Feasting: Yes to Jesus and Yes to His Creation

Various texts

Last week I talked about fasting, an appropriate topic since we are in the midst of the month of Ramadan. I asked if Ramadan should be called a month of fasting since many people gain weight during this lunar month because of all the food that is eaten at night. Would it be better to call Ramadan a month of feasting?

I said last week that fasting is saying no to the world and yes to Jesus. When we fast we push away the world to focus more intently on God. So what is the opposite of fasting? Is feasting the opposite of fasting?

What is feasting?

If you were here last August, you may remember me talking about the most expensive meal in the world. On February 13, 2007 fifteen people sat down to a 10-course gourmet meal at the Dome Restaurant in Bangkok, Thailand. The six chefs who prepared this expensive meal were flown in from France, Germany and Italy. Similarly, the ingredients they used were also flown in from all over the world. The cost of the most expensive meal was about $30,000 – per person – not including tax and tip.

It was estimated that the wine list totaled around $200,000 and included a rare Rothschild estate wine. Fine champagne was also available.

What do you get for $30,000?

Crème brûlée of foie gras with Tonga beans
Tartar of Kobe beef with Imperial Beluga caviar and Belons oyster
Mousseline of pattes rouges crayfish with morel mushroom infusion
Tarte Fine with scallops and black truffle
Lobster Osso Buczco
Ravioli with guinea fowl and burrata cheese, veal reduction
Saddle of lamb “Léonel”

Then to cleanse the palate for the last three courses, Sorbet “Dom Pérignon”

Supreme of pigeon en croute with cèpes mushroom sauce and cipollotti
Veal cheeks with Périgord truffles

And for desert, Imperial gingerbread pyramid with caramel and salted butter ice-cream

Is that feasting? If a feast is associated with more rich food than you can possibly eat, this meal would seem to qualify. One of the guests at this more than elaborate meal in Bangkok was a wealthy (obviously) Cambodian woman who lives in Malaysia, Sophiane Foster. When Foster was asked how she was enjoying the meal she was quoted during her eighth course, saying: “I can’t finish it. Your senses can only take so much.”

In contrast to this meal, you could try a World Meal. A World Meal is the average meal for the average person on the planet and consists of a limited amount of rice and beans. Herbs and spices are optional; as is anything you can forage from the local natural environment. Cost? About 20 cents US. If you wanted the ten course meal and ate ten bowls full, it would still cost only $2.

Would this rice meal qualify as a feast?

Feasting and fasting have a wonderful interrelationship. Let me invite you to a four course sermon meal: appetizer, salad, entree and desert.

First the appetizer: Feasting has more to do with relationship than it does with the food that is set on the table.

Think about the best meal you have ever eaten. Did you eat it with strangers? Did you eat it alone? Or did you eat it with friends or family?

Proverbs 15:17 reads:
Better is a dinner of herbs where love is
than a fattened ox and hatred with it.

If you are a vegetarian, do not take this the wrong way. The point is that it is better to have a little food in the company of friends than an elaborate meal where there is not that love and intimacy.

This is why I would not call the meal in Bangkok a feast. The food was exceptional but where was the love? Where were the people sitting around the table laughing and joking in familiar intimacy? That meal made the quality of food an idol and it was worshiped, but it was not a feast.

Annie and I invited some friends over for dinner one time and I grilled hamburgers and chicken. The hamburger buns were a bit stale. The chicken was not cooked well enough so that as you got close to the bone it was undercooked. The watermelon we had for desert was a bit mushy, not crisp. But it was still a feast. The meal could have been better but the people around the table were wonderful and we had a great time. We feasted.

You don’t have to cook an elaborate meal or a perfect meal when you invite people over to eat. Sometimes we don’t invite others because we don’t think we will have the right kind of food. We forget that it is the fellowship that is most important. We do need to try to make good food. To properly enjoy God’s creation, we need to learn how to serve it in a tasty fashion. But it is not the most important part of the feast.

A meal of rice with different spices to add to the rice would be a feast. Rice with a bit of sauteed onion in one bowl, some sauteed peppers and mushrooms in another, some fruit salad in a third, some raisins and cinnamon and sugar in a fourth bowl and you have a delicious feast – if you have good friends with whom to share it.

You do not have to have a five star meal to have a feast.

Notice in the passages from Deuteronomy about the tithe that there is no recipe given. In fact the Bible does not contain any recipes. There were elaborate instructions in the Law of Moses about how to build the Tabernacle and the clothing to be worn by the priests, but not a single recipe. There are, however instructions about who to eat the meal with. (Deuteronomy 16:14)
You shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow who are within your towns.

The community coming together made this a feast, not the food by itself.

There is one more relational aspect to feasting. Where does Deuteronomy 16 say the feast is to be eaten?
For seven days you shall keep the feast to the Lord your God at the place that the Lord will choose, because the Lord your God will bless you in all your produce and in all the work of your hands, so that you will be altogether joyful.

The place God chose was Jerusalem where the Temple was built and three times a year the people of Israel traveled to Jerusalem for these feasts. In fact, the Law said that if you lived far from Jerusalem, you were to sell your tithe and take the money and then buy food and drink in Jerusalem. It was in God’s presence that the feast was to take place. A feast celebrates our relationship with God and our relationship with each other.

The meal is not the goal. The meal is part of the goal which is the celebration, the feast with friends and with God.

Let me give one last example. Jesus often ate in the homes of strangers, but on the night he knew was going to be his last meal, at the Passover Seder, who did he eat with? He gathered his closest friends, his disciples and they shared the meal together. The feast of Passover was celebrated by Jesus with his friends. (Okay, one of them betrayed him, but still the point stands. Jesus did not eat his last meal alone. He celebrated the Passover with his disciples.)

The appetizer of this sermon meal is this: Feasting is about relationships more than about the food.

Now for the second course, the salad: God wants us to feast in a celebration of all he has created and of all he has done for us.

Starting in Genesis and going all the way through to Revelation, it is clear that God wants us to join together in feasts of celebration. In the Genesis account God created a garden teeming with delights and he said to Adam and Eve (Genesis 1:29)
“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.

God created a world full of sensual delights and he created man with five senses to enjoy this world. I read a book by Robert Farrar Capon titled, The Supper of the Lamb: a culinary reflection. This is a book with a recipe for making three meals for ten people from one leg of lamb, but it is even more his philosophy and theology that comes out in the pages of this book.

He tells you in the second chapter of the book how to spend an hour, sixty minutes, cutting an onion. This is obviously more than technique; he wants you to enjoy and appreciate the onion you are using for the meal. He ends his mediation on the onion with this:
[God] likes onions, therefore they are. The fit, the colors, the smell, the tensions, the tastes, the textures, the lines, the shapes are a response, not to some forgotten decree that there may as well be onions as turnips, but to His present delight – His intimate and immediate joy in all you have seen, and in the thousand other wonders you do not even suspect. With Peter, the onions say, Lord it is good for us to be here. Yes says God. Tov. Very good.

If we can take such delight in an onion, the world awaits us with treasures to explore. This is why I find so much enjoyment in having a vegetable garden. When you plant the seed and then a few days later see the sprout break through the soil, watch it grow, see the fruit begin to form and then ripen, and then you pluck it and bring it into the kitchen – this is a celebration of God’s amazing creation.

A vegetable garden is part of the feast and the feast continues when you begin to prepare the raw ingredients for a meal. Ideally this is done with others so there is relationship even in this part of the feast. As you watch the ingredients come together into a beautiful dish with an enticing aroma and a delicious taste – that is feasting.

And I want to add that even cleaning up afterwards is part of the feast. There have been many great conversations that have taken place as dishes are washed and dried.

God created sensual man to enjoy the sensual world he had created and I am so glad he did.

When God instructed Israel to remember the exodus from Egypt with a ceremony, he told them to remember the exodus in a feast, the feast of Passover. Each year we celebrate the Passover Seder here at RIC, usually in our home. If you have never been to a Passover meal you should consider coming this next spring. The meal is a sensual delight as the story of God’s deliverance is accompanied with tastes and smells.

I mentioned that when you lived far from Jerusalem, you were to sell your produce and then take the money to buy food and drink in Jerusalem. Notice what the Law of Moses says you are to buy (Deuteronomy 14:25b-26)
go to the place that the Lord your God chooses 26 and spend the money for whatever you desire—oxen or sheep or wine or strong drink, whatever your appetite craves. And you shall eat there before the Lord your God and rejoice, you and your household.

“Whatever you desire; whatever your appetite craves” that is what you were supposed to buy. And then take what your appetite craves and eat before the Lord your God and rejoice, you and your household.

Feasting is saying yes to Jesus and yes to his creation. We eat in his presence with our friends as we enjoy with all our senses the delicious foods of his creation.

There is an account of an extraordinary meal in Exodus. Moses and Israel arrived at Mt. Sinai and then: (Exodus 24:9–11)
Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, 10 and they saw the God of Israel. There was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. 11 And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and ate and drank.

What did they eat? What did they drink? What was this experience like? It is an incredible account and has affected the way I pray before a meal. I have come to understand that when we eat, we eat in the presence of God and this should affect our fellowship around the table.

Once again we are pulled back to the memory of the appetizer we just enjoyed. Feasting is more about relationships than the food itself. What made this meal on Mt. Sinai so extraordinary was not the meal itself but the presence of God as they ate. And the importance of feasting is revealed by the fact that God called Moses and the leaders of the tribes of Israel, not just to come and look but to sit and eat.

After Jesus resurrected, he cooked a breakfast of fish and bread for his disciples on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Why did Jesus cook a meal? God wants us to feast and there is a promise of a great celebration, a feast, a wedding banquet yet to come.

Isaiah prophesied about this wedding banquet to be held when Jesus (although Isaiah did not know his name at the time) will be united with his bride, the church. (Isaiah 25:6–8)
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,
of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.

The Bangkok meal will be put to shame at this feast but the best part of it will be the fellowship with saints from all of time sharing in the meal in the presence of Jesus. All of our feasts are a foreshadowing of this celebration meal that is yet to come.

God loves it when we celebrate a feast in his presence.

This has been quite a salad course and now we come to the third course, the entree: Fasting is feasting on God.

I like food in combination. This week I sauteed some chopped carrots with onions and then added chopped red and green peppers and finally added small cherry tomatoes chopped in half. It was a colorful, delicious medley of vegetables that went well with rice and a hamburger. But sometimes it is good to taste one part of the meal separate from the others, to focus on the look and taste of that one ingredient in the meal. Sometimes it is good to take out just the piece of carrot and taste that apart from the other vegetables.

When we fast, we separate out our food from our feasting and focus on just one part of the feast. We focus more intently on God who is present with us. We push away the world and its messages and we feast on our relationship with God. We read the Bible more intently. We take more time to pray. We sit and listen and reflect. I talked about this last week so do not need to go into detail today.

The point in fasting or feasting is to be present with God. We feast in the presence of God and the community he has given to us and we fast so we can more intently feast on our relationship with God.

We want to be grateful to God for his abundant, sensual blessing in our lives when we eat from the garden he created for us and we want to sometimes push this aside to focus just on his presence.

Fasting is not a denial of pleasure, it is a seeking of deeper and more powerful joy and peace and love. Both fasting and feasting are celebrations and unless we approach them this way, we are missing the life Jesus wants us to live.

And finally the desert course: Fast or feast but do not fast-eat.

What is fast-eating? I would suggest the meal at the restaurant in Bangkok was fast-eating. Fast-food restaurants are fast-eating.  Eating quickly without savoring the tastes of what is eaten is fast-eating. Eating food without taste or flavor is fast-eating. Eating as we walk or drive because this is the only time to eat, this is fast-eating. Food that fills but does not satisfy is fast-eating. Eating for the sake of eating is fast-eating. Eating when we are not hungry is fast-eating.

Fast-eating does not acknowledge the presence of God. Fast-eating does not concern itself with relationships. Fast-eating focuses on the food apart from the relationships. Fast-eating is the mechanical fulfillment of a task, not an experience to be savored.

Dieting can easily be fast-eating. Robert Capon considered dieting but then his wife made spaetzle, a German noodle served with gravy. He wrote:
It took only one taste of my wife’s first batch to make me realize that I could not go on as a dieter. Spaetzle exude substantiality: A man who takes a small helping is a man without eyes to see what is in front of him. Accordingly, I passed my plate back for seconds and then thirds, and made a vow then and there to walk more, to split logs every day and, above all, to change my religion from the devilish cult of dieting to the godly discipline of fasting.

It is important for us to maintain good health. One of the fruit of the Spirit is self-control and we need to not be slaves to our appetite. We are in control, not our appetites. But this does not mean that we do not celebrate our appetite from time to time. It is better to fast than not to feast with friends. Celebrate the delicious food but do not let it control you.

When I am losing weight, I have a limited number of calories I can consume. I exercise as well as restrict my diet, but I make sure that when I eat it is good, delicious food. It is better to eat a little of good food than a lot of flavorless, unsatisfying food. I like to call my diet a deluxe concentration camp diet. I eat just a little but I love the flavors of the food I do eat. So when you are losing weight, make sure that each calorie you consume is delicious. Because the calories are limited, they become more precious. Don’t waste them.

If you can fast, then use this as a tool for weight reduction. You can even combine this to make it a feast of focusing on God.

Again, Robert Capon
Let us fast, then – whenever we see fit, and as strenuously as we should. But having gotten that exercise out of the way, let us eat.

Fast food restaurants are destroying us. Diet programs are taking away our enjoyment of life. Both are destructive to our spirituality because both of them take us away from the earth and the treasures it produces.

Now at the end of our four course meal it is time for coffee or tea: Take a fasting and feasting approach to life, not a fast-eating approach.

There are many who fast-eat their way through life. We wake up, wash our face and brush our teeth, sit down with a cup of coffee or a glass of juice and read a few quick verses from the Bible. As we head out the door we mumble a couple prayers. We walk past the flowers someone has planted, too busy thinking about what we have to do that day.

We need to slow down and take time for what matters. If you are married, how much time do you spend each day with your spouse? I am not talking about one spouse watching TV while the other plays on a computer. I am talking about being together, interacting, watching the same thing. If you have children, how much time do you spend with them each day?

Are you taking time to communicate with your family and friends in your home country? One of the delights of this church is the new relationships that take place as people move into Rabat for a few years. We need to take time to savor and enjoy each other.

We need to take time to find a bit of nature and enjoy it. You can go to the Sofitel forest and run or walk laps around it for exercise, but that is a far different experience than taking a walk and stopping to look at the birds and insects and plants of that forest.

Our life is a celebration of all God has done for us and a celebration of the world he created for our enjoyment. Fast and feast. Live life to all its fullness. Fast and feast in the presence of God who loves you. Resist the devil who will try to make you focus on food in the absence of relationship, who will try to turn the delights of this world into an idol, who will try to remove you from an enjoyment of God’s treasures that rise up out of the soil.

In this sermon there has been a tension between the enjoyment of this world and a longing for a deeper, richer experience with Jesus. We are called to do both and when we do, our life is a rich, abundant life. My Facebook profile reflects this tension: I’m doing my best to keep the balance between enjoying the pleasures of this life and longing for eternity.

May we learn to fast and feast, to love this world without longing for it. To set our hearts on the kingdom to come while we celebrate the world God has given to us.