Born in the 1980s, the term “foodie” is a relatively young one. The moniker is not confined to those that simply enjoy eating, in fact, many don’t even cook. A foodie has a keen interest in the eating experience. In the overgeneralized categories of those that “eat to live” and those that “live to eat,” they fall squarely in the latter.
Foodies make dining something of a hobby. They’re not satisfied with just finding good restaurants, they’re on the hunt for the best individual dishes—the breakfast burrito with legitimate tortillas, pizza with the richest sauce or the most authentic gelato. A foodie’s recommendation usually comes with a detailed analysis like, “The service is fair, and the wall colors are downright ugly but ignore all that because they make fresh bagels daily, in-house. And don’t get distracted by the wide array of cream cheese flavors. Order an asiago cheese toasted with butter, so you don’t disguise any of the sharp, nutty flavor.”
There is an application here to participation in the Lord’s Supper, and it starts with Jesus feeding the five thousand. After miraculously being fed they accurately concluded, “This is indeed the Prophet Who is to come into the world!” (John 6:14). However, it took only one day for them to find Jesus and ask for more belly-filling miracles. Instead of passing around more baskets of bread and fish, Jesus spoon-fed them the greater lesson when He said, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to Me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in Me shall never thirst” (Jn. 6:35).
Some of the Jews were offended at Jesus’ claim so He turned up the temperature on the teaching. He said, “Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him” (Jn. 6:56). By analogy, Jesus was referring to being filled with the life-giving Holy Spirit that only comes through belief in Christ. This is a “one-time meal” that never perishes and endures to eternal life.
Jesus again used the analogy of food when He instituted the Lord’s Supper. This, however, is not a singular event, but a recurring proclamation of the Lord’s death until He returns. As Christians participate in the Supper, they are commanded to earnestly examine themselves because one “who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself” (1 Cor. 11:29).
Yikes! The ongoing mandate to “discern the body” is delivered under threat of judgment, so how does one do that? It is to think seriously (and accurately) about what the physical body of Christ submitted to. He was crucified for the elect. He physically died and remained in the state of the dead for three days (yet without undergoing decay). He arose from the dead in the same physical body, yet perfected. He physically ascended to heaven and, in a bodily form, continues to make intercession for you in the presence of the Father.
For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. (Heb. 9:24)
Further, Jesus will return in the same perfected, physical body as when He left. At the time of His ascension, the angels, in Acts 1:11, said to the disciples, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, Who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw Him go into heaven.”
If you have been made alive by the Bread of Life, then you must take the Lord’s Supper in a “worthy” manner. You are required to soberly examine yourself in light of what Jesus accomplished in the body. You have to be something of a “spiritual foodie” that doesn’t just eat-and-run but cherishes the bodily experience of the Redeemer. “Feed on Him” by considering your need for repentance, His love for you, your unity with fellow believers and how all that is made possible by the real, physical, bodily obedience of the Son.
The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? (1 Cor. 10:16)