Taste the Goodness

~Hebrews 6.4-7

It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace. Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God.

Spiritually, the meaning of this verse can be debated, but foodwise the analogy is clear: we are meant enjoy good taste. God's word is something we are to enjoy the taste of. (In fact, we'll see it compared to honey in the OT. Psalm 119.103 "How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!")

Sowing Generously for a Great Harvest

~II Corinthians 9.10

For God is the one who provides seed for the farmer and then bread to eat. In the same way, he will provide and increase your resources and then produce a great harvest of generosity in you.

This time a food analogy is used in relation to generosity in giving. God provides the seed, which, when sown into the ground by the farmer, will produce a great harvest. So be it!

Death like a wheat seed

~I Corinthians 15.35-38 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.

I don't understand why Paul thinks this is a foolish question. But he answers with an analogy of wheat.

Don't muzzle the ox, Mom!

~I Corinthians 9.3-4, 7-10

This is my answer to those who question my authority. Don’t we have the right to live in your homes and share your meals? . . . . What farmer plants a vineyard and doesn’t have the right to eat some of its fruit? What shepherd cares for a flock of sheep and isn’t allowed to drink some of the milk? Am I expressing merely a human opinion, or does the law say the same thing? For the law of Moses says, “You must not muzzle an ox to keep it from eating as it treads out the grain.” Was God thinking only about oxen when he said this? Wasn’t he actually speaking to us? Yes, it was written for us, so that the one who plows and the one who threshes the grain might both expect a share of the harvest.

~I Corinthians 9.11-14

Since we have planted spiritual seed among you, aren’t we entitled to a harvest of physical food and drink? . . . . Don’t you realize that those who work in the temple get their meals from the offerings brought to the temple? And those who serve at the altar get a share of the sacrificial offerings. In the same way, the Lord ordered that those who preach the Good News should be supported by those who benefit from it.

~I Timothy 5.17-19

The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching. For Scripture says, “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain,” (Deuteronomy 25.4) and “The worker deserves his wages” (Luke 10.7)

~II Timothy 2.6

And hardworking farmers should be the first to enjoy the fruit of their labor.

Our kids loved to remind me of this ox when they were mixing up a batch of cookies or biscuits as a reason for helping themselves to the dough. It's a reasonable point. Paul uses it twice. :-]

Community Supported Agriculture

No references to food in my Bible readings recently, so I'll post a report on our experience joining a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) group for this growing season. For about $400 we signed up to get a "share" of a local farm's produce from mid-May through mid-October. This means every Wednesday I have gone to a garage in Champaign and picked up my portion. Spread over the four months, here's what we got: salad greens, radishes, broccoli, green onions, basil, radicchio, daikon (radish that looks like a parsnip), Italian parsley, kale, turnip greens, summer squash, zucchini, kohlrabi, beets with their greens, fennel, slicing onions, napa cabbage, red cabbage, green cabbage, green beans, zephyr squash (half yellow, half green), patty pan squash (pale, round with scalloped edge), cubanelle peppers (the long, mild ones), sweet peppers, cauliflower, eggplant, red lettuce, Romaine lettuce, sweet corn, hot chiles, pickling cucumbers, slicing cucumbers, savoy cabbage (super crinkly), cantaloupe, onions, roma and cherry tomatoes, acorn squash, butternut squash, kuri squash, Japanese red cooking radishes, and purple beans.

Some of the weeks, especially in the beginning, were sparse due to the wet spring; other weeks had quite a bit. One good thing about this is that the selection forced me to try some vegetables I had been unfamiliar with before. It was interesting to arrive each Wednesday not knowing what I would receive. A not-so-good aspect is that there was far more zucchini, cabbage, and cucumbers than sweet corn, tomatoes, or fennel. Ah well.

All of these are good food that God grew in natural provision for us.

Eat, drink, and be merry, but not at the cost of your soul.

~Luke 12.15-21 Then Jesus said, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.” And he told this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ [Ah!] I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones . . . . And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’
“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”

So eating and drinking, both of which can come from abundant grain, are associated with being merry. Being merry is not a bad thing in its own place, but in God's place it is dangerous.

We have joined a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) this year with the purchase of a share of a farmer's harvest for this season. That means every week I pick up a bunch of local, fresh vegetables. Here's this week's haul: Italian parsley, zucchini and summer squash, Tuscan kale, radicchio, green onions, broccoli, kohlrabi with tops and a cute little cabbage. Love it!

I don't know yet if any of this is specifically mentioned in the Bible, but I do know that God made it, not a food processing plant. :-]

Herb Garden

~Luke 11.42 “Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone.

Herbs add so much flavor and variety to food. Mint is delightfully light and refreshing. Rue I know little of, but read that it has a "pleasant musky flavor" and can also serve as a bitter medicinal herb, "excellent protection against plagues and pestilence, and used . . . to ward off poisons and fleas" http://www.mountainroseherbs.com/learn/rue.php. So apparently the choice of these two would cover a range of culinary and medicinal plants. Jesus here gives no evaluation of herbs, but just a glimpse of the fact that they were commonly grown and used.

Seeds and Weeds

~Matthew 13.24-30 Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.
“The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’
“‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.

Since this is not meant to be a Bible commentary but only my search for what/how to eat, I leave out parts not related to that, like the end of this parable which actually contains its higher purpose. Looks like the main point of what is left is that there is value in seeds, not weeds. Good seed, that is, like wheat, one of the common grains of the first century Middle East and one we can easily enjoy today. I wish more people could learn to enjoy it in its more natural, whole-grain form which includes the nutritious germ and bran. It wasn't white Wonder Bread that this wheat of Jesus' day was made into.

Natural Miracle

~Mark 4.26-29 He also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”

What a beautiful reminder of how dependent we are. We plant the seed; we may weed; we harvest. And that can be hard work. But that's all we can do. The actual growing is up to God as he has designed our amazing world. Yes, we can apply fertilizer and pesticide, but really, the growing is out of our hands. It's a miracle of life, pulsing through our world every second of every day.

Let's stay here

~Mark 4, Matthew 13, and Luke 8 Story of the Farmer Scattering Seed. While a large crowd was gathering and people were coming to Jesus from town after town, he told this parable: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path; it was trampled on, and the birds ate it up. Some fell on rocky ground, and when it came up, the plants withered because they had no moisture. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up with it and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown.”

Is there anything to learn about what to eat from this familiar parable of the farmer planting? For one thing, growing crops, agriculture, as opposed to just hunting and gathering, is acceptable. John the Baptist was eating a hunter-gatherer diet, right? But if we want something more dependable and something that will allow us to settle in one place as opposed to roaming after the food, planting seed that produces a good crop is desirable.

This makes me think of an early chapter in James Mitchner's The Source, a story of the land of Palestine, from cave man days to the 1960s. The thought of intentionally trying to get a plant to grow in a certain place was revolutionary.