Since the
mass introduction of processed foods into the Western diet during the 20th
century a growing concern with eating healthy foods has arisen and the use of a
popular catchphrase “You are what you eat”.
The idea is if we eat healthy foods, we will be healthy. The phrase has been a part of the popular
mindset since 1942 when a nutritionist and radio personality named Vince
Lindlahr wrote a book entitled You Are What You Eat: How to Win and Keep Health
with Diet. He also developed the
Catabolic Diet where you eat nothing but foods that take more calories to
digest than they actually contain. In
the ‘60’s hippy era, promoters of the macrobiotic diet or “long-life” diet made
ready use of the phrase. They encouraged
eating grains and local vegetables and properly chewing your food to promote
long-life and prevent cancer. Their
ideas have persisted hence the arising of a lot of eat-local movements and
Farmer’s Markets selling organically raised foods. Some on the Christian side of things have
begun to promote the God-diet; if God didn’t make it, don’t eat it. They also want to push the card that spiritual health is also related to
healthy eating. If you eat the foods God
has given, you will be better related to God.
I’ll withhold comment on that, but I will note that it is quite possible
that the actual origin of the phrase is Christian beliefs.
Most
trace its origin to the 19th century German philosopher Ludwig
Feuerbach who is known for offering the most damning critique yet of Christian “religion”. In his book The Essence of Christianity he
says Christians have projected their own human qualities, values, and ideals
onto an object that they call “God” and worship that rather than experiencing
God who can be experienced with the senses.
He wasn’t too far off. There is a
huge difference between Christian “religion” and practicing the heart of
Christian faith which is our participating in the divine communion of the
Triune God of grace – the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – by means of union with
Christ Jesus in the Holy Spirit. There’s
a difference between just claiming to be a Christian who believes certain dogma
about Jesus and actually eating his flesh and drinking his blood – which is
what’s at the heart of the difficult claim Jesus confronts us with here in
John’s Gospel.
Back to Feuerbach, in an essay
entitled Concerning Spiritualism and Materialism from around 1863 he
wrote, “Der Mensch ist, was er ißt.” “Man
is what he eats”. The point he was
making had little to do with overall health but rather with a revolution of the
poor. He was saying that if there is
going to be a general uprising or revolution by the poor against the rich, then
the poor need to have a better food staple than potatoes. Potatoes lack the necessary fats for proper
development of the brain. Hence, due to
this food staple the poor will lack the intelligence to wage a revolution. He wrote that, of course, less than fifteen
years after the infamous potato famines in Ireland
and Scotland. He said beans would be a superior
alternative. Either staple the poor
don’t have much of a choice. It’s either
an underdeveloped brain or chronic flatulence?
Prior to
Feuerbach, the historical roots of this phrase and the idea that there is a
correlation between what we eat and our overall way of being may lie in the
Roman Catholic church’s doctrine of transubstantiation; that the bread and wine
of the Lord’s Supper actually change in substance from bread and wine into the
body and blood of Jesus so that one literally eats the body and blood of Jesus
to the effect of becoming one body with him.
Part of the prayer many churches read today during Holy Communion
reflects this belief:
“We offer
and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a
reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee; humbly beseeching thee that
we, and all others who shall be partakers of this Holy Communion, may worthily
receive the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, be filled
with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he
may dwell in us, and we in him.”
Roman
Catholics rightly want to stress the crucial importance of partaking of the
Lord’s Supper and our spiritual health and growth in Christ. In short, we become , whom we eat. Our tradition, the Reformed Tradition, tends
to avoid getting bogged down in the question of how we receive Christ
Jesus through participation in this meal and rather rightly focuses on the
question of who it is we are receiving with this meal: Jesus Christ the
incarnate Son of God and Saviour of the world.
In some mysterious way we are partaking of Jesus’ life and are being
nurtured by grace for faith. We believe
that it is not so important how it is we partake of him in the Supper
for no one can answer that. Rather, it
is that we are nourished by means of a spiritual/relational union with him that
changes us, transforms us, heals us each to be more as he is. It is not that the bread and wine are
transformed, rather it is that we are transformed.
It is our
belief that Jesus was referring to the totality of our relationship with him
and the Father in and through the Holy Spirit and not just the literalities of
a sacramental meal when he said: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and
drink his blood, you have no life in you.
Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I
will raise him up on the last day. For
my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood
abides in me, and I in him.” We are what
we eat and here eating means more than just the celebration of the meal of Holy
Communion. The act of eating is what
goes into maintaining our living and life-giving relationship with Jesus Christ
which involves contemplation of him, talking with him, breathing him, following
him, studying him, and obeying his command to love as he loved us. Either we are eating Christ which means experiencing
him and being transformed by him by the working of the Holy Spirit or we are eating
something else and are rather perishing.
Back to Feuerbach, taking seriously his critique of
Christian “religion” in which we more or less project ourselves onto God and in
essence create a god in our own human image to worship and serve, a god we use
to gird up and protect the social institutions we hold near and dear, a god we
use to ensure morality among people, a god whose chief purpose is to judge
between good and evil. If that is the
god we worship and serve, then we are just like it. We use the name of god coercively to protect
social institutions that we claim are instituted by it. We substitute simply being good people for
spiritual discipline and obedience to Christ.
And, we judge rather than truly love our neighbours and ourselves. Instead of bearing the cross, we bear the
gavel. So much of Christianity in our culture
is nothing more than the religion eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge
of Good and Evil rather than the fruit of the Tree of Life. When it comes to the matter of faith, the
matter of our relationship to whatever it is we call god, we are what we
eat. Therefore, we must honestly ask
ourselves what are we eating? Dead idols
foster death. Are we truly eating Christ
Jesus in a living spiritual communion with him which we experience by means of
the work of the Holy Spirit and truly taking up the cross as our way of life in
this world or are we simply clinging to blind faith and the beliefs and
practises of a dying religious institution?
Amen.