Today is World Food Day, and as I consider hunger and food insecurity in the world, my mind turns to tracing the meta-narrative of food in the Word. The first mention of food comes very early in the Bible as part of the creation story and God’s instructions regarding food: Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.”1 And thus begins an ode to food threading through Scripture from beginning to end.
After the flood, God expands the gift of food to include everything that lives and moves. In Leviticus, we are introduced to a detailed food classification system and then God outlines the interdependence upon the Israelites keeping of covenant to His blessing:
obedience equals plentiful harvest … disobedience equals scarcity
From the commandments regarding food, through the stories of ancient kingdoms and down through the prophets, the story of feasting and food weaves in and out through the Old Testament.
We are told stories of peril in connection with food—of Job’s family being wiped out during a feast and of Queen Esther risking her life to court the King’s favour for the salvation of the Jews over the course of two banquets. We see celebration with food in the book of Nehemiah, when after the returned exiles have rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, they gather to renew their submission to God’s law—and then they are told to celebrate the holy day by enjoying choice food and sweet drinks.
Through the poetry of the Psalms, we see that God is the provider of food for all of creation and that we look to Him for He gives food in due season. God’s word becomes a spiritual fulfillment: compared to the sweetness of honey…that through God, our souls are nourished as with marrow and fatness and by listening to Him, open mouths would be filled with the finest wheat.2
In the prophets, the story shifts to speaking of food in terms of social justice, care for the oppressed, and pouring out of ourselves for the hungry. Terms of spiritual conditions and covenant keeping…of fasting in truth and future restoration.
The setting transforms yet again in the New Testament as Jesus declares Himself the Bread of Life, broken for us so that we can eat and never hunger again.3 And finally, the story ends with the future vision and promise of the wedding supper of the Lamb—to which God invites the nations!
We see this similar ode to food in cultures throughout the world. The Fulani, with whom I worked in Niger, express gratefulness or appreciation by saying “No weli kam.” The verb in the middle—welude—means it is pleasing like honey. Essentially, what you have done for me is pleasing like honey on my lips.
The sharing of food is deeper and more meaningful than the simple movement of food in our hands to our mouths. In the sharing of food with my Fulani friends—we shared joy at weddings and baby naming ceremonies, we shared grief at funerals, we popped millet kernels after the harvest and shared gratitude for a crop yielding its fruit. I learned to eat in humility and grace for all they provided me, at times out of their scarcity.
Another intriguing ode to food is the Middle Eastern ritual of sharing food: of breaking bread together to symbolize hospitality, sacred trust, and spiritual blessing—summed up in their expression of trust and loyalty by saying ‘there is bread and salt between us.’4 A sacred trust and loyalty thus entwined with peace.
Around the world, one of the
driving factors of hunger is conflict and I so wish the wars and atrocities that we see in the world today could be resolved as simply as sharing a meal in hospitality and humility one with each other: of peace between broken bread. A groaning of spirit to see the day that Micah foretold. Of swords being beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks; when instruments of war are turned into tools of harvest. Of a day when nations no longer take up sword against each other; when everyone sits under their own fig tree…and no one will make them afraid.
5
Norman Wirzba describes the significance of food as being “best understood in terms of God’s own Trinitarian life of gift and sacrifice, hospitality and communion, care and celebration .... Inspired by Jesus Christ, and empowered by the Holy Spirit, we have the opportunity to turn our homes into place of hospitality and ourselves into nurture for others. At its best, eating is a sharing and welcoming movement that makes room for others.”6
When we provide food to those suffering a disaster or catastrophe, we participate in God’s life of gift and sacrifice. We are enlarging our table to make room for hospitality and turning ourselves into nurture for those who hunger and are in need around the world. We walk alongside them to commune with them in their need.
In the past two years, The Alliance Canada, through our membership with the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, has partnered with a humanitarian aid organization in the Middle East to provide food baskets to vulnerable families living in Internally Displaced People camps. Families who have fled on-going conflict in their country.
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In so doing, we have entered into the care of those who live under threat of sword and spear and who no longer have their own fig tree beneath to sit and nourish themselves—those for whom there is no peace but rather fear. Yet as we break bread with those a world away, we proclaim an element of peace in our hospitality and relieve the fear of food insecurity. For to "feed people in the wilderness is to declare that scarcity does not have the last word.”7
Oh Lord, we entreat that our breaking of bread and hospitality will fling wide the heavenly gate, for the Great King stands at the door and knocks - to enter and eat with those who hear His voice. That as they eat of You, the Bread of Life, they will never hunger again and find in You perfect peace.8
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1 Genesis 1:19
2 Psalm 145:15-16, Psalm 104:27-28, Psalm 119:103, Psalm 19:10, Psalm 63:5 KJV, Psalm 81:10,16
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
3 John 6:48, 1 Corinthians 11:24
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
4 https://abtslebanon.org/2015/02/05/lets-eat-together/
5 Micah 4:3-4
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
6 Wirzba, Normam. “Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating” 2nd Edition. Cambridge University Press, UK. 2019. p. xi-xii.
7 Jozé Reverente, International Worker, 2026
8 Psalm 24:9, Revelations 3:20, John 6:35
Scripture taken from the Good News Translation® (GNT) – Second Edition, Copyright © 1992 by American Bible Society. Used by Permission.