The latest issue of Word & World is devoted to ‘Bread’. The content (with main articles and abstracts as below) is available from here.
Editorial
Frederick J. Gaiser
On Eating
Articles
Jeff Wild
Anniversary Bread
David Beckmann
Bread for the World: What Pastors and Christians Need to Know about Hunger Today
Worldwide, hunger is retreating. Still, a staggering number of people live in perpetual hunger. Jesus and the prophets call us to respond, and together we can make a difference. But concerted action is required. Donating one can of food at a time, be it ever so useful, will not be sufficient to meet the crisis.
Rebecca P. Judge and Charles Taliaferro
Companionable Bread
Do U.S. trade and agricultural policies promote “companionship” (the “sharing of bread”) with other nations and peoples, or are they ways to exercise control over the bread supply to the detriment of others? The question does not permit an easy answer, but even raising it is important in our consideration of our role in an imperfect world.
Peter Speiser
Farm, Bakery, Table: Reflections on a Path of Daily Bread around the Globe
Participating in the production of our “daily bread” – whether rice in Japan, baguettes in South Africa, or lavash in Armenia – produces not only social and economic insights but theological ones as well. God provides for our physical needs, and Jesus, as the “bread of life,” satisfies even more than the rumbling of our stomachs.
Walter Brueggemann
Food Fight
The “food fight” extends throughout the Bible – the struggle for food between those who have much and those who have little. The fight betrays two contrasting ideologies or theologies about food: the conviction that the world is a closed system of limited resources versus the view that the creation is a process open to the continued gifts of a God who is anything but parsimonious.
Pamela Fickenscher
From Catherine to Katniss: Disordered Eating, Resistance, and the Eucharist
In a culture of bread and circuses, when some are obsessed with food and bodies but seldom name God as the source of nourishment and growth, the Christian community has the opportunity to celebrate and proclaim Holy Communion – the “body of Christ” – in life-giving ways that resist the reduction of food and bodies to market consumption.
Susan E. Hylen
Seeing Jesus John’s Way: Manna from Heaven
By using manna as a metaphor for Jesus, John points backwards to understand Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection as part of the Jewish story that begins with the exodus; John also points forward to the Eucharist, allowing those who partake of Jesus as manna to walk as Israelites and disciples whom God feeds with the bread of life.
Bryce Johnson
The Bread of Life
A community bread oven can be a way to gather members of a congregation and the broader community. In the oven, people bake the “bread of life” – both for their own use and the Eucharist – and they become the body of Christ in a new way.
Frederick J. Gaiser
Which Bethlehem? A Tale of Two Cities
Two stories of Bethlehem (the “house of bread”), back to back in our present Bibles, contrast the ugly consequences of hospitality denied (the Outrage at Gibeah) and the delightful consequences of hospitality given (Ruth). The hospitality granted Ruth leads even to the messianic line of Jesus – a remarkable promise to us and a lesson for our own behavior.
Face to Face
Christian Scharen
Vocational Formation for Ministry: The Need for Contextual Reflection
Walter Sundberg
Vocational Formation for Ministry: The Need for the Classical Disciplines
Texts in Context
Shauna K. Hannan
When Scripture Speaks out of Both Sides of Its Mouth: Dueling Preachers on a Faithful Food Ethic
So which is it? Do we, with Scripture, enjoy the abundance God has provided? Or do we, with Scripture, practice care for those who suffer hunger? Before we get to a too-easy “both,” we should think more deeply and theologically about the implications of each.
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