Proper 15 Year B

Proper 15

Proverbs 9-1-6
Ephesians 4. 25-5.2
John 6: 35, 41-51

‘You are what you eat’, so the saying goes. Our modern western culture is wise to the fact that food is not all the same, and will not all be good for you. We are now very anxious about food additives, very aware of possible allergies to food that might normally be thought nutritious. We spend a lot of time worrying, rather literally, about where the next meal is coming from. Was it organically grown? Did it start life too near a motorway? Will its deceptive rosiness mask the slow pollutants it contains? Not all cultures have quite that luxury. Our children have food fads, sometimes encouraged by us, in case of allergic reactions, but some children suck helplessly at empty paps, or scavenge the streets for almost any- thing that will fill the aching void in their bellies. Their version might be, ‘You are if you eat.’ We who pick and choose and read every detail of our supermarket labels still showed a tendency to be shocked when an African country recently refused food aid if it had been genetically modified. In every culture and at every time, food has been one of the main obsessions of human beings, though we might be unusual in the West in being a culture obsessed with not eating, rather than eating...

Taken from Lectionary Reflections – Year B by Jane Williams