Many religions include a spiritual practice around eating a communal meal (The Eucharist, the Passover Seder) or not eating (fasting for Ramadan, Yom Kippur, or Lent). Eating together at a church potluck, or being mindful of the ethics of what we eat are common ways Unitarian Universalists participate in this spiritual practice.
I’m talking today about spiritual practices around food, eating, or not eating.
Spiritual practices are those activities we engage in, to help us advance and deepen the spiritual dimension of our lives. Activities that invite us to contemplate and form more certain answers to the spiritual questions of Identity, Purpose and Meaning: Who am I, What Should I do, and Why does it matter.
A spiritual practice is a practice, meaning it’s an activity we engage in regularly, probably on a schedule like every day, or every Sunday.
And a spiritual practice is holistic, intentional, and ecstatic.
Holistic, meaning it involves all of our being: mind, body, spirit; mental, physical, emotional.
Iintentional, meaning that we undertake the practice conscious of our spiritual purpose.
And ecstatic, meaning ecstasy in the spiritual sense, that through this practice I am developing that part of my being able to experience losing my ego-identification and feeling myself at one with all existence.
We sometimes think of spiritual practices as very specialized, narrowly spiritual activities, like praying, meditating, or worshipping at a home altar. But many kinds of activities could be a spiritual practice. One of my purposes in this sermon series is to help you find a spiritual practice that fits with your personality and interest and theology. People have spiritual practices of painting, or cycling, or knitting. Nearly anything can be a spiritual practice but not everything, automatically is.
A spiritual practice is, for you, spiritual, and a practice, and a practice that is holistic, intentional, and ecstatic.
Everyone eats. Most of the time eating is not a spiritual practice for most people. But many spiritual practices do involve food: ritual meals, ritual foods, eating or not eating.
Think of the ritual meal at the center of Christian worship, the Eucharist, or Communion as it’s sometimes called. A ritual recreation of the Last Supper with Jesus and his disciples, also called the Lord’s Supper.
The meal is described in all four of the gospels. Here it is in Luke (Luke 22:17-19)
After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, “Take this and divide it among you. For I tell you I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”
Because Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me” Christians recognize this passage as a commandment to re-enact the Last Supper meal ritually as part of Christian worship.
The word Eucharist is Greek. It combines the word Eu which means well or good, with the word Kharis, which means grace. Eucharist means, “to give graciously” or as we might say, Thanksgiving. The Eucharist is a Thanksgiving meal, every week, at the altar.
Is it a spiritual practice? Yes. Spiritual. A regular weekly practice (or more or less often depending on the faith tradition). Holistic in that the mind, and body, and spirit are all engaged in the ritual. Intentional. Yes, the Christian knows exactly why they are coming to the altar and prepares in various ways. And ecstatic. Well yes, for some, at least potentially.
The Last Supper is also, according to the gospels, a Passover meal, a Seder.
The Seder, in the Jewish Faith, is a ritual remembrance of the Exodus Story. Seder means “Order” or “Procedure” in Hebrew, referring to the ritual way in which the meal is conducted and the story told through the Haggadah
Despite a series of plagues demonstrating God’s power and inflicting hardship on the Egyptian people, the Pharoah refuses to release the Hebrew people from their captivity.
Finally, on the evening of Passover, God plans to kill the firstborn male of every family. But he will spare the Hebrew people if they sacrifice a lamb and mark the doors of their homes with the lamb’s blood.
The horrible night comes. The agony and anger of the Egyptian people is so great that Moses leads his people to flee. They have no time to wait for bread to rise. They escape into the desert.
The Seder plate contains a collection of symbolic foods representing the elements of the story: matzoh cracker, symbol of the hurry in which they were forced to leave, salt water and bitter herbs for the tears and bitterness of forced labor, a lamb shank to remember the sacrificial lamb.
Christian communion is a miniature Passover meal. The remembrance of Jesus’ sacrifice, the lamb of God, his blood poured out to mark us for life, an escape from the bondage of sin; the bread, his body; the wine, his blood.
Today we are in the midst of a different Jewish holy time. We are in the midst of the High Holy Days, the period from Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, or “head of the year” literally (rosh ha shanah) to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
The High Holy Days are a time for self-reflection and honest appraisal. What happened in the previous year? Where did I fall short of the ideal person I strive to be and the expectations others have for me? For what do I need forgiveness? Who can forgive me – a specific person I have wronged, or for more general sins, only God. The High Holy Days end with a recommitment to be the people we are called to be, and a prayer that God will write our names in the book of life for another year.
Yom Kippur is marked not with a dinner but with a different kind of food ritual: a fast. Nothing to eat. The religious purpose is to redirect one’s attention from the physical to the spiritual. From sundown on Tuesday through sundown on Wednesday, the observant Jew will partake of a complete 24-hour fast. No eating. No drinking, including water. And also a “fast” from other actions which might draw focus toward the body like bathing, or wearing overly comfortable of fancy clothes, or putting on perfume or lotion, or having sex.
Lent, in the Christian calendar, involves a 40-day fast, not a complete fast, but meat-eating is forbidden and a general, “giving up” of bodily pleasures. Parallel to Yom Kippur the spiritual task of Lent is to contemplate one’s sins, ask for forgiveness, and make oneself worthy of the promise of new life at Easter.
The Ramadan Fast is the Islamic equivalent of Yom Kippur and Lent. Twenty-eight days of fasting during daylight hours, broken each evening, and again each morning if you get up early enough.
Religious rules about eating or not eating are a common way to redirect one’s thoughts from the material to the spiritual. Because everyone eats everyday, if you aren’t eating a certain food, or skipping a meal that others are eating, or your food must be prepared or blessed in a certain way, you have a strong and regular reminder of who you are, what value you are upholding, and to recommit by act of will to the spiritual purpose justifying your food choice.
Mormons don’t drink alcohol, use any form of tobacco, or stimulants, like caffeine. All according to a teaching from Joseph Smith called, “The Word of Wisdom.”
Seventh-day Adventists are primarily vegetarian following a vision from one of their founders, Ellen White. If they do eat meat they follow the same kosher restrictions on meat that Jews observe.
Kosher rules are extensive. You probably know that observant Jews don’t eat pork or shellfish. But there are dozens of other kosher rules applying not merely to forbid specific foods but also how permissible foods are farmed, raised, harvested, slaughtered, stored and served.
Halal and Haram are the Islamic equivalent of Kosher and non-Kosher, meaning permissible and forbidden.
Perhaps you already have a spiritual practice around food.
Perhaps you say a prayer of thanks before each meal.
When I first moved out of my family home and my parents still lived in Santa Monica, I and a friend of mine had a regular date to have Sunday dinner at my parents home. I wasn’t thinking in spiritual terms at the time, but it was a king of spiritual practice. Regular. Holistic. Ecstatic, if my mother made her famous meatloaf. And spiritual in the sense that it was at the service of the value of fellowship, community, and family.
Many Unitarian Universalists have made food rules for themselves similar to kosher laws. You probably have some rules yourself, although you may not have thought about your food rules in a spiritual way.
For health reasons there may be some foods you don’t eat. A lot of folks who aren’t Mormon also don’t drink alcohol, or smoke, or avoid coffee. Perhaps you have a known food allergy, or a disease like celiac disease. Or perhaps you just notice that you feel better when you refrain from certain foods. I stay away from milk and ice cream because I have a lactose intolerance. That’s one of my food rules.
Or there might be some foods that you deliberately do eat, because you know they’re good for your health, even if you don’t like them.
Searching for the certified organic label on fruits and vegetables at the grocery store is much the same as looking for a certified kosher label.
For ethical reasons you might follow food rules like purchasing fair trade products whenever you can. Or you might choose a vegetarian or vegan diet for the ethical reason of reducing animal suffering.
Because you care about the environment and climate change you might choose to eat locally-sourced foods whenever possible, to reduce the carbon produced through shipping on trucks and boats. Or you might choose to not eat beef because of the impact raising cattle has on land use, growing grain for feed, and the methane cows produce through their digestion. Or you might be conscious about reducing food waste and composting what you can.
Could your eating choices be a spiritual practice? Well they might, if you choose to make them so. Making food choices based on health, or ethics, fellowship, or a social concern like climate change all engage with the spiritual questions of who am I, what should I do, and why does it matter. Being intentional about spiritual purpose is one of the factors that re-creates an activity we already do anyway into a spiritual practice.
And that brings me to where I want to end this morning.
We’ve been talking so far about the kinds of spiritual practices that people do together with others in the context of their spiritual community. Spiritual practices like worship, or congregational singing, or eating a ritual meal or fasting as a group while spending the day at Temple.
But eating is also an individual activity. You can make a spiritual practice of eating while alone, just yourself and the plate in front of you. This food, this way, at this time.
So for the next few weeks, I’ll turn from spiritual practices done in spiritual community to individual spiritual practices, the practices most often done alone and in private.