Take
and Eat, Take and Drink:
Feasting
and Fasting the Body in a Consumer
Society
The
assembly that gathers to
share the Eucharist Sunday after Sunday does its doxology as a body
embedded in
a social milieu of abundance. Members of the assembly are the church,
the body
of Christ gathered at the table of plenty. The table of the Lord is one
among
many in a fast-food nation known for its patterns of efficiency, its
penchant
for extravagant excess, and its praxis of over-consumption. This paper
will
investigate the actions of taking and eating, taking and drinking in
the
particular setting of early 21st century America. I shall
argue that
the dominant ethos of “having” poses a challenge to authentic
Eucharistic
liturgy and thwarts the church’s efforts to embody a responsible food
ethic.
I shall
proceed in four steps.
First,
I shall draw from an essay
by Patrick T. McCormick as a basis for understanding what it means to
break the
bread of the Eucharist in the milieu of our nation today.
Second,
I shall sketch briefly
the historical development of “having” in what has become a so-called
consumers
republic.
Third,
I shall look at our
Eucharistic Prayers to discover a language that promotes gratitude and
table
sharing.
Fourth,
I shall suggest what a
responsible food ethic might include for assemblies that take and eat,
take and
drink.
1. Breaking
the Bread and Drinking the Cup in Diet America
Patrick
T. McCormick’s 1988
essay, “How Could We Break the Lord’s Bread in a Foreign Land? The
Eucharist in
‘Diet America,’” presented a provocative analysis of eating and food in
our
society. He sketches the tasks that the church faces as it confronts
its own
hunger and the world’s hunger. He begins by considering the shape of
‘diet
America.’ He contends that we are ashamed of eating.
Americans’
increasing fascination
with and magical beliefs about nutrition and weight loss have so skewed
our
relation to food and meals that dieting … is becoming the ‘normal’ way
of
eating for most Americans (McCormick 44).
We do not allow
ourselves the space or the time to enjoy
dining. Meals are no longer a source of sustenance, conviviality, and
pleasure.
Working class people eat on the run and in their cars. Many waver
between
feasting and fasting, bingeing and starvation dieting. While some dine
on lean
cuisine, others live on food stamps or stand in line at the local food
pantry.
American tables are increasingly separate and unequal tables. The
affluent can
afford to eat sumptuously. “Gated communities and private police forces
sprouting
up across America are symbolic of a republic remaking itself in the
image of a
third world oligarchy (ibid 46).” The poor hardly eat, or eat poorly,
giving
little thought to nutrition or the relationship of food and health.
This
reading of the times leads McCormick to ask a series of questions.
First,
how does our growing
obsession with nutrition, efficiency, and dieting, as well as the
increasing
disparity of out tables, shape our understanding and celebration of the
Eucharist? … (H)ow does our being immersed in the ritual and customs of
‘diet
America’ affect our experience of the Eucharist? And second, what, if
anything,
does the Eucharist have to say to our contemporary food culture and
larger
practices of table fellowship? In what ways does this sacrament of
God’s
creative, redemptive, and reconciling love informs and/or challenges
the
attitudes, practices, and structures of
‘Diet America’?
What …
does it mean to celebrate
the Eucharist as food
(bread and
wine) in a place where we are increasingly obsessed with and yet deeply
afraid
and ashamed of food, where we idolize and demonize food, where we are
increasingly disconnected from the sensual pleasures of good food, and
we have
gone a long way toward losing our sense of food as a blessing that ties
us to
life and others? Or what does it mean to celebrate the Eucharist as the
body of Christ when
our diets seem to be
waging a war against our bodies (particularly against the bodies of
women),
when the ways in which we eat do not
honor our bodies, or when our eating patterns seem indifferent
to the
suffering bodies of all the Lazarusses gathered at the edges of our
tables, as
well as all the Marthas waiting on them? How are we to understand the
Eucharist
as a table or banquet at which we are united and reconciled with
enemies and
aliens in the breaking of the bread if our national and global tables
are
continuing to fragment more and more (ibid 47)?
These are undoubtedly
more questions than can be answered
even in a number of essays. McCormick’s questions point to three
horizons of
food and Eucharistic meaning. First, our hunger and our table
fellowship
promote interdependence and community rather than privatized spiritual
nourishment and religious individualism. Food has a religious and
relational
meaning. Because we are so focused on our terror over food’s calories,
we have
lost our capacity to care about those that are deprived from even a
small
portion of daily bread. We have forgotten that all bread is divine
gift.
Second, we need to reclaim our sense of being embodied.
Being a
body means that we are
sensual; that we touch, taste, smell, hear, and see other bodies, that
we rub
up against them, savor them, take in their scent, that we enjoy them,
and
suffer with them… Being a body means that we take our bodies seriously,
… that
we honor and celebrate them, that we bless and attend to them ‘in
sickness and
in health’ (ibid 50).
‘Diet America’ tends
to be unfriendly to our flesh.
Dieting “has distrusted our bodies’ natural appetites (ibid 51).
Following our
natural appetites usually leads to a balanced diet. This contrasts
sharply with
the controlled eating of dieting. Many live a roller-coaster of fasting
and
bingeing. Specifically, ‘Diet America’ is waging a war against the
bodies of women.
Recent study indicates that overweight women face discrimination in the
workplace and are paid much less than normal sized colleagues. Anorexia
and
bulimia are serious illnesses in the United States today. This has
profound
influence on our quest for worker justice, as well as our liturgical
and social
praxis.
In the
Eucharist we partake in
the body of Christ. Indeed,
we
are not only fed by, but also transformed into that body…. We are to
treasure,
honor, and celebrate our bodies and the bodies of our neighbors and
that we are
to remember our connections with all those other bodies. (Our bodies)
have
become God’s dwelling place.
(T)here
is to be no hoarding,
separate tables, or reserved seating for the rich and privileged at
this
banquet… (O)ur focus on the body is against hierarchies and in
solidarity with
all the bodies of the suffering and the oppressed…. Sharing in the one
body of
Christ means honoring and celebrating all bodies….
Taking the
Eucharist
seriously as the body of
Christ, then, means being opposed
to every form of discrimination, oppression, and injustice (ibid 51-52).
Third,
humans do not just eat. We dine. We use food to create a meal and we
fashion
the meal into a work of art. Dining is about companionship, about
expressing
and enriching our humanity.
For
these tables are not only the
places where we share our food and drink, they are also where we bring
our
stories, raise a toast to our dreams, thank God for our blessings,
welcome new
family members, and remember old friends. (Our tables) are places where
we bow
our heads to recall those without tables…. (They) are places of
reconciliation
… since it much too hard … to sit around these tables and eat with
enemies. And
they are places to bring new acquaintances and fashion them into
friends or
family, because dining is not
something we
can do well with strangers (emphasis mine).
In
‘Diet America’ … there are
increasing signs that our tables are falling apart…. Lines of class and
race
seem to be hardening. Nor is dieting drawing us together, for in
America
fasting and being skinny is a matter of status and class…. (E)ven the
ways we don’t eat in
America are based in class.
The middle class don’t eat in support groups. The poor can’t afford to
eat at
all. The rich hire someone to not eat with them. Dieting is a symbol of capitalism. It has
a venal heart (emphasis
mine, ibid 54-55)
The Eucharist points
us to a new kind of table
fellowship, a radically prophetic standard.
In the
end it was not what (Jesus)
ate or did not eat that really
got him into trouble, but who he
ate with. Jesus did not leave us liturgical directives about
eucharistic fasts,
communion wafer recipes, or the alcohol content of sacramental wine,
but he
certainly set a radical standard for table fellowship (ibid 55).
The Eucharist is about
sharing food. “At this meal we are
to ‘all sit down as one’ (emphasis
mine, ibid 56).” It challenges individual deeds and critiques social
structures.
In
short, McCormick asserts that our eucharistic theology ideally
proclaims three
things. First, the eucharistic liturgy promotes community and a shared
life of
interdependence. Sharing the body of Christ is what the embodied
community of
Christ does. Second, the eucharistic liturgy is bodily-enacted ritual
prayer.
God abides in this particular assembly of variously sized bodies. No
body is to
be excluded. All bodies matter. Third, all bodies contribute to a new
kind of
dining in the kingdom. We dine with justice in mind, with reverence for
each
person, with a commitment to solidarity, and both the individual and
common
good.
Being
the body of Christ and acting as the body of Christ trumps the norms of
class,
status, or body size. This is a rich eucharistic theology. Why does it
seem
lofty and ideal? What keeps it from being enfleshed in and becoming
normative
for our Sunday assembly and, in turn, for our society? McCormick would
suggest
that the principal obstacle is “Diet America,’ a social milieu that has
a venal
heart. This mindset promotes “having.” It is a culture of consumption.
It is
rooted in greed and in economic individualism. It has a long history in
the
United States. I shall now turn to the roots of that history, the
birthing of
the so-called consumers’ republic in the late 19th and early
20th
centuries.
2. The Beginnings
of the Consumers’ Republic
A
significant number of labor,
cultural, and social historians have studied the beginnings of the
so-called
consumers’ republic. Beginning with the first Industrial Revolution
during the
Gilded Age (1875-1901) the United States experienced unprecedented
shifts. The
first shift was paradigmatic and revolutionary. It influenced the
geographic,
demographic, ideological, commercial, and religious milieu of both the
Gilded
Age and the Progressive Era. People left the farm for the city in the
last
decades of the 19th century. The nation moved from being
rural and
agricultural and, by the census of 1920, became predominantly urban and
industrialized. Greed, a vice in post-Civil War America, gradually
became an
acceptable virtue. By the 1920s “having” what others had was nothing
more than
“keeping up with the Joneses” (Matt 42). Advertising reflected the
transformation of desire and working-class preoccupation with “having.”
19th
century mail order catalogues advertised goods that were necessary and
useful
for daily life. 20th century ads presented purchasing and
possessing
as something that gave status, significance, and self-esteem to one’s
person.
19th century Christian preachers recommended asceticism,
self-control, and the disciplining of desire. 20th century
affections eschewed envy as a vice and espoused the indulgence of
desire.
Life
would become better if
Americans, especially the working class, became consumers.
Between
1890 and 1930, success
gradually became associated with what a job allowed a man to buy rather
than
what a job allowed him to do. Consequently, many men came to envy
possessions
more than they envied occupational status. Corporate leaders and
advertisers
abetted this transformation. Business executives attempted to suppress
envy in
the workplace while advertisers tried to excite envy in the marketplace
(Matt
96).
Envy and discontent
energized the aspirations of men and
women for a higher and happier standard of life (Matt 182-183). The
second
shift entailed the nation’s perception of the rich and powerful
vis-à-vis the
middle-class, the poor, and the most vulnerable. The old business
ideals of
early 19th century gave way to an industrialized nation. The
personal integrity of individual entrepreneurs gave way to the
beginnings of
corporate America. Factories manufactured goods, railroads brought them
to the
farthest reaches of the country, and department stores and advertising
created
a consumers’ republic. The barons of business became an elite upper
class.
The
debate about class played out
in the pageant of events from 1896 and 1932, a period which deserves to
be
called the Era of Big Money…. Gilded Age captains of industry set out
to
transform themselves from mere money-grubbers into paragons of society
enjoying
all the dignity and perquisites of an upper class (Dawley 149).
The
poor, in contrast, suffered.
They spent long hours in dangerous work places, lived in inadequate
housing,
endured workplace-related illnesses, received unjust wages, and faced
ethnic
and racial discrimination. In seeking a voice, the have-nots turned to
socialism, the Catholic Church, and the union movement in order to
survive the
consumers’ republic. When Samuel Gompers was asked what the unions
wanted for
working people, he replied “more” (O’Brien 26-61). Ironically,
organized labor
began to achieve its goals (for collective bargaining and an economic
voice)
during the Great Depression, a time when most Americans lost all that
they had.
The 1935 Wagner Act offered the working poor and the middle class a
chance to
share in the consumers’ republic. This would reach its high point in
the
post-Second World War period with the demise of downtown (Fogelson
218-316),
the “malling” of America, the automotive revolution and the building of
interstate highways, the suburbanization of the middle class (McGirr),
and the
significance of advertising, especially on the young (Schor). In short, the privileged and the
powerful established the society that has become a consumers republic
and that
has birthed notions of privatized prosperity, individual well being,
and an
ethos of “having.” Powerful U.S.-based international corporations and a
mindset
of economic individualism have combined to create a global culture of
consumption. The spirit of “having-without-end” poses a challenge to
the
liturgical renewal of parishes and thwarts the church’s efforts to
embody a
responsible food ethic. The eucharistic liturgy becomes a source of
strength
for the local assembly and the Eucharistic Prayers that the assembly
prays
provide a spirituality of just faith, compassion, blessing, and
generosity.
3. The
Eucharistic Prayers: Learning an Alternative Life-Style
Ideally,
the church’s prayer (lex orandi)
should correspond to its rule of faith (lex
credendi). The liturgical texts are a theological locus
guiding the
assembly in its belief and in voicing a language of gratitude and table
sharing. Furthermore, the reciprocity that exists between the law of
prayer and
the law of faith has implications for how we live the Gospel and share
our
table fellowship with others (lex
vivendi).
The
Eucharist is a gift given to
the church. It inspires an attitude of gratitude. What is the church
grateful
for?
These berakoth-styled prayers teach a
language of gratitude for
the kind of kinship and mutuality that should characterize the
relationship of
the human and the earth community. They bespeak a gratitude for the
evolution
of grain and the gift of bread (Gittens). They point to divine
generosity. God
gives the assembly a table that groans under the weight of such
abundant
blessing. These prayers anticipate the attitude of gratitude and table
sharing
that will be fully embedded in the Eucharistic Prayers.
Second,
the assembly is grateful
for the sacramental sacrifice of Christ that has brought redemption to
all
creatures and creation. The first Eucharistic Prayer connects the gifts
of
creation with events of salvation.
Look
with favor on these
offerings and accept them as once you accepted the gifts of your
servant Abel,
the sacrifice of Abraham, our father in faith, and the bread and wine
offered
by your priest Melchisedech.
Almighty
God, we pray that your
angel may take this sacrifice to your altar in heaven. Then, as we
receive from
this altar the sacred body and blood of your Son, let us be filled with
every
grace and blessing (Eucharistic Prayer 1).
The third Eucharistic
Prayer also offers thanks for
Christ’s sacrifice. “We offer you in thanksgiving this holy and living
sacrifice.” The assembly offers “the one, ever the same yet ever new
paschal
sacrifice of Christ…. (T)he eucharistic sacrifice is offered in the
context of
a holy sacrificial meal (Irwin 2001, 40 and see chapter on sacramental
sacrifice in 2005).”
The assembly’s table
sharing manifests the attitude of Christ.
“He always loved those who were his own in the world. When the time
came for
him to be glorified by you, his heavenly Father, he showed the depth of
his
love (Eucharistic Prayer 4).” The spirit of gratitude is amply
expressed in the
Eucharistic Prayers for Mass with children.
We
thank you for all that is
beautiful in the world and for the happiness you have given us. We
praise you
for daylight and for your word which lights up our minds. We praise you
for the
earth, and all the people who live in it, and for our life which comes
from you
(Children’s Eucharistic Prayer 1).
When the assembly
shares the sacred meal, the sacrificial
covenant between God and creation is renewed and reconciliation with
God is
effected once more.
Do this
in memory of me refers
not only to the enactment of the supper, but more importantly and
poignantly to
living our lives in obedience to Christ and in imitation of his
exemplifying
for us what it means to give our lives in self-surrender and
self-sacrifice….
That the eucharist contains the sacrifice of Christ is clear; that his
sacrifice should be imitated and lived in our lives of
self-transcendence,
self-sacrifice, and service should be equally clear (Irwin 2001, 41).
In
Christ there is no east or
west,
In him
no south or north;
But one
great family bound by
love
Throughout
the whole wide earth.
In him
shall true hearts
ev’rywhere
Their
high communion find;
His
service is the golden chord
Close
binding humankind.
The
epiclesis of the Eucharistic
Prayers asks that the Spirit will effect communion with Christ and with
the
body of Christ. These prayers also express significant ecclesial
sentiments
that are synonymous with communion. These include a common bond in
Christ (“one
spirit in Christ”) that offers a “living sacrifice of praise,” and that
experiences both joy and a familial closeness.
May all
of us who share in the
body and blood of Christ be brought together in unity by the Holy
Spirit
(Eucharistic Prayer 2).
Gant
that we, who are nourished
by his body and blood, may be filled with his Holy Spirit, and become
one body,
one spirit in Christ (Eucharistic Prayer 3).
Lord,
look upon this sacrifice
which you have given to your Church, and by your Holy Spirit, gather
all who
share this one bread and one cup into the one body of Christ, a living
sacrifice of praise (Eucharistic Prayer 4).
Fill us
with the joy of the Holy
Spirit as we receive the body and blood of your Son (Eucharistic Prayer
for
Masses with Children 1).
Send
the Holy Spirit to all of us
who share in this meal. May this Spirit bring us closer together in the
family
of the Church (Eucharistic Prayer for Masses with Children 2).
Father
in heaven, you have called
us to receive the body and blood of Christ at this table and to be
filled with
the joy of the Holy Spirit. Through this sacred meal give us strength
to please
you more and more (Eucharistic Prayer for Masses with Children 3).
Communion
is not only
intra-ecclesial. It is also a gift that promotes an ecclesial mission
of public
witness, healing, peace, and holiness.
Through
the power of your Spirit
of love include us now and for ever among the members of your Son,
whose body
and blood we share. Renew by the light of the gospel the Church of N.
(diocese/place). Strengthen the bonds of unity between the faithful and
their
pastors, that together with Benedict, our pope, and N., our bishop, and
the
whole college of bishops, your people may stand forth in a world torn
by strife
and discord as a sign of oneness and peace (Eucharistic Prayer of
Masses for
Various Needs and Occasions 1).
Father,
look with love on those
you have called to share in the one sacrifice of Christ. By the power
of the
Holy Spirit, make them one body, healed of all divisions (Eucharistic
Prayer
for Reconciliation 1).
May
this Spirit keep us always in
communion…. Father, make your Church throughout the world a sign of
unity and
an instrument of peace (Eucharistic Prayer for Reconciliation 2).
Almighty
Father, by our sharing
in this mystery enliven us with your Spirit and conform us to the image
of your
Son. Strengthen the bonds of our communion… (Eucharistic Prayer of
Masses for
Various Needs and Occasions 3).
In
short, the Eucharistic Prayers
teach each assembly a spirit of gratitude for the materiality of
creation, for
the redemption accomplished by the sacramental sacrifice of Christ, and
the
communion that the Spirit fashions. In addition, the Eucharistic
Prayers
promote public witness and table sharing, a ministry of healing and
peace
building, a spirituality of joy, and a holiness of life for the sake of
the
world. These gifts are not personal possessions. The assembly does not
“have”
these virtues. Rather, the Spirit teaches the assembly “to be and to
become “
public witnesses, healers, peace-builders, joyous people, and holy
Christians.
The Spirit calls the assembly to a responsible food ethic.
4. A
Responsible Food Ethic for Today and Tomorrow
The
assembly celebrates the
Eucharist in order to deepen its closeness to Christ and its communion
with
God. The liturgy effects an attitude of gratitude and encourages table
sharing.
Communion is food for the journey. The Eucharist is “food taken at a
meal –
which reality reveals a paschal theology. It is food from a sacred meal
to
strengthen us as pilgrims on this earth until we are called to the
kingdom
forever (Irwin 41).” Christ entrusted the pilgrim church with a
mission. The
assembly is to act justly, to go beyond its own boundaries, “to go in
the peace
of Christ,” and “to go in peace to love and serve the Lord.” In short,
taking
and eating, taking and drinking challenge the church to live a
responsible
ethic (See Campbell, Jung, McCormick 2004, USCCB 2002 and 2003).
Bread
is the ‘test’ of both
worship and brotherhood (and sisterhood). For Christians, Jesus Christ
is the
Living Bread who kneads together the relationships between God and
(humankind),
between people and daily bread, between justice and love (Crockett
262).
If bread is the test
of worship and community, what might
a responsible food ethic look like?
First,
eating is a personal act.
Food, body size, and fitting in at the table are highly delicate
issues. Each
local assembly has to evaluate how it deals with those that live daily
with
food-related illnesses. This includes those that struggle with obesity,
food
addiction, anorexia, and bulimia. Do the local churches value members
that do
not fit the standards that are regnant in diet America? Does parish
leadership
honor the credentials of fat people in its hiring policies and
job-related
practices? Does the assembly consider the needs of bishops, priests,
deacons,
and laity that are physically challenged? This demands that the parish
is
thoughtful when it designs liturgical space, purchases furniture for
meeting
rooms and rest rooms, and plans for parking, walking, and gathering
spaces? In
short, does the lived theology of the church appreciate that all bodies
mirror
the beauty and largesse of God? Does the church treat every body with
reverence
and a good measure of dignity?
Second,
eating is a moral act
(see NCRLC brochures). It is people-centered. Who has a place at the
table? Who
is excluded from the table? How do we enter into solidarity with
farmers, farm
families, agricultural and migrant workers, the rural community, and
the poor?
How do we honor the presence of those that society deems of lesser
status or
class? It is worker-centered and concerned with justice. We leave the
table and
join hands with poultry workers, tomato pickers, and meat packing
workers. How
do we support organized labor in its quest for worker justice? How do
we do
public advocacy for the homeless, the starving, and those that lack
economic
citizenship?
Third,
eating is a
community-building act. Not only do we share in fellowship and
conviviality
with others at the table; we also inquire into our food system. Who
grew and
picked our food? Who brought it to superstores and local markets? How
many
miles did food travel so that we could eat? A responsible ethics of
eating
encourages the purchase of local food (Halweil) at farmers markets.
Eating is
an eco-justice act. A responsible ethic of eating suggests that we
support
organic food farming and avoid fast-food restaurants. It also assesses
our
behavior vis-à-vis global food systems and the impact of our
actions upon the
water and the soil.
How the
church lives a
responsible food ethics will determine its credibility in a world where
the
broken bread and the poured out cup are not, for many, on the menu.
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11 June 2005