Food that Never Rots

(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: https://brothersinchristcmf.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Mass-Blog-for-the-18th-Sunday-of-Ordinary-Time-2024.mp3)

How humans treat food is a good standard by which to compare us 21^st-Century consumers to our biblical ancestors. Today’s well-fed populations tend to live to eat more than we eat to live. Contrast this with the people Moses led out of slavery and into a food desert, when they said,

“If only we had died at the LORD’s hand in the land of Egypt, as we sat by our kettles of meat and ate our fill of bread! But you have led us into this wilderness to make this whole assembly die of famine!” (Ex 16:2-4, 12-15)

So, God finally put them on a manna and quail diet—which they had to gather each day FOR each day’s meal. No storage for future meals allowed—except for the Sabbath day, on which they were not allowed to work. Only THEN were leftovers allowed and eatable. Anyone who tried storing up a batch of manna to ensure a week’s supply would find it turned stinky and wormy.

If you “say grace” before meals, you might recognize God’s philosophy on feeding our needs:

“Give us this day our daily bread.”

Grace is supported by a daily supply of faith in the belief that God will provide. Despite their constant grumbling, the desert-bound Israelites stayed fed for 40 years until reaching the land of Canaan—whose produce finally replaced their manna diet.

The section of Exodus from which we read Sunday couldn’t contain ALL the grumbling these people aimed at Moses, though. If you ate nothing but manna day after day, how would YOU feel?

The full account from Exodus kind of sugar-coats the experience, comparing manna to coriander seed—with a taste “like wafers made with honey.” The Book of Numbers, on the other hand, likens the flavor to “fresh oil” and describes how the Israelites were able to make it into a fun food:

“The people would grind it between millstones or pound it in a mortar, then cook it in a pot and make it into loaves, with a rich creamy taste.” (NUMBERS 11:8)

Who wouldn’t like a cake with “a rich creamy taste?”

Sunday’s gospel reading from John shows us a people who REALLY liked the food Jesus fed them. They had just eaten their fill of the loaves and fish Jesus multiplied and distributed. They were SO satisfied that after he left, they went looking for him. They wanted to ensure a steady food supply.

Upon finding him, they asked that he give them this food always. They might as well have asked him to do what the devil challenged him to do while Jesus was preparing for his ministry during those 40 days in the desert:

“If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread.”

Jesus disarmed the devil, saying:

“One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.”

Similarly, Jesus tells those hungry people he just fed,

“Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. … I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.” (Jn 6:24-35)

Like the people who feasted on manna cakes in the desert, we need DAILY bread. God appreciates our appetite, too. Prayer is the bread we bake from God’s raw materials, and if we share the fruit of our labor with others every day, we’ll never grow hungry. We Twenty-First-Century foodies just need to reinvent our live-to-eat mindset. Paul tells us how in Sunday’s letter to the Ephesians:

“Put away the old self of your former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self, created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth.” (Eph 4:17, 20-24)

Through the Gospels, multitudes continue to be fed living bread infused with God’s way, truth and life. If we live to eat THAT food, we become what we eat for other consumers. That’s a food chain without expiration dates.

–Tom Andel