A Theology of Leftovers

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Below is a guestpost by Philippa Martyr, who is a writer, historian, teacher, and psychology student living in Perth, Western Australia. Readers might remember her past post in our series on absurdity. This latest post was written in response to last week’s offering on finality.

I cook, and I eat, and I also hate wasting food. I wish I could say that I loved saving food, but it is not true. I am motivated more by hatred of waste than by a desire to save the leftovers because I love them.

And yet that is not quite true. When I have cooked well, I want to save the leftovers, because I know they will be useful and enjoyable later. Some people save food so they can throw it away later from a different container; this error is my mental test for whether I am going to keep something or not.

I have pondered my personal theology of leftovers for many years now. All of us know the pangs of lost time, lost friends, and lost opportunities – the prophet Joel sums these up as ‘the years the locusts have eaten’.

And yet there is something very odd in the account of the feeding of the five thousand which occurs in all four Gospels. All four accounts state that after everyone had eaten, the disciples collected twelve baskets of leftovers.

Only Matthew and Mark tell us about the other miraculous feeding of four thousand, where they collected seven baskets of leftovers.

John alone goes further. He tells us that Jesus expressly instructed the disciples to collect the leftovers, and told them why - “Gather up the fragments left over, that nothing may be lost” (Jn 6:12).

Why did Jesus make this unusual request? We know partly why, from what He said later in Mark chapter 8 about the yeast of the Pharisees – where the disciples do not understand about yeast, and eating, and say they have no bread.

This is Jesus’ cue to ram home to them the superabundance of the two miraculous feedings: how many baskets did you collect afterwards? They dutifully respond: twelve from the five thousand, and seven from the four thousand.

But I think there is another reason, and it is to help us to realise that in the divine economy, nothing is wasted. Not even broken bits of bread with finger-marks all over them and unappealing bits of dried fish.

Leftovers can make delicious meals, precisely because they are unexpected combinations (especially if you put a pastry lid on them). I think this is how God works with our leftovers, and our leftovers can be anything and anyone that we bring to Him.

I bring to prayer all the leftover people of my life: discarded and discarding romantic partners, random strangers, my old teachers, and other people who I had forgotten about until that precise moment. I bring them all in my twelve baskets of leftovers from the superabundance of my life.

For all I know, I am the only person in the world praying for these people. It is a strange combination of people, even with a pastry lid. But I think it is no less pleasing to the Lord for its strangeness and for my finger-marks.

Wasted and lost time goes in the baskets as well – mine and other people’s. There are plenty of Holy Souls who have no one to pray for them, along with every failed assignment, beloved pets, other people’s sufferings, my own ingratitude, animals at the zoo, the worst date I ever went on, all those unsolved mysteries, and all those poor life choices.

Can sins go in? Perhaps not unrepented sins - but I have no problem adding repented sins and their penance and consequences to the baskets.

No member of the Church Militant should be sitting on their hands while there are leftovers to be collected – especially not those who hate waste, regret lost time and lost opportunities, or grieve over partings.

Nothing is really lost in the divine economy, if you – child of Adam, heir to the Kingdom - do not want to lose it. All partings can be temporary - if you want them to be. It can be always au revoir, rather than adieu.

You have been offered the chance to restore the years the locusts have eaten (Joel 2:25). We have been told with the force of divine command: “Gather up the fragments left over, that nothing may be lost”.

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