2015 Reports

Waiting for One Another at The Table of Hospitality: A Pauline Confrontation with the Anxiety of Food Self-Righteousness

Fici, Christopher Lawrence

In this final meditation for our Idol Meat and Vegetables: Toward a New Testament Theology of Food course, I want to integrate, confront, and lay a path towards transcendence over this anxiety which is present in our own contemporary food story and in the food story of the Bible. The anxiety present throughout the food story of the Bible is a reflection and expression of how we as human beings, and also as planetary beings of the Earth, struggle to overcome our tendency towards disorder in relation to the food we need to survive and the act of eating in which we need to thrive. The fulcrum of this anxiety pivots between concerns of righteousness against self-righteousness in relation to our personal and communal practices of producing, distributing, and consuming food. The anxiety which is produced prevents us from eating together at the table of hospitality, in a kind of intimacy which is life-giving to the matrix of the body, mind, and spirit.