Word & World 33, 4 (2013) on Bread

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.

Reviews

Centre for Public Christianity (October 2013)

Among other items, the latest newsletter from the Centre for Public Christianity contains a link to an audio conversation in which Justine Toh talks to Ruth Dearnley (World Vision Australia’s campaign leader for child protection and trafficking) and Ruth Padilla DeBorst (World Vision International’s director of Christian Formation and Leadership Development) about the ethical dimensions of our eating.

Ben Witherington III on Everyday Life from a Kingdom Perspective

Christianity Today carries an interview with Ben Witherington III about his latest book, The Rest of Life: Rest, Play, Eating, Studying, Sex from a Kingdom Perspective (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012). There is also a review of it on the EerdWord blog, along with a brief summary post from Witherington himself.

The book effectively provides a final a volume in his ‘Kingdom Perspectives’ series, having previously published on worship, work, and the kingdom of God. In this one, Witherington offers theological reflection on aspects of ordinary, everyday life. 

As he summarises:

‘What we are, and what we do in life, is tremendously important to God, to the kingdom of God, and to ourselves. When we think about our Christian faith and how we spend our work week, faith should not be something that we do on Sunday, but something that shapes our worldview and how we live.’

Jamison Galt on Church Practices in Public Life: Food

Jamison Galt, ‘Church Practices in Public Life: A Global Feast’, Cardus (25 June 2012).

Cardus have started a new series on ‘Church Practices and Public Life’, which looks like it could be worth checking out as entries appear.

The editor’s note says:

‘We’re accustomed to thinking of the practices of the Christian faith as something that happens within the church, shaping those who engage in them. But we don’t always think about what it looks like when those same practices translate into and affect public life, informing society beyond the church walls. Comment asked some writers to explore this question in reference to a number of the distinctive practices of the Christian faith – like tithing, prayer, preaching, baptism, and singing – and we'll be publishing them in the coming months.’

Jamison Galt kicks off with a piece on food, reflecting on how ‘the history of the world from creation to consummation is enacted in the process of making bread’.

Some excerpts:

‘Food is central to who we are as human beings and communities; our food practices comprehend nearly everything important that we do in life: from the time we nurse as babies until our last meal we will use food to celebrate, to mourn, to court a spouse, to explore other cultures, to pursue health or its opposite, to medicate, to experiment, to delight, to worship. Food is present in most of what we do in life and food both shapes and expresses our personal habits and cultural values.’

‘The Christian story in the Holy Scriptures is where we should start in looking for the meaning of food. Food is central in the first scene of the Bible; it’s central in the last... If we’ll allow this story to shape our personal stories, we’ll find a way forward for feasting as Christians and in the public realm.’

Tim Chester on Eating and Drinking with Others

Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission around the Table (Wheaton: Crossway, 2011), 144pp., ISBN 9781433521362.

IVP are publishing this in the UK. Meanwhile – to whet the appetite – Crossway make available an excerpt as well as an interview with Tim Chester around the topic of the book. It’s about the significance of eating with others – in the ministry of Jesus (particularly as portrayed in Luke’s gospel) and as part of the shared life and mission of Christian communities today.

Here are some paragraphs from the Introduction:

‘This is a book about meals. But the meals of Jesus are a window into his message of grace and the way it defines his community and its mission. So this book is about grace, church, and mission. But meals are more than metaphor. They embody God’s grace and so give form to community and mission. We can’t get away from meals.

‘If I pull down books on mission and church planting from my shelves, I can read about contextualization, evangelism matrices, postmodern apologetics, and cultural hermeneutics. I can look at diagrams that tell me how people can be converted or discover the steps required to plant a church. It all sounds impressive, cutting edge, and sophisticated. But this is how Luke describes Jesus’s mission strategy: “The Son of Man came eating and drinking.”’

After the Introduction, the book is divided into six chapters, looking at meal scenes in Luke:

1. Meals as Enacted Grace: Luke 5

2. Meals as Enacted Community: Luke 7

3. Meals as Enacted Hope: Luke 9

4. Meals as Enacted Mission: Luke 14

5. Meals as Enacted Salvation: Luke 22

6. Meals as Enacted Promise: Luke 24