One key refreshing highlight at the Fourth Lausanne Congress in Seoul-Incheon has been the wonderful hospitality and food provided by our generous Korean hosts. At arguably one of the most strategic gatherings of the global church, jellyfish salad, kimchi, soybean paste soup and fluffy white rice with soup have been on the participants’ minds, a tasty break between the sessions at the Congress.
The Bible has much to say about food and God’s mission.
The Bible has much to say about food and God’s mission. It shows clearly that a lot happens when people have conversations around food. In the Old Testament, God’s first invitation to humans was to freely eat. When Abraham received his strange guests, the ensuing life-changing conversations of Sarah’s unusual pregnancy and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah took place around curds, milk, and calf (Genesis 18). In Isaiah, couched in language of food, we are invited to a more soul-satisfying experience in God (Isaiah 55). YHWH promises to satisfy us with meals (Isaiah 58).
In the New Testament, meals are a central rallying point. No figure in the Bible is more associated with food than its central character, Jesus. In response to a catering crisis, his first miracle was changing water into wine (John 2). He saved the newlywed couple’s day by fermenting four hundred and fifty litres of water into the best wine the guests had ever had.
Throughout the New Testament Jesus spends a great amount of time at dinner parties—winning for him a reputation as a drunkard, glutton, and friend of the ’wrong sort of people’ (Matthew 11:19). Though the first two accusations were false, the third could be determined guilty as charged.
One of the major miracles associated with Jesus’ ministry is the feeding of the 5,000 with five loaves of bread and two fish. Showing deep compassion, teamwork, tact, member care, creation care, and divine prowess, Jesus satisfied the physical hunger of the 5,000.
Before his death on the cross, Jesus had the last supper with his disciples—a meal we continue to share together today in remembrance of the Lord and his work on the cross. After the resurrection, Jesus exercised his culinary skills to prepare breakfast as an act of love and reinstatement for Peter (John 21). With bread and fish, Jesus reconnected with his disciples. What a picture we have of heaven—a great banquet and feasting. In effect, the Bible message is sandwiched by meals from beginning to end.
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