Something to eat
Eucharistic Ecology
“You give them something to eat.” – Jesus[1]
We live in a hungry world, a world in which life feeds upon life in a ceaseless, dynamic exchange of sustenance. We are food for each other. And this “other” is not just other human beings. The whole of reality is just this dynamic exchange, this outpouring of life for life. Everything depends upon everything else. Everything is constituted by everything else in a radically interdependent web of being.
This is the core insight of Jesus, the implicit metaphysic undergirding his vision of the world. When Jesus says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh,” this is not just a metaphor.[2] It is statement about how reality is constituted. We are food. And it is as food, as participants in the continuous giving of life for life that we experience eternal life, abundant life. It is those who lose their life – who become food for others – who find it: life, that is.[3]
What this means is that our relationship to everything else that is, is internal rather than external. We are not like billiard balls on a table bumping into each other. We are more like branches on a vine, or fruit that grows, blossoms, falls and becomes compost nourishing the next cycle of growth, or seeds that die in the soil and are broken open to give new growth.[4]
In John’s Gospel, this communitarian, relational understanding of reality is described as a kind of inter-abiding. God is in Jesus and Jesus is in God and Jesus is in us and we are in Jesus and God is in us . . . “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”[5]
Jesus and we – through a process of reciprocal feeding in which all things participate with Jesus – are a manifestation of the divine energy of love. Beatrice Bruteau expresses this theological insight when she writes,
“The whole universe is structured and organized in such a way that all members depend on one another, they are all, in fact, dynamic processes constituted precisely by their relations to one another. It is exactly the Trinity that the universe images, which it, in fact, incarnates, embodies, phenomenalizes, shows forth, reveals, glorifies. The universe puts into flesh, into matter, the Trinitarian perichoretic Life – with its differentiation by relation, its self-sharing, its mutual indwelling – by which the nature of God is expressed . . .
The cosmos too, is communitarian, a single body of mutually feeding processes – much more like beings that are in one another than like beings that are outside one another. It embodies, in its various finite organizations and processes and its ever more complex growth, the radiant expansive nature of that which it inevitably expresses. It is a Symbiotic Cosmos, and it is the artistic expression of the Trinity.”[6]
This vision of reality gives rise to such teachings as “Love your neighbor as yourself,” “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,” and “Those who lose their life will find it.”[7] Where will we find it? In the life we have given to the other, who is not other than our self. This perception of reality is the ground of wisdom and compassion. It is the fundamental truth upon which we can build a sustainable future for the planet, based on what Bruteau calls a “Eucharistic ecology.” We can consciously participate in the reciprocal feeding that constitutes the life of the world. “Take, eat, this is my body, which is given for you.”[8]
In the famous story of the loaves and fishes, in which a crowd of thousands feed each other, the miracle is not the proliferation of food. The miracle is the conscious participation in the generosity and joy of mutual feeding. It is the miracle of waking up to reality. “You give them something to eat,” Jesus tells his disciples. Be the food that gives life to the world.
Clearly, Jesus is not limiting his vision to that of physical eating. While we all do eventually become literal food for bacteria and microorganisms that enrich the soil and nurture the efflorescence of biological life, there is a spiritual dimension to the offering of ourselves as food, as conscious energy directed to the nurture of love, joy, generosity, mercy, forgiveness – all the fruits of the spirit. These are no less real constituent elements of life for being invisible. They are tangible, if not visible, and they represent the cutting edge of the evolution of consciousness in the universe.
And Jesus did not limit the reality of inter-abiding to human beings with each other, and with God. He was baptized “into” the Jordan River, and went “into” the mountains and wilderness to pray. While there, he was with the wild beasts and the angels.[9] He invites us to learn from the birds and the lilies.[10] Jesus included all the dimensions and elements of reality in this inter-abiding.
“You give them something to eat.” That is our calling. The invitation today is to renew our vision of this mutual feeding to include all of life on earth. When we celebrate the sacrament of Holy Communion, the reality encompassed in that communion includes the bread and wine, the fruits of the earth. They are given for us, and we are given for them. In consuming them, they become interior to us, part of our identity. We wake up to the truth that they have been internal to us all along, and we to them. And Jesus continues to feed us all with his vision of reality. He is in us, and we are in him. He is still giving us something to eat for the life of the world.
[1] Mark 10:37.
[2] John 6:51.
[3] Matthew 10:39.
[4] John 15:1-9; John 12:24-26.
[5] John 17:21-23.
[6] Beatrice Bruteau, “Eucharistic Ecology and Ecological Spirituality,” Cross Currents (Winter 1990): 503-504.
[7] Mark 12:31; Luke 6:27; Matthew 10:39.
[8] Matthew 26:26; cf. Luke 22:19.
[9] Mark 1:9-13.
[10] Matthew 6:25-33.