whether food should continue to play an important part in Christian mission as the sharing of food, especially on Feast Days has been in evidence throughout scripture.
In the Old Testament there are seven official Sacred Annual Festivals mentioned. They began in Springtime with the Passover, followed by the Festival of Unleavened Bread (interestingly lasting some seven days- imagine all the extra calories involved with that one ! ), then of Trumpets, of Atonement, of Tabernacles – or Shelters, and finally the ‘Festival of the 8th day’ in late autumn. All these involved God’s people meeting together and doing lots of communal celebrating and eating.
Sacred dining foods of wheat, barley and beans , bread and raisins, almonds, cucumbers and dates and others are all mentioned in Old Testament scripture and suggest that God’s people were acutely aware that food was a blessing from their creator and the two couldn’t be separated.
Moving on to the New Testament I suggest scripture becomes full of references to food. Although adult earthly Ministry for Jesus begins with him fasting for forty days in the desert it’s not long afterwards that we hear of him being at a wedding reception and performing the first miracle of changing water into wine. Some time later we read of the feeding of the five thousand, meals with fishermen, tea and cake with friends, even inviting Zacchaeus to come down from the sycamore tree (Luke 19) and have tea with him (according to the well known children’s song anyway) perhaps in order to get to know him better. Infact so much of Jesus’ ministry, especially relationship building seems to have been revolved round food that I found myself joking with Christian friends that maybe Jesus was the first Methodist as he always seemed to be meeting up with old friends and forming new relationships with others through food sharing and conversation.
Perhaps then the combination of the two, food for the body and for the Soul being linked together is something considered to be of paramount importance by John in his Gospel writing. He firmly places it on record that when Jesus referred to himself as the ‘bread of life’ he is keen for disciples to note they are not to put their whole emphasis on one or the other , something borne out in his visit to the sisters Martha and Mary (Luke 10).
From the early days of Methodism there have been and still are, many examples of uniting the two elements in Mission through a Love Feast, or Agape. The Methodist Agape, a Christian fellowship meal recalling the meals Jesus shared with disciples during his ministry, expresses the closeness of the fellowship enjoyed within the body of Christ. Prayer, praise, scripture reading and faith sharing testimony may be included and also the sharing of the Love Feast cake and Loving Cup. After the time set aside for worship a ‘ shared lunch’ often follows with a sharing in a variety of dishes for a meal, contributed to by everyone continues the time of bonding within the Christian fellowship.
In the past years Methodism has, for the most part continued in linking together food for the body and soul through a variety of celebrations, including Church anniversaries of one sort or another. From childhood I recall Whitsuntide Festivals when the congregations of local chapels would take part in a procession around the area each proudly following their Sunday School Banner. After a time of praise and worship together at the end of the walk and in a gathered place, the festival would end with what was commonly referred to by the children, as a ‘ bun fight’, a church tea party, with lots of cake.
Sadly in many parts of the country such celebrations are become much less popular than they were and even in rural areas, where much food is grown and animals kept, I’ve noted that in my own experience, there tends to be a scarcity of such festivals celebrated with the Pandemic of recent times only adding to the abolition of these occasions.
But I’ve also observed that worship on village greens in the open air during the spring and summertime with some sort of refreshments provided after worship are still much in evidence and are often ‘ dipped in to’ by tourists visiting the area and local dog walkers, becoming an effective form of outreach and mission. In other rural situations lambing services and Plough services and others give opportunities to bond worship, food and mission.
I’ve found Tea and Toast breakfast projects where passers by, including young parents, who have been returning home after taking their children to school are invited for a simple free meal in the church hall have proved popular and the church is given an opportunity for relationship building with many in the village or local community. It also has meant the chapel building is used as a useful resource for mission on weekdays.
More recently in one of the rural communities I work with we looked into some way that we could get to know better those of other Christian denominations in a relaxed setting and have been holding well attended Afternoon Teas in the hope that cream buns could help ‘bond us together’ as Christians. Certainly chatting over tea and cake proved to be an opportunity for Christians from the local Methodist, Roman Catholic and Anglican churches to form friendship and talk freely about faith issues.
I’ve also discovered that a free simple lunch of soup and a bread roll offered to all following our weekly coffee morning to those who were already in our church building for mid morning refreshments or attending the local Community Library alongside it, doubled our attendance at the informal Bible Study held immediately afterwards. Together the projects offered Food for the mind, the body and the Soul. The Methodist Church initiatives of Suzanna’s Table and others such as New Places for New People are successfully doing this in more structured ways.
Ice Cream Sunday (with the alternative spellings of Sonday, or Sundae) has also has attracted newcomers to worship and a (chocolate) ‘Brownies for Breakfast’ celebration has enticed more than one local Uniformed Brownie Group to worship with the Sunday congregation of the rural village chapel and provided a fun and Missional opportunity to faith share.
Other successful links as food, mission and evangelism unite have been borne out across multiple Christian denominations through the Alpha Course and Messy Church initiatives in recent years and I suggest that the conversations whilst eating together have probably equalled in importance with the teaching element. Certainly it is thought that eating together has numerous benefits including reducing stress and anxiety and reducing loneliness and isolation. All these through a variety of projects can offer physical, emotional and prayerful support to those in need and form an integral part of the pastoral mission and outreach of Christian communities.
The recent success of the BBC’s series of Pilgrimage where a small group of pilgrims walk and talk together and while doing so are encouraged to discuss faith issues as they visit sites of religious interest and live in community for a time, has heightened the beneficial links between health, food and faith sharing. Many of our rural church communities are already acutely aware of the benefits of offering refreshments to walkers and some have already used chapels as sites of religious interest. Perhaps for others the BBC’s series could prompt more rural circuits to open up a set route for pilgrims which included them visiting the chapels not only as places of historical and religious interest but also an aid to providing new exciting opportunities for faith sharing and prayer ?
All of this seems a long way off the Cold Jelly and custard dreamed of by the Victorian orphans in the author Charles Dickens writing and of the more formal setting of the sharing of bread and wine through the Sacrament of Holy Communion in our chapels but maybe both can remind us of the important bond between food for the body and the soul and encourage us to further explore the opportunities for mission and of offering the ‘ life in its fullest’ (John 10:10) promised by our generous God through Jesus to those around us in our rural communities.
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