Eating As Teaching

FRI., DEC. 9, 1983, 6:11 AM
FARM, BREAK. TABLE

Yesterday, o son, was a day of eating and teaching. Now, clearly, not much is taught directly by the food, but it can become an important part of the total learning process. This shall be My general theme this morning.

First, however, I need to comment upon your reaction to an implication in My last Teaching to you… that you are not perfectly accurate in what you write down as My Teaching of any day. You like to feel that you are hearing what I say and writing it down with accuracy and integrity. You know that I correct you at times, and so you assume that I will do this always, for the sake of a proper message. Well, partly true. I do not want you to write and share ideas that are blatantly false. Yet I only influence so far. I use you, but as you are. I only ask you to do the best that you can. One consolation and assurance: if you write imprecisely or interpret some idea poorly I shall present it again, in another context, until you get it right.

Eating is fundamental to physical life and health. In all human societies eating has also become a social practice, with rituals and customs accruing. Emotions are felt as certain foods are consumed, and, yes, there are spiritual dimensions to food growing, food preparation, and eating. And now I offer the observation that eating can abet teaching.

Eating can be rather directly involved in the teaching/learning process. One of the first stories of Me, as Jesus, that you and others have learned is the one about feeding 5,000 people on a hillside with 5 loaves of bread and two fishes. I blessed and broke the bread and the fish and gave them away, and lo, there was more than enough for all. That eating experience taught that if you have something that others need, want, or from which they could benefit… and yet what you have appears to be insufficient… offer it to Me and receive My blessing, and it shall be more than enough. How I do this is truly unimportant to you. I am able, and I use My abilities in many different and diverse ways.

In the story of Me and the woman of Samaria at the well food was indirectly related to the teaching. I sent the disciples to get food, for their presence would have “messed up” the encounter. With them gone and searching for food I taught the woman (and through her, countless others through the ages) that I am the Living Water and if you “are in Me” you need search for no further spiritual source. I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And, you notice, I used water, a very essential nutrient, as a representation of Myself, so it was a fundamental part of the teaching.

Another story, embodied in the song you did last week, has Me, after My resurrection, offering the disciples “bread and fish upon the fire”. I offered them bread and fish, just as we had had on the hillside several years before. This time it taught that I had really survived the cruel death on the cross, and I could be active on the earth, even beyond that death.