Eating and Drinking

Over the past year or so, I have been listening to the sermons from Mars Hill Bible Church, Rob Bell's church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I am amazed week after week at what the speakers have to say (Rob Bell, Ed Dobson, Kent Dobson, and many guest speakers). Every time, they seem to bring up things in a way I have never thought of before!  Today, I listened to a sermon by Ed Dobson from August (I'm a few months behind!) called The Sacred Obligation of Eating. It was the sermon for their communion Sunday. He raised some interesting ideas, although I'm not sure I understand what the main point was. In Genesis, he pointed out that sin came into the world through eating. Then he showed in Matthew how Jesus asked his disciples to remember him through eating. And the Tree of Life from Genesis shows up again in Revelation. I thought that was very interesting. He said in Genesis we have "paradise lost" and in Revelation "paradise regained."  And in the middle is Jesus and what he did to restore the world. And we are supposed to remember what he did by eating and drinking.  Here is something I have been wondering about since I started looking into first century Jewish culture: They all ate bread and drank wine. That was a normal meal. So when Jesus asked his disciples to "do this in remembrance of me," did he mean a special meal like the Passover, or did he mean every time they ate?

Another topic in the sermon is giving thanks for our food. He points out that from a Jewish point of view, asking God to bless the food is absurd, since God has already blessed the food when he sent the rain and caused it to grow. Instead, they bless the God who has already provided the blessing of food. It reminds me of The Fiddler on the Roof when they ask the rabbi if there is a blessing for a sewing machine and he answers that there is a blessing for everything! If we remember the source of all good things, of course, there is a blessing for everything!

Blessed is he who gave humans the intelligence to invent computers and the internet.