“Connection is health. And what our society does its best to disguise from us is how ordinary, how commonly attainable, health is. We lose our health – and creat profitable diseases and dependencies – by failing to see the direct connections between living and eating, eating and working, working and loving. In gardening, for instance, one works with the body to feed the body. The work, if is is knowledgeable, makes for excellent food. And it makes one hungry. The work thus makes eating both nourishing and joyful, not consumptive, and keeps the eater from getting fat and weak. This is health, wholeness, a source of delight.”
~ Wendell Berry

Last Sunday the scripture for the morning was a common one to those who have spent any amount of time in the church. It was the story of the feeding of the five thousand. This scripture, often called miracle story, is the only one that appears in all four of the gospels. Scholars will tell us that it was the central story for the early Christians, the one around which they gathered and shared community and made sense of who they were. It is depicted in some of the earliest Christian art found in the Middle East.

In preparation for worship we began to try to see the ways in which the story had such meaning for these earliest followers of the Way of Jesus. One of the key elements we noticed was that it is a story of empowerment. Jesus demands that the disciples take responsibility for feeding a large number of people who have gathered to hear him teach and heal. He reminds them that they have enough right in their own circle. The miracle comes from taking what they already have and sharing it with all who are gathered regardless of what any individual may have to contribute. It is a fascinating and simple story and one we might want to hold out more often than we do.

One of the things we wanted to do was to also connect it with some modern wisdom, something that might get at people’s real lives in a real way. That is what led us to these words of farmer, writer and environmentalist Wendell Berry. As I read these words in worship on Sunday, I watched as faces softened and heads began to nod, all a sure sign that people were hearing something that made sense to them, connected to their own life experience. Believe it or not this is always a goal in worship!

The wisdom of his words have been traveling with me all week. I have wondered when we moved from thinking of food as what nourishes and brings joy to what it is we consume. I thought of my experience of the truly wonderful meals I have eaten and how almost always they were marked by simplicity, beauty, fresh food prepared with grace and love. Often by people I did not know but whose art within the food made it seem as if it was prepared by a Great Mother.

I also thought about all the people who have no tie to where their food actually comes from other than a grocery store aisle or a delivery person who shows up at their door. This makes me think of all the people who labor on my behalf, people who sweat and toil in all kinds of weather while hoping that same weather will be kind to them and their crops. Once we began(when did it happen?) to think of food as consumption we lost that connection to the greater health of a community that plants and grows and harvests the food that feeds our bodies even when it is not us who is doing the actual gardening. The local food movement is one of the ways in which we are trying to turn this tide and I am seeing changes in this consumption mindset.

Throughout time humans have shaped their lives by what we eat, how we work and how we make meaning of the two. It is one of the common experiences of walking upright and having opposable thumbs. And both the ancient story of Jesus and the modern words of Berry came to nest together for me this week. It became a true experience of carrying my worship into my daily life and having its message continue to work and find a home in me. Another goal of worship.

My sense is that it will be doing its work for a very long time.