Category: Food

The church has been powerfully de-ritualized. Habits die quickly or become rusty when not exercised. As Dru Johnson notes, “we need to know our rites.” The more we understand our rituals, the more meaningful they become. And we have forgotten those rites and/or meaningfully ceased to practice them. I offer ten brief notes on recovering the ritual of feasting in this age:

First, we eat without thanksgiving. Gluttony exists because thanksgiving does not. Eating is not a neutral exercise. Christians eat as acts of triumph over the world.

Second, the ritual of eating is undervalued in America. In this country, food is consumption. We eat because we want to; therefore, we eat without intentionality. When rites become trite, our experiences become trivial, and the doors for abuse open wider.

Third, corporate eating is devalued because we allow teenagers to rule over the table. Parents must re-assert their authority over the table and keep food at the table and not on laps in front of laptops.

Fourth, feasting suffers when worship looks like a funeral. If every head is bowed and eyes are closed, we cannot see the feast or hear the feasters. Feasting is diminished when worship is feast-less in character.

Fifth, feasting is best formalized and appointed. When it is that way, it can be adorned with fancy napkins and plates. It allows family members to long for something better. We are gnostics to think that immediacy is best. Christians understand that better feasts mean preparing more to enjoy better.

Sixth, feasts are more meaningful when we incorporate singing. Feasts in the Bible are celebrations of our freedom from bondage. Singing to Yahweh a new song is declaring Pharaoh will never rule over our appetites again.

Seventh, there is no friendship without Christ. There are shared experiences and stories, but friendship is rooted in a shared Christ. Feasts are accentuated when brothers dwell together.

Eighth, relationships change and are re-directed. Someone who was a friend in eighth grade may not be a friend now. God gives us a rotation of friends through life because He knows that our changes will require new people to speak into our particular phases of life. Feasts restore friendships and renew friendships and are the genesis of new friendships.

Ninth, many of us are worse friends than we think, but we have better friends than we deserve. Feasts create the environment for friendship rituals to be exercised in service and communion.

Tenth, all rituals require meaning. All good things require work. Therefore, all feasting is meaningful work. It provides true health for the Christian.

Real health is grounded in a proper relationship with God, and since this relationship is in part sacramental, it involves physical things. The purpose of these physical aspects is not, however, to provide mechanical health to the “human biological machine.” Rather, the purpose of these physical aspects is to communicate to us, in a mystery, the grace of God.

Our congregation holds a monthly fellowship meal. It’s spectacular in every culinary way. The other weeks we host people in our homes, but on the last Sunday of the month, it’s a fattening extravaganza! All sinners come home and we kill the fatted calf with vigor and throw a party!

It’s also shaped by the kinds of things Robert Capon would savor were he present with us. Apart from the main dishes, there are delicacies made with gifted hands. Both have their place at the table. The desserts carry another special place serving as Sabbath ambassador. She brings rest to the weary and a boost of energy to the little covenanters running around.

It seems that food koinonias have lost their vigor in the scientific laboratory of the germaphobes of our culture. Long gone are the healthy gatherings of vivid recollections of stuffed-ness. COVID has given us an extra rationale to not eat as one should: with gusto. We now have to eat six feet apart from one another as if the other person may contaminate our joy. To the inferno with that logic!

One of the problems of modern evangelical “food theology” is that it has departed from its Hebrew history. We have chosen the mortification of the flesh over the enjoyment of life.

Paul was a strong critic of the “Do not taste! Do not touch!” attitudes of his contemporaries and certainly our own (Col. 2:21). We have forgotten that the Bible is an edible book, a book of lovely and superb meals beginning in the abundance of the Garden and ending in the glory of the New World. But in every place, there is a tree that gives and gives and gives food to the hungry.

We ought to take every meal hostage in season and out of season. Every delicious bite is an act of praise and adoration, and when eaten in the company of fellow saints, it is a festive day; one with additional pleasure for we were made to eat with one another. When we partake together at the Lord’s Table on Sundays, the common table afterward becomes an extension of the holy. It is good and beneficial. It is sobering and enlightening. It is both delicious and life-altering. When we eat together, we are changing ourselves into living sacrifices edible to the Triune God who swallows us into his glorious grace.