Blessing #1

Table Grace:

Come, Lord Jesus, and be our guest. Share this meal with us. Enter our hearts and into the daily rhythm of our laughter and conversation.

Come, Lord Jesus, and be our host. Teach us how to serve. Open our hearts, minds, homes and tables to all we meet and know.

Come, Lord Jesus, to this meal and bless the hands and love that have provided this sustenance and those eating at this table and all others across our world. Amen.

Devotion:

As I child I grew up saying the basic table grace "Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest and let these gifts to us be blessed." This is still the table grace I offer up when my family gathers together for a meal. For the first time ever I contemplated this grace and how it doesn't quite say everything that I feel is needed to say. I often think of my first agape meal for Teens Encounter Christ where there was an empty chair at the head of the table representing Jesus' presence at our meal. Jesus is both the guest and the host who shows us all the way, provides the meal for us and enjoys the meal with us.

Blessing #2 (Lynne)

God the wealth of your grace is present in everything that we see, taste, smell, touch, and hear. May we continue to use our hands and our hearts to glorify you in this place and time. May we be mindful of those hands and hearts that care for, produce, prepare and package these gifts of food and drink before us now. They are unknown to us but we know that you know and bless all with your abundant love. God of abundance, come to our table and fill us.
Amen.

"You fill up my senses
Like a night in the forest
Like the mountains in springtime
Like a walk in the rain
Like a storm in the desert
Like a sleepy blue ocean
You fill up my senses
Come fill me again

Let me give my life to you
Come let me love you
Come love me again."

These lyrics from John Denver's Annie's Song were playing in a store when I was shopping the other day. As I shopped in the affluent suburban grocery store listening to this 1980's song, I heard the words in a different sense. I am blessed with the power of eating for enjoyment, for a sensual experience. As I eat in this life of privilege, I am constantly reminded of those who eat for survival, to live another day. And then I feel the surge of passion for ministry rushing through my veins. God has come to me, filled me with abundance and asks me to go out into the world and share God's abundant grace and love with others. It is the least I can do. It is the most I can do.

overabundant grace

"God, we give you thanks for this meal. When Jesus blessed and broke the scanty resources of five loaves of bread and two fish, there was not only enough to feed the hungry multitudes, but there was an overabundance of food. To the hungry crowds that longed to be close to Jesus, the bread and the fish was a tangible and literally life-saving sign of grace. They were not only filled, but the overabundance of food was an overabundant of grace. Let this meal represent your overabundant grace for your church and for all people who hunger. Amen."

This blessing reflects my understanding of food as an expression of grace. I think the story about Jesus feeding the multitudes shows us the compassion of Jesus and the overabundance of grace that is given us.

We Thank You: 2nd Blessing - Emily Carson

Sustainer of wholeness, Provider of life.
Thank you for the food and drink,
that nourishes our bodies and heals our hearts.
May each bite be a reminder of your ever-present nearness.
May every flavor awaken us to the beauty of your creation.
For this meal,
and for this company,
we thank you.



Reflection: I am a notorious junk-food advocate. Well, I should restate that. I WAS a notorious junk-food advocate. In the last few weeks, I have become increasingly aware of what I put into my body. I write this prayer as a way of reminding myself of God's presence within the food I eat. Eating as a student is something I always seem to be doing in a hurry - rarely taking time to notice flavors and sadly, rarely taking time to even CHEW properly. Finding God in mealtime is something I am certainly working on.

Blessing #1

Gracious God, we thank you for the many blessings you have given us and we pray that you will be with all who are in need of your loving care. Bless this food that it may nourish our bodies and strengthen us to serve you. In Christ's name, amen.

This is the basic frame I have come to use every time I am asked to bless a meal. I guess I first heard it when I began sharing meals with the folks who have now become my in-laws. Before each meal someone would always be asked say a blessing and no matter who wound up offering the prayer it almost always followed this form. Of course things were added in special situations so the prayer mentioned any concerns or thanksgivings that might be on the minds of those gathered around the table.

I think the real beauty of this prayer is that it is not about thanking God for food just for the sake of having food. Instead it reminds us that we eat because our bodies need the nutrition and part of our returning thanks for the gifts we have been given is to serve others. And it does this in a way that is still able to name and celebrate the blessings of food, or family gathered together around the table for the first time in months, or whatever other blessings we may be celebrating.

table blessing one

God of the harvest,
we thank you for these gifts on our table.

we thank you for the hands that picked the produce,

the backs that bent over the crops,

and the eyes that watched for the harvest time.

thank you God that we have food on our tables

and we do not go hungry.

keep us mindful of those in our local and global communities

who go hungry tonight,

and help us to make food choices that do not further injustice.

bless this food to our bodies

and our bodies to your service.

amen.

i have been thinking about how removed we are from our food a lot lately. like many of us, my food comes from the grocery store and is often covered in plastic. i wanted to write (and pray) a grace that reminded me that food does not just appear, it is a gift from God that must be harvested. i am also thinking about how our food choices affect the whole world. i pray that God will show me a way to make ethical food choices in a world where price is the bottom line.

Blessing 1

Blessed be to you, Creator of our earth and its inhabitants.

We thank you for the abundance of food provided by the earth, and those who labor to grow and harvest it. Thank you for the food before us, the nourishment it provides, and all who share its bounty with us.

May we be ever mindful of our connection with all living creatures and work for their flourishing.

I am interested in the connection between the food we eat and the flourishing of not just us, but the other inhabitants of our earth. I also want the blessing to serve as a reminder that what we eat comes from the earth, and involves human labor to bring it to the table in the form it is in. Life is interconnected.

My family has always been important in my life. While growing up we set aside time to be together, to be present in each other's lives, and that was at dinner time. At first it seemed like an inconvenience because none of my friends HAD to be home for dinner, but as I grew up I began to look forward to them. So now, I am broken. I hate to eat dinner alone. In fact, a group of about 7 of us trade making dinner for each other this year.

I chose this prayer to post first because you have to start somewhere. This is the prayer that was first taught in my family. My parents chose it for the family even before there was a family over 30 years ago, but they knew they wanted a prayer that meant something. It was easy to learn, but even if you forgot it was hanging on the wall in the dining room.

I can still hear my siblings and I say the prayer together. Rolling our eyes at the line "we forgive one another," energetically saying "together we HOPE for HEAVEN." And every now and again we would slow down enough to think about the words as we say them. So, now I share my family prayer with you:

God makes us a family
We need one another
We love one another
We forgive one another
We work together
We play together
We worship together
Together we use God’s Word
Together we grow in Christ
Together serve our God
Together we hope for Heaven
These are our hopes and ideals
Help us to obtain them, O God
Through Jesus Christ, Our Lord
Amen

First Blessing for Take and Eat class

Bless this food to our use, and us to your service, and make us ever mindful of the needs of others. Amen.

I just finished reading the book Born Again Bodies for our class. It explores the history of U.S. Christian attitudes towards body, appetite, and eating. I was sad that so much of it confirmed the mentality of crass individualism. In light of this, I wanted to write a table blessing that included service to others and mindfulness towards the needs of others....community life. Intentionally, I did not address the prayer to a particular divinity because we prayed this prayer in an interfaith chaplain meeting at the hospital where I work. We are a diverse group representing a wide range of faith traditions.

Manda's first blessing

All day long I've been chopping, stewing, canning, preserving, baking and cooking. Why? Well, because I didn't have enough homework to occupy my time. Right! I've got an abundance of summer vegetables right now and they're wonderful! But as lovely as they are, I can only eat so many. So in an effort to save all this goodness for some time in deep winter when I'm craving a fresh vegetable and don't want to have it shipped to me from Argentina, I'm trying to save it all now. Sure, it won't be the same but there's something awesome in the process and I'm like a kid at Christmas, having to keep myself from opening every sealed jar. (And thanking God for the one that didn't seal and I get to eat soon!)

So today, I've been thinking about saving....and salvation. So from all this comes my table blessing. It's short, but to me it encompasses a lot.

To the God of abundance,
Who saves.
We give you thanks.
Amen.

Table Grace #1

Almighty God, we give you thanks for the great gifts you gave Moses and the Israelites. You led them to a land of great abundance, flowing with milk and honey. We come before you today, O God, thankful for that same rich abundance you have given us. As we eat of these gifts, may we be called as witnesses of that abundance for others. Amen.

This is a variation of the grace I prayed last Tuesday in class. I believe that the notion of God as a God of abundance is either not taken seriously at our tables, or it is reduced to a quantitative idea. God is not a God of abundance because God provides a lot (though God does), but because God provides enough for our well-being, and for the well-being of all. The Hebrew Bible witnesses to this abundance, especially in God's provision of manna, and I believe we should also witness to this abundance at our table.

Gratitude

Creator God,

We are grateful for the varied ways we can be sustained. We are grateful that our reliance on food speaks to the interconnected nature of our lives – that all of us need each plant, each animal and each other to survive. We are grateful for the lessons learned through cultivating preparing and enjoying food. May these lessons settle in us as we eat and become a way for the reign of peace through justice to enter this earth.

With grateful hearts,
Amen


This grace was deeply influenced by Sallie McFague's manifesto. Her emphasis on the interrelated nature of humanity with all of life, and the implications of that interconnectivity on our ideas of God challenged me as to how we can better acknowledge our interdependence through prayer. I also was inspired by Brueggemann's re-reading of the biblical narrative as competing stories about God's abundance versus our fears of scarcity. I believe the diversity present in the earth is a testament to the model of abundance presented in his article.

Thanksgiving for creation and relationships

"Gracious God,
We thank you for these blessings that you share with us. We pray that as we gather together and prepare to eat this meal, a sense of gratitude and a spirit of sharing would be present in each one of us. Bless us and help us to see the ways that you call us to share our blessings and gifts with others, so that your people would be fed and your name be praised. Guide us to see the ways that you are present and active in all of creation. Give us grace and courage to love all of your creation. Forgive us for our misuse of our gifts, our exploitations of resources and people, and for the ways we reject parts of your creation as unholy. May we grow in our understanding of you and our relationship with you. Amen."
As I read the articles for this week, I thought about the ways that humans have sought to be in relationship with God. The ritual rules found in Leviticus were designed to bring a certain group of people in relationship with God by not eating particular animals and only eating specified animals in a set way. The problem with these rules is that they are rules-they can be followed without an understanding of why they were established in the first place. The goal was to help people praise God and celebrate God’s creation, while recognizing their place in it. Walter Brueggemann’s call to praise God by sharing our gifts from others and not simply hoarding them. Our gifts and material blessings come from God and are meant to be used to bring God glory, either by sharing them with others or by using them as wisely as we can. In our North American context of wealth, we should pray for the knowledge and generosity to share our gifts and use them appropriately, as well as ask for forgiveness when we do not.

Table Grace #1 (Denise P)

Loving and gracious Lord,
we thank you for gathering us here together today. Be with us in our gathering; be present in our words and our sharing, that all we say will be about your amazing love for us. Bless this food and the hands that have prepared it. Bless the ground that nurtured it and the people that processed it. Use it to nourish our bodies and strengthen us for your service. We pray all this to the glory of your holy name. Amen.

This is the table prayer I prayed when we gathered for staff lunch every
Tuesday during my internship. It was amazing how many times our regular
weekly meeting was preempted by important events that called us away. We
were always grateful for time together and however uninterrupted it managed to
be. The food was a way to celebrate being fellow human beings in the
world. We typically ate together between the staff meeting and our text
study.

Prayer 1 - Emily Klock

Gracious God,
You gave your people manna in the desert.
You fed the multitudes with loaves and fishes.
You give all your believers your own body and blood,
and you provided this meal before us.
Thank you for providing all we need.
Amen

As I was thinking of all of the meals that God has hosted for his believers, and all of the communities he has gathered around meals, I realized that God is present and eats with us too, not only at the Eucharist, but also in our daily meals.

Table Prayer #1

Creator God, fashion together the working of our hands. You bathe the earth with waters that nourish the soil and shower us with heavenly light. Use our hands to pluck up and to plant, to sort and sift the fruits of our labors. Knit together all farmers, gatherers, and chefs who provide for us our daily food. And keep us ever-mindful of those who will go hungry on this day. Amen.

Commentary: I believe that many individuals within the U.S. have fallen into a consumerism mentality. It is so easy to dash off to a 24 hour grocery store for whatever craving that hits us. We pull that package of cookies (or whatever else we crave) off the shelf, we break the “freshness seal” and devour the entire contents and often cannot remember the following day what we had just eaten.

My prayer attempts to reorient our minds to those hands, both physical and spiritual, who have provided for us our daily food. It begins by acknowledging our gifts from God to the hands of farmers and those (often underpaid immigrant workers) who collect what has been sown. It blesses the craft and artistry of chefs and calls us to be mindful of those who have limited or no access to daily food.

These are the two sung table graces I encountered most often in Argentina:

Bendice Senor nuestro pan
Y da pan a los que tienen hambre
y hambre de justicia a los que tienen pan
Bendice Senor nuestro pan.

Translation:
Bless, Lord our bread
and give bread to those who hunger
and hunger for justice to those who have bread
Bless, Lord our bread.

and:
Gracias Tata Dios, Tata Dios queremos dar,
por aquellas manos que hoy hacen nuestro pan.
Recordamos a quien le falta y a quien le sobra- (hey!)
Y que tu justicia a todos pueda alcanzar. Amen, Amen Senor!
(loose) translation:
Thanks, Daddy God, Daddy God, we want to give,
for those hands which today make our bread.
We remember those wanting and those with plenty
and may your justice provide for all. Amen, Amen Lord.

I appreciate in these table graces a remembering of those without as well as their confidence that God provides for all- combined with a supplication of the eaters present to enact God's justice to make that possible. I find threads of connection to the Douglas article- the Leviticus code was about eating justice, symbolically- and to the Brueggemann article- re learning Jesus as an economist and to trust in God's abundance, not work out of scarcity.

Connected - Week #1 Prayer by Emily Carson

Creator Within and Among Us,

Thank you for this nourishment.

May it strengthen us for the journeys ahead,

May it fill us with thankfulness for what we've been provided,

May it encourage us to look beyond ourselves,

May it connect us to the many - both near and far - who long to be filled with heavenly food.

Amen.

I'm writing this prayer an hour after finding out my step-Grandmother died this evening of a heart attack back home in Iowa. My awareness is sharply increased tonight as to how important connectedness really is. I'm definitely longing to be closer to my family tonight - and trusting in God's ability to connect us spiritually.

Meals shared in community (with 2 or 2000) are a powerful and beautiful means of building life-transforming connections.

Take, Thank, Break, Give

This is a "participatory" table grace in which all at the table take part in the ritual action:

Dear friends, stop now, and look at this food we are about to eat. Take a dish, each of you, and lift it as we give thanks to God…

Blessed are you, God of abundance, you who from the beginning have delighted in
creating food for all your creatures, who provide us each day what we need, and
who give us one another so we can rejoice together in your goodness. We give you
thanks and praise for the Son and the Spirit who give us life. We give you
thanks and praise for this food that you give us today. Blessed are you, O God! Amen.

And now, dear friends, take your portion of God’s bounty. Break it, tear it, cut it, spoon it. I give you this food not from my own hand, but from the hand of the one who has given it to me to offer. Take it with joyfulness, but also with mindfulness of those who still wait for their share. Ask God to give you a generous heart toward them. Take it now, and eat!


Commentary: I was particularly struck in reading John Burkhart’s article, “Reshaping Table Blessings,” by his mention of the four-part structure of Jesus’ last meal with the disciples: Take, Give thanks, Break, and Give. I am striving to extend my understanding of the sacramentality of all our living, even in the most ordinary of circumstances. This table grace is an effort to point out explicitly the sacramentality of a meal together among friends, so yes, the eucharistic overtones are intentional!

Table Grace #1 from Brahm

A table prayer from my family:

Komm Herr Jesus, sei unser Gast
und 
segne was du uns bescheret hast.
Amen

In English, it is commonly known as:
Come Lord Jesus, be our guest
And let these gifts to us be blessed.
Amen

This is a grace that my father might say at the dinner table. There is something lost in the translation from German to English, as the second line translated literally is “and bless these gifts that you have given.”
This table grace covers a few elements that I believe are important for a grace.
The first is that we are inviting Christ to the meal. We are inviting Christ because of the second element, that we recognize that the gifts are provided by Christ, and that these are a blessing to us. God is our great provider, and as we give thanks and worship God, we invite Christ into our midst to share in the feast.
The third element is something that became more evident to me as I became older, and that had to do with my father praying in German. It helped me become aware of the world outside of my immediate surroundings, and outside of the U.S. We recognize that God is present in all the world, and that the gifts God gives us are not limited to only us.

brahm

Jon Bergstrom's Table Blessing #1

Creator God,
Who brings forth life from a seed that falls to the ground and dies,
We give you thanks for the hands and soil that have nurtured and prepared these once-living things over time, so that they might nourish us as food.
Refresh us with this meal, and rejuvenate us with the fellowship we share around this table,
So that we might serve you and serve those who lack nourishment.

Amen


This prayer attempts to reflect some of my initial theological understandings of food. I think it is important to remember the cycle of life and death that is inherent in our eating. And I think it is important to remember that it is God who brings forth and sustains life out of death (that whole resurrection thing). I also think it is important to remember that life and growth take a very long time, whereas death and breaking things down (like we do when we eat) take a relatively short amount of time. And of course there is more to the meal than just food, the fellowship can often be just as nourishing, so let us pray that it is.

Table Blessing (Lynne Morrow)

Lord of all creation, give us the eyes to see your earth and every element with its intrinsic beauty and value; all people as sisters and brothers.
Help us to build up a world where we can share the abundance of this earth through justice and peace; cherishing the beauty in each other, and in all your created world.
In this spirit of abundance we recognize each other as sister and brother and welcome everyone at your banquet table to share in the community created through your Gracious Love.
Amen.


I enjoy reading some of Cesar Chavez (and others') prayers from National Farm Worker Ministry. This is an adaption of one such prayer. In adapting it, there is a strong sense of Sally McFague's Manifesto to North American Middle Class Christians (from Life Abundant) on my mind and in my heart. I used this blessing for the Community Inter-Faith Thanksgiving Eve service at my intern site in North Shore Glenview last year.

Table Prayer #1 (Bruce G)

Heavenly Father:
You provide the Meal of Life, Your Son Jesus Christ. Through the sharing of His Body & Blood, we are reminded of our sinful self and of our redemption and salvation. May this daily meal we share now keep us energized to continually serve and glorify the One who sacrificed all to give us life and sustenance. Amen.

This prayer comes about, in part, because of the Sack reading. It seems the Meal is personal agenda driven. We want to be in charge, we want to control, we want personal gratification and benefits. As folks who want to be in charge of all, we tend to demand pre-conditions for everything we do. Apparently, the Eucharist is included in this. My own theology says one Cup and wine. This is not a directive to others, but a personal belief. I cannot in Christian love demand others to follow blindly my personal theology. Christian love and service, in my theology, does not allow for this. We take the elements with the Word and with faith. Luther has written something to the effect of this: the Word and our faith are vital to the Meal, with or without both elements or no elements at all. God has given us so many wonderful gifts; a discerning mind and heart being just two. Peace. Bruce Gray

The Selkirk Grace

Some hae meat and canna eat,

And some wad eat that want it;

But we hae meat, and we can eat,

Sae let the Lord be thankit.

Attributed to Robert Burns, but likely earlier (see Wikipedia). This one often works for me.