I am not a good cook. I really wish that I were. I listen to people raving about their mom’s or dad’s famous casseroles and deserts that they look forward to having at Thanksgiving, expressing their fond appreciation for just how tasty is this or that favorite dish, and I lament that nothing I ever make ever rises to that level of acclaim. In truth, I am not a good cook for a simple reason: as much as I long to be able to make praiseworthy apple pie, I have a serious underappreciation for food. I experience stopping to cook and eat the way most people experience stopping at a gas station to get gas for their car. It is rare to have the thought, “My car needs to refuel! Yes! It is time to stop and get gas!” We stop, because it is necessary, though often inconvenient. So it is with me and food, yielding a rather highly developed skill for creating meals that are nutritionally functional without much thought, time, or effort put into the pleasure of the palate.
The younger version of myself actually took a bit of pride in how little effort I put into the taste of food. I thought I had more important things to do. I was, after all, spending my time engaging in theological education instead. Did not Jesus praise Mary for sitting at his feet and listening to him while Martha was distracted by her many tasks? I thought of myself as choosing the better thing. It was a sort of perpetual fast from the pleasures of this life, and, while this was not entirely wrong, it was also not entirely biblical.
Food is actually an important image within Scripture, and feasts are the climax of salvation. In Isa 25:6 God himself is personified as the host of “a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.” The language of this verse emphasizes the care, the effort, the time that God puts into providing the best of all possible meals “for all peoples.” This meal, commonly recognized as a depiction of the eschatological Messianic Banquet, presents God as the ideal host who is not just interesting in functionally eliminating the hunger of those he feeds as a stop along his way toward other matters. Rather, God will spare no effort to provide this feast. Indeed, to prepare it, he will “swallow up death forever” (25:8a), as we see on the cross.
The imagery of this rich feast that God will prepare for the world is surrounded in Isaiah by thanksgiving songs (Isa 25:1-5, 9-10). Indeed, this meal is the Thanksgiving of Thanksgivings, the paradigmatic meal for every meal of thanksgiving. If we are going to have a meal of thanksgiving, it makes sense to model it after this one in which God is the careful, hard-working host.
Interestingly, this thanksgiving meal in Isa 25:6 echoes and directly contrasts with a different way of feasting talked about earlier in Isa 5:11-14:
Ah, you who rise early in the morning in pursuit of strong drink, who linger in the evening to be inflamed by wine, whose feasts consist of lyre and harp, tambourine and flute and wine, but who do not regard the deeds of the LORD or see the work of his hands! Therefore my people go into exile without knowledge; their nobles are dying of hunger, and their multitude is parched with thirst. Therefore Sheol has enlarged its appetite and opened its mouth beyond measure; the nobility of Jerusalem and her multitude go down.”
Here in Isa 5 there is a lot of feasting, but there is no thanksgiving. In fact, there is no reference to a host to thank at all. In this feast Sheol, the place of the dead, enlarges its appetite and swallows up the guests. Ironically, in their lack of thanksgiving, as they eat they are being eaten by death itself.
When I think about these two different images of feasting, I remember my grandmother. My grandmother not only hosted every Thanksgiving dinner throughout my childhood for our enormous family, but she prepared Thanksgiving-sized meals for six to ten hungry farmhands three times a day for decades in her home in rural Tennessee. Her oldest son, my dad, became a pastor who grew many churches and led thousands of people to Christ. As a child, when I thought about what it looked like to follow Jesus well, I always tended to think of my dad. However, while my dad was certainly a Christ-like person for me to look up to in many ways, these Scriptures have a way of honoring my grandmother.
It somehow never occurred to me to want to be like her in the kitchen so as to be like Christ. I never reflected upon how when I saw her in the kitchen pouring out her life to create all those rich feasts, I was being offered the opportunity to gaze upon that which God has done for me. And so I never learned to imitate her.
Thanks be to God for the rich food of salvation that he, the best of all hosts, sets before us. May we imitate him well.
About the author
Kristin Helms
Kristin Helms has a Ph.D. in Biblical Studies from Princeton Theological Seminary with an emphasis on the Old Testament. Her primary areas of research include the prophets, post-exilic period, and pastoral concerns related to the practice of ministry. She is currently a Section Leader for the update edition of the New Revised Standard Version translation of the books of 2 Kings, 1&2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, in which her role is to oversee an assessment of the readability of the updated translation for today’s audience. Prior to coming to Roberts, she taught courses at the Masters and Doctoral levels at Princeton Theological Seminary, Missio Seminary, and the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary. In addition to her academic interests, she has served in numerous ministry settings, including working with at-risk children in urban centers as well as developing and implementing both outreach and Christian Education programs in local churches. She has a passion for helping college students learn to study and apply Scripture faithfully to their lives.