Holy Days and Holidays 3: Connection – The Joy of Food

When I was growing up, summer holidays were mostly spent in self-catering accommodation in the form of faraway relatives’ homes that were opened to the extended family for the six weeks of the school break. We never stayed the whole time, but the weeks we did occupy the camp beds and limited washing facilities also meant lots of sitting around huge tables eating foods we didn’t often get at home. My great-great-uncle’s mudbrick house in Central Otago had a coal range, from which my Nana turned out delightfully fluffy scones and muffins, to be spread with home-made jams and jelly from Uncle Bill’s berry bushes. My other grandmother’s farmhouse, in the North Island, meant meat at every meal, fresh eggs and colourful preserved fruit in bottles. I now realise my Mum and Nana probably had slightly less of a holiday than the rest of us! They could however relax and enjoy the meals we took at roadside cafés to break the long car and ferry journey; these were often accompanied by ice cream on a cone, a rare treat before the advent of home freezers. I wish I could say my father’s daily trip to the river to fly-fish brought delicious piscatory delights, but he rarely caught one of the brown trout my uncles often snagged. I later discovered going fishing for my introvert Dad was his way of winding down from the feverish demands on a parish minister in those times. His annual Sabbath!

If we notice the stories about food we find in the Bible, we find there are plenty; the stories of Abraham, Elijah, David, Isaiah, feasts like Passover, Jesus’ parables, the loaves and fishes miracle and of course the Lord’s Supper. Our kids ministry recently enjoyed a series called Meals with Jesus, and some of us grownups also worked through the Scriptures around meals in Luke. Many of the food stories in the Bible are about God’s miraculous provision for his people, but the Great Banquet parables give us a different perspective. The feast is, as the Anglican liturgy reminds us, a ‘foretaste of the heavenly banquet prepared for all peoples’ – a glorious celebration of all who are in Christ. One of my friends has a standing joke he makes about earnest Baptists who are wont to ask “will you be present at the marriage supper of the Lamb?” It’s cheesy but reflects our firm hope for the future.

Nevertheless, God’s good gift of food and shared meals are also for now. They feature in Jewish traditions; in the Talmud, a Seudat Mitzvah was the celebratory meal at a wedding, baby-naming ceremony or coming of age. (I guess its from the Jewish faith that we got the word holidays/holy days). Although even the Marvelous Mrs Maisel acknowledges the ethical questions around extravagant food-based events, the desire to have a party is planted deep in the culture. Samantha Solomon recounts her Jewish father’s ritual invitation: “We nearly didn’t survive, and that is worth celebrating; it’s time to eat!” I recently learned from a Jewish scholar that after the fall of the Temple in 70AD, the rabbis transferred the Jerusalem-based rituals to the Jewish home, where the altar became a table and parents became priests. For Christians too, a shared meal is an encounter with grace, a way to build community and caring, not just with family and friends, but at times also with strangers. That’s why we talk about ‘eating together’ rather than feeding, which is what animals do. Eating is a social task; people face each other and enjoy talking about what matters in their lives.