Wine, Bread, and Fish
Friday, June 6, 2025
The first meals Jesus shared with his community included bread and fish, while a meal of bread and wine became the official meal of the church. Father Richard explores the importance of each:
The tradition of table fellowship shows up in many places in the Christian Scriptures—for example, the several loaves and fishes accounts in the Gospels (Matthew 14:13–21, 15:32–39; Mark 6:30–44, 8:1–10; Luke 9:10–17; John 6:1–13). Scholars say now that even while Jesus was still alive, there seemed to be two traditions of open table fellowship: one of bread and wine, the other of bread and fish. The bread and wine finally won out—that meal is what we call the Mass today in the Roman Catholic church.
But the bread and fish stories also point to an open table fellowship tradition. The exciting thing about these stories is that they emphasize surplus and outside guests. At the end of each event, there are seven or twelve baskets left over. That surplus seems to be a point of this form of table fellowship. It’s a type of meal we’d call a potluck supper today. Apparently, Jesus invited everybody to bring their food together and there was plenty for all the poor and then some.
It’s unfortunate that we lost the bread and fish ritual meal, because the bread and wine ritual meal didn’t emphasize this idea of surplus: real food that actually fed the poor. The bread and wine tradition lent itself more to purity codes, insider/outsider dynamics, and ritualization. The bread and fish tradition, if retained, might have contributed to issues of justice, community, and social reordering. We see this after the resurrection. In John 21:1–14, the apostles are out on the lake. They see Jesus on the shore, cooking fish at a charcoal fire. He invites them to come share bread and fish.
If we remember what happened after Jesus’ arrest, we see the significance of this charcoal fire. The only other charcoal fire in the Gospels is where Peter stood when he betrayed Jesus (John 18:18). Jesus invites him now to another charcoal fire, where they share the bread and the fish. He says, in effect, “Peter, it’s okay. Forget it.” At this second charcoal fire the risen Jesus initiates table fellowship with Peter, who just a few days before rejected, betrayed, and abandoned him in his hour of need. It seems the bread and fish meal also had a healing, reconciling significance. What a shame we have lost this.
It’s very likely that the Last Supper was a Passover meal of open table fellowship—the final one of many among Jesus and his closest followers—that evolved into a ritualized offering of bread and wine. The disciples had come to understand it as a way of gathering, as the way to define their reality and their relationship to one another. It became for them a powerful symbol of unity, of giving and sharing, of breaking the self and giving the self over.
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John Chaffee 5 On Friday
1.
“The poor tell us who we are. The prophets tell us who we can be. So we hide the poor and kill the prophets.”
– Philip Berrigan, Jesuit Priest
The ills of society are not things which we must eliminate; rather, they are symptoms that point the way to a larger problem.
The homelessness problem in America is not the real problem.
The income inequality in America is not the problem.
The rates of student debt in America are not the problem.
All of those three things above are the SYMPTOMS of something larger going on.
The only problem is that we dislike it when people point out the larger issue at hand, with which we are likely also complicit.
2.
“What makes us human is not our mind but our heart, not our ability to think but our ability to love.”
– Henri Nouwen, Dutch Priest and Theologian
As an Enneagram 5, I love taking the time to research a topic. I literally cannot remember the last time I felt legitimately bored. There is always a book to read, an idea to explore, a concept to grasp, a new philosopher or theologian to dive into.
For a while, I was proud of myself for what I had learned and was able to teach.
That is, until I realized that to be such a nerd was coming at the expense of bettering my relationships around me. It was a hard pill to swallow, but I had to acknowledge that I needed to improve my ability to be present with others, set firmer boundaries, and communicate more effectively.
In essence, I still had a great deal to learn about loving others well.
All those books, studying, learning, and gaining degrees did not necessarily help me learn how to be human. Again, it was a hard pill to swallow.
I cannot say that I know how to love well, but hopefully, I am on the way. All I can say is that I have gotten faster at apologizing, quicker to listen to feedback rather than defend against it, and learned to tell people I love them. It has been a challenging yet enormously rewarding journey to undertake.
You know, learning how to be human.
3.
“Systems reward you for staying immature.”
– Fr. Richard Rohr, Franciscan Friar
Whew. This is a big one.
We like to think that our church communities, our clubs, our government, etc., all want us to be mature.
And, in one sense, they do want us to be mature.
Just not TOO mature.
If we are TOO mature, then we might just push back when those systems have lost their way, and when they need to be held accountable.
Systems want to be held accountable by themselves; they do not want to be held responsible by their whistleblowers.
As a result, systems will reward you for staying either immature or half-way mature. They will give you accolades, raises, titles, celebrations, and more as long as you don’t rock the boat.
Religious, political, or familial systems are looking for people who will protect their status quo, not for people who try to raise it. So, if a group loves you, be careful. God might want you to rock their boat, even if they loudly applaud you for not rocking it so far.
4.
“All of us experience a wonderful mixture of both well-being and woe. It is necessary for us to fall. If we did not fall, we would have the wrong idea about ourselves. Eventually we will understand that we are never lost to God’s love. At no time are we ever less valuable in God’s sight. Through failure we will clearly understand that God’s love is endless nothing we can do will destroy it.”
– Julian of Norwich, 14th Century English Mystic
One of the most confounding and comforting insights from Julian of Norwich is the idea that mistakes, failure, and even sin are inevitable aspects of what it means to live and to learn how to love.
No one begins life knowing exactly how to love as we ought. It is only through doing things the wrong way that we learn how to do things the right way.
Not only that, but the fact that God loves us unconditionally would not land with us unless we stop and experience that same love of God coming to us despite our failures.
For Julian, sin is a necessary teacher that has much to teach us about our immaturity, the limitations that hinder us, and the depth of God’s love through all our foibles.
5.
“Conquer evil people by gentle kindness, and make zealous people wonder at your goodness. Put the lover of legality to shame by your compassion.”
– St. Isaac the Syrian, 8th Century Orthodox Saint
I firmly believe that when it is all said and done, the virtues of Christianity will always be the best way to live.
