Sermon: Let Us Keep the Feast

We enter life hungry. Each one of us. We all enter this world crying out, literally, for someone to feed us. We start out with colostrum and milk and then we move onto bananas and mushy carrots.

But eventually we move on to acquire the bitter taste of coffee and the heat of Yucateca hot sauce and the Unami buzz of raw sushi and a cornucopia of other foods. But you know what happens each and every single time we eat? We get hungry again.

We are hungry beings. We need food to survive. Some of you are hungry right now and wondering what you’re going to eat after the service is over.

But you may be wondering…what does hunger and food have to do with God? We might think that a sermon on food should be about: what to eat—vegetarian or organic, etc. 

Or how to produce it. 

Or how much to eat: or the diet of the Bible, etc.

Or how to feed the hungry. 

But while those are important, they focus on should. But I want to focus on what is. In other words, a theology of food must precede any ethic of food. 

I want us to zoom out and see that food is GRACE. We are hungry people, and God, in his grace, feeds us.

You’ve heard a sampling of passages from Genesis to Revelation that hopefully show you how widespread food is in the Bible. In some ways, this book is a cookbook, a menu, a farmer’s almanac.

So I want to briefly walk through the Bible and get a big picture of food to see that food isn’t incidental to the story of the Bible, but essential.

What’s the first thing God says to Adam and Eve after he blessed them and commanded them to be fruitful? 

And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.

The creation story reads like the menu of a banquet. God is like a host preparing a banquet. He’s getting the food ready and decorating the ambiance and setting the table so that he can bring his guests around the table and say: bon appetit!

What was the first sin?

Eating with God was meant to be worship, but eating apart from God was rebellion. But while the production and distribution of food was cursed, and everything from eating disorders and body image issues and food allergies and unhealthy eating patterns and food insecurity entered the world through the fall, food itself was not fundamentally changed. Food was still seen as a gracious gift from God, given to both the one who worships and the one who rebells.

How did God redeem his people from oppression?

It was a meal of roasted lamb that God used to liberate his people from slavery in Egypt. And as he led them through, you know what he kept whispering in their ears as they walked, as a way of encouraging them to keep going? “I’m leading you into a land flowing with milk and honey. And you know what else is there? Wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and honey. That’s where I’m taking you.”

And when they got there he said, “Listen, this is how I want you to worship. I want you to slaughter a lamb and cook it. I will forgive your sins and bring you to my table to eat with me. Give me a calendar. I want you to plan three big feasts each year to celebrate that I have redeemed you.”

When Jesus came into the world, when the eternal word took on flesh as a little infant, he too, drank milk from his mother. When he was older, he too felt his belly growl and wondered into the kitchen for a snack.

What was Jesus’ philosophy of ministry?

In the gospel of Luke chapter 7, Jesus tells us that the Son of Man came, eating and drinking. His ministry in the gospel of Luke is arranged around a series of table. Take away the meals of Jesus and you have a much different story.

What was his first miracle?

John tells us that the first miracle of Jesus was at a wedding feast. Where he turned a moment of shame and scarcity into a moment of honor and abundance by turning water into wine. Fine wine, not 2 buck chuck.

How did he found the church?

With a meal. It was at passover where he took bread and wine and said, this is my body and my blood, given for you. Take and eat. The church of Jesus Christ began at a table.

Which is exactly where we find the church at the beginning of Acts (2:46):

“And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts.”

 What is the one activity Jesus did between his resurrection and ascension?

John 21 tells us he cleaned some fish and built a fire and cooked breakfast for his disciples. Just think about that for a minute. The resurrected Lord was a chef, a server, and a host.

Last question: where does this world end and the next world begin? 

At a table. The Bible in Revelation calls it the marriage supper of the lamb. I imagine a long table stretching out from that mountain with every tribe, nation, and tongue represented and food and drinks from every culture.

What does all this teach us about food? What does this have to say about cheeseburgers and shrimp and grits and blackberries?

Food is grace. Every meal is a tangible proof of God’s gracious provision for his creatures. 

“Food is a gift of God given to all creatures for the purpose of life’s nurture, sharing, and celebration. When it is done in the name of God, eating is the earthly realization of God’s eternal communion-building love.”

—Norman Wirzba, Faith and Food

Food is grace. But let me put a finer point on it. Part of the GRACE of food is that it reveals to us something about God. If food is grace, then God is an extravagant and generous Host that loves to set the table for his creatures.

So what are we supposed to do? Don’t overthink it.

Eat it, enjoy it, share it, but ultimately—give thanks.

Gratitude is the first and continual response to grace. 

Imagine this. I got this from a pastor named Vito Auito. Imagine Adam and Eve in the garden, and God is showing them around to all the things he created and he pulls a carrot out of the ground. And he says, “This is a carrot. I made it for you. For your nurture and your delight. Taste it!” And they eat it and they love it and they say, “this is so good! Thank you!” Can you imagine what that would be like? 

Well, guess what? You don’t have to. That’s the way it is even now. The Christian faith teaches us to ask God for daily bread and to see him at the head of every table; to see every meal as an answer to the Lord’s prayer.

The avocado toast that you ate for breakfast is an answer to the Lord’s prayer. It’s from God. Imagine this: there is an invisible line from every food that you eat, through the ecosystem of labor and production, all the way back to the farm and ultimately from the hand of God and he says, “here is some avocado toast. I made it for you. Take and eat. It’s delicious.”

Every meal you eat this week, I want you to pause and say “God is great. God is good. Let us thank him for this food.” Do you know why we say “grace” before meals? It’s  from the latin “gratiarum actio”=act of thanks. Thanksgiving is the appropriate response to grace.

And here’s the point. I think this is why food is on every page of the Bible. Food is a reminder of God’s grace but it’s also a reminder of our constant and bottomless dependance on God.

If we can get our minds around the grace of food, then we can begin to worship God at all times.

When we ask for our daily bread we are asking God to supply all our needs. We are asking God to fill and satisfy every hunger we have. Our hunger for food and shelter of course, but also our hunger for meaningful labor, for belonging, for love, for righteousness.

Do you have anything good, true, or beautiful in life? It came from the Host of Heaven. This is how a writer named GK Chesterton put it:

“You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”

Life is grace. Life is a banquet of God’s good gifts which we enjoy everyday. Will you give him thanks? Will you see the beach and the mountains, the sunset and the night sky, your children asleep in their beds at night and the car that brought you to church as an opportunity to express gratitude to the God who gave them to you? There is, to be sure, much suffering here as well, but that is another sermon for another day. Life is a good gift from God.

Your kitchen is a sanctuary, your table is an altar. And that’s true because the world is a temple of God’s glory. Everything you do, whether you eat or drink, can be done to God’s glory and in communion with him.

But, wait a minute. Can’t those things be idols? Yes. Absolutely. But the goal is not to value the gifts less, the trick is to valuing and appreciating God the Giver more. The greater mistake is to eat at God’s table without acknowledging him. The Apostle Paul made that point clear when he wrote in Romans 1:

"For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.”

The matriarch of food writing, MFK Fischer put it this way during WWII:

“When we eat without thought or thanksgiving we are not men, but beasts.”

—M.F.K. Fisher, How to Cook a Wolf

So, these are my words, let us eat with thought and thanksgiving to the Eternal Host, and let us give him the credit for all the goods things we possess. May every day and every hour be thanksgiving.

About 15 years ago I had the best and most memorable thanksgiving meal of my life. There was no turkey and dressing or cranberry sauce. In fact, it wasn’t in November and it wasn’t even in the United States. I was living in Peru at the time and I had travelled up to the highlands to what the people there call the Sierra because I wanted to see what life was like in a remote, agrarian village with no running water or electricity. The village was called Hualqui and the people there were without exception, farmers. They, like most of humanity, spent their days making food to eat.

While I was there I visited a little presbyterian church. It was a little mud brick building with a thatch roof and it was lit by a few tiny Christmas light bulbs plugged into a car battery. I watched as they piled into this little building, even the dogs and the chickens. They prayed and sang psalms and read scripture and gave thanks to God for the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life that came into the world for us and our salvation. There was no pastor, but there were three elders, the eldest of them being a man in his eighties named Anciano—which means elder. 

On our last morning in Haualqui we stood by a dirt road where we were told a truck would eventually pass by for us to hitch hike back. When we asked when it would be there, the answer was, “today.” And while we were waiting, Anciano walked up the side of the mountain with his cane and invited us to his home for breakfast.

We followed him to his house where he sat us at a table underneath the rafters where the chickens were roosted. And he served us scrambled eggs on bread made from the wheat that grown next to his house and milled on the stone in the corner. The distance from farm to table was measured in steps. And he gave us raw honey from the bees he cultivated. And before we ate, he looked up to the sky and he said grace. He thanked God for the food God had provided. And for his honored guests. 

And what did we do? We ate with Anciano and his family. And it was good. And we said, gracias. Grace. Thank you. And what did he do? He smiled, happy to see his gifts enjoyed. There was a tangible sense of thanksgiving at that table because we knew that we did not deserve it and we would never be able to repay it. We ate at that table not because of our worth, but because it delighted Anciano to bring us there. All we could do was enjoy it and give thanks.

Someday we will feast in the House of Zion. Not because of anything we have done but through the grace and finished work of the one who went to the cross in order to bring us to the table.

The world is full of his gracious gifts. We receive them everyday. Let us give him thanks and commune with him.

Eternal God of the Feast, you have given us good gifts. Thank you. Thank you for the farmers, for the workers in the field, for the truck drivers and butchers, for the line cooks and the servers, and every person who has a hand in bringing us our food. Bless them. And would you be blessed in our eating and drinking, and whatever we do in communion with you and for your glory. Amen.