Abstract
In 2012 something truly remarkable happened. I walked out of the North Carolina State Fair holding a blue ribbon, an engraved silver pie server, and a commemorative apron featuring the Pillsbury Doughboy. My recipe for “Chai Latte Pie” had won the Pillsbury Pie Championship.
Why did I enter the competition? Aside from the joy of baking, I wanted a seat at the table in my new home state. Crafting food involves the pursuit of excellence in community, testing, refining, and sharing attempts to nourish and delight. What I submitted was more than a pie; it was a fellowship offering laid on a gingham altar.
Food is complicated, however. It is tied to national, regional, and familial identities. For that reason, food involves all the complexity and brokenness embedded in the identities that people bring with them to the table. As a theologian I am drawn to the theme for that very reason. Somehow food links an eclectic range of issues, both the glorious and the tragic, demonstrating their underlying unity and their urgency. The complexity of food and its intersection with matters of faith is on full display in the articles featured in this issue.
In Mark Biddle’s “A word about . . . A call to ‘keep kosher’ today,” the reader hears a stirring reminder that foodways have always been part of living in covenant with God. Given the layered challenges involved in eating in the twenty-first century, Biddle asks what “keeping kosher” might look like in a contemporary context.
Scott H. Moore offers a timely word for a world transformed by COVID-19. His article, “Rethinking food, fortune, and misfortune: Reading Wendell Berry in a time of pandemic,” reminds the reader of the maxim: “Good fortune corrupts, bad fortune instructs.” In conversation with Wendell Berry, Moore helps the reader consider how current misfortunes might be instructive on food, sustainability, and human flourishing.
According to David W. Priddy, the life and worship of the local church has an often-missing ingredient: penitence. In “Eating with penitence: An essay on the local church eating responsibly,” Priddy exhorts the reader to rediscover how penitence might prevent the church from being satisfied with busyness or empty activism.
Correcting what traditionally has been a blind spot for Baptists, Allison Collier addresses the spiritual discipline of fasting and its value for corporate spiritual formation. Her article, “Fasting: A congregational call for Baptists to reclaim a neglected discipline,” offers biblical and historical backgrounds on the discipline, as well as practical suggestions for congregations that seek to explore this ancient path.
Christopher D. Walk offers a surprising claim in “The virtuous act of feasting as a cure for gluttony.” While conventional wisdom suggests that the best cure for gluttony is fasting, Walk demonstrates that feasting is just as important for the task. This is good news, indeed!
My contribution to the conversation is “The pleasures of food and the good life.” Rejecting the notion that faith is a joyless business with no room for bodily pleasure, I suggest that the Christian tradition is appropriately cautious about the consequences of disordered desire, while boldly affirming the goodness of God’s creation. Pleasure, then, can play a positive role in spiritual formation such that even humble onions and coffee mugs can serve as implements of worship.
Having considered the pleasures of food, the issue turns to a pair of articles that lead the reader to re-encounter bread. The first article, by John Inscore Essick, is “Preaching from ground to table: Reflections on an Eastertide sermon for Port Royal Baptist Church.” It reflects on an unusual sermon that ponders the bread consumed in communion. Inscore Essick leads the reader to pay closer attention to the food that is consumed, and the gifts that have been received. (Recipe included.)
The second essay that directs attention toward bread is “Word and bread: A theological recipe of the body and mind.” Kendall Vanderslice braids together theological argumentation and a recipe for no-knead bread, demonstrating that baking represents embodied knowledge, a kind of knowing that offers profound theological possibilities.
The conversation then turns to the public and communal dimensions of food. Jaclyn Lewis Albin, a physician and professor of medicine, provides wise counsel about the connections between faith, food, and health in “Eat to live: A physician’s perspective on the powerful role of food in a faithful life.” In it the reader discovers how churches can offer a fuller picture of wholeness by addressing the role of food in faith and in health.
Cindy Bolden, a self-described “community minister” who has adopted the restaurants and pubs of downtown Raleigh as her parish, reflects on the story of Jesus’s encounter with the woman at the well in “Hospitality at community wells: The life-giving waters of John 4:7-15.” She reflects on the boundary-crossing nature of that conversation and its implications for the Church’s engagement with the community.
Alarmed by the growing problem of food insecurity on the African content, Jackson Nii Sabaah Adamah offers a theological response in “Food insecurity, Eucharist, and community: Reading Jean-Marc Éla’s ‘shade-tree’ theology in light of Balthasar’s ecclesiology.” Here Adamah sets two great Catholic theologians in dialogue: one a liberation theologian, the other a eucharistically focused “conservative.” Adamah discovers surprising points of convergence that help to model ways to address food insecurity while remaining theologically robust.
Turning to scripture, the reader discovers a fascinating range of moments when food played a crucial role. For instance, Kenneth A. Vandergriff explores the implications of the traditions surrounding the mysterious figure of Melchizedek in “Melchizedek and the Eucharist? (Re)discovering eucharistic interpretations of the bread and wine in Genesis 14.” Despite the complexity, Vandergriff suggests that the figure of Melchizedek is important for an understanding of Christ and the bread offered at the Lord’s table.
Christy Cobb also takes the reader to the Lord’s table—specifically to the Last Supper. In “Preparing and sharing the table: The invisibility of women and enslaved domestic workers in Luke’s Last Supper,” Cobb renarrates the Last Supper to fill in details often overlooked, namely the role of women and the enslaved in preparing the sacred meal.
From the Last Supper the reader moves to the Lord’s Supper, at least as it was poorly practiced in the Corinthian church that earned Paul’s rebuke. In “The Lord’s Supper? When food and dining become determinative in 1 Corinthians 11:17-24,” David A. Steinbrenner offers perceptive analysis of what went wrong at the table in Corinth and what consequences resulted.
Finally, Eric J. Gilchrest serves up “Dinner in paradise: The fruit of the tree of life in the New Jerusalem.” Here the reader encounters the tree of life in Revelation 22, a powerful symbol of abundance and provision, a reminder of God’s good intentions for humanity.
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The practice of sharing recipes, perhaps by way of a tattered and stained 3 × 5 card, reflecting their thorough use, is, at its core, an exercise in sharing wisdom. That image captures well the intent of this collection. Each article is a labor of love, a reflection of the gifts, skills, and quirks of the one who made it, shared as a token of fellowship and good will. 1 Enjoy!
Footnotes
1.
A debt of gratitude is owed to my wife, Kelly M. J. Jorgenson. She is a magnificent copy editor whose skills improved every article in the collection. For her love and her tireless work on this project, I give thanks.