The story begins with home cooking. No doubt the brothers enjoyed good nutritious meals prepared by their father's staff. What are the home-cooked meals that you enjoy?
But those home-cooked meals lose their appeal for a younger brother. The younger brother is ready to eat something besides rice and beans, grits and greens, recipes handed down from previous generations. So the younger brother leaves home to travel the world.
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Eat, drink, be merry. That becomes the younger brother's motto. Fancy food in fashionable restaurants become the norm for this young man.But all too soon the money dries up and so do the companions in eating and drinking. Feasts are fewer and farther between. A table full of food becomes a single dish. And then not even that.
The younger son gets to the point where the best looking food in his world are the pods he is feeding to the pigs in his daily work. The pigs eat better than he does. So he determines to go home, content now to eat like the workers in his father's household.
But instead of having to earn his daily bread, he is treated to the best in the house. Wagyu beef and all the sides.
How does the food journey of the parable illuminate it? And if you put this food story in conversation with the Hebrew scripture paired with it by the Revised Common Lectionary (Joshua 5:9-12...the end of the manna), what do they have to say about faith and food?
