Enthusiasm

If you know very much about me, then you know that I am a hobby gourmet cook.  Few things are more enjoyable to me than being in the kitchen and few things bring me more joy than preparing food for family and friends.  As a friend once put it, “You express love through your food.”  Lots of people do.  At last month’s Calvin University January Series I had the chance to do the post-lecture interview with cookbook author and TV personality Caroline Randall Williams.  In the long prologue to her cookbook, Soul Food Love, she traces her family’s history of love expressed through food back multiple generations.  (Excellent cookbook, by the way.  The Peanut Chicken Stew is over the moon good.)

Recently I mentioned Neal Plantinga’s new book Gratitude.  Plantinga also notes how being thankful for the gift of food goes back as far as there was such a thing as praying in the Judeo-Christian tradition.  Doubtless other religious traditions could say something similar.  In one of Neal’s own prayers he frequently gives God thanks for the gift of food and drink and then says, “We are grateful because this shows, O God, your enthusiasm for our lives.”   Plantinga also encourages us to reflect on the long chain of people and markets and equipment that is required just to get something like a Brussels sprout onto our plates.  All thanks finally goes to God in the end but we widen our ambit of gratitude when were remember also farmers and truckers and warehouse workers and grocery store owners and the people who stock the shelves at such stores.

When God hands us our food—and when more immediately we hand food to a loved one—God is saying and we are saying, “I want you to live.  I want you to flourish.”  God could have, of course, made eating and drinking a necessary but somewhat bland affair.  Instead God has gifted us with whole cornucopias of foods, food types, ethnic specialties, and more.

Perhaps my favorite dish to make is Spanish-style paella (I have mentioned it before on the Reformed Journal blog!).  It is a one-pan wonder that showcases that abundant variety of food.  Dig into one of my paellas and you will encounter clams, mussels, shrimp, sausages, chicken, beef, (now and again lobster tail), fish, roasted red/green/yellow bell peppers, peas, Arborio rice seasoned with the most expense spice on the planet: saffron.  Talk about your enthusiasm for life!

A year ago I cooked a dinner for my parents on the occasion of their 64^th anniversary.  I wanted it to be special and so spent weeks planning it, sourcing the ingredients, etc.  In the end they got a salad with a variety of cherry tomatoes, pickled red onion, and a hazelnut-crusted warm medallion of chevre (goat cheese).  They had a fish course of Chilean sea bass in a yuzu-carrot broth; a game course of grilled venison chops with a pomegranate-juniper sauce; a main course of filet mignon over truffled potato puree and roasted carrots with a cabernet reduction sauce.  And Mom’s favorite dessert: orange-scented Crème Brule.  (I posted photos of all this on a Facebook Jacques Pepin fan page and it is the only post I ever did that actually went viral!)  All of it was my extended act of love for my parents.

People respond to food.  Post something about food to Facebook or Instagram and you know people will come out of the woodwork to comment and like it.  Recently in a church service I listed a variety of specific foods in thanksgiving to God including spicy tacos.  People thanked me after the service for giving thanks for spicy tacos!  (How often do our prayers even get mentioned to us as pastors?)

Is it any wonder that in Scripture one of the leading images for the joy of God’s kingdom is that of a feast, a banquet.  “On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine—the best of meats and the finest of wines” (Isaiah 25:6).  Is it any wonder that apparently Jesus enjoyed good food when he came as our incarnate Savior.  People enjoyed inviting him to dinner parties.  Jesus enjoyed those dinner parties so much that when the Pharisees were looking for a way to take a swipe at Jesus, they called him a glutton and a wine-bibber.  Jesus was neither but he was a far cry from an ascetic or an abstemious individual. 

“God is great.  God is good.  Let us thank him for this food.”  How many of us can count this as the earliest prayer our parents taught us?   With good reason we are taught to give thanks for food first and foremost.  We are also painfully aware that we render up such gratitude in a world where food scarcity and famine is a tragedy without end.  Those who work to end hunger, especially the hunger of children—and those who like Chef Jose Andres and his World Central Kitchen that gets hot food into places like Haiti after earthquakes and into war zones throughout the world—are doing the Lord’s work for certain.

Those of us blessed with pantries, fridges, and freezers with an abundance of food owe God our thanks for every morsel we eat.  And we give thanks for those who are God’s hands to grow and prepare food.  Some years ago I ran across a church tradition centering on Rogation or Rogate—a time of prayers around the weeks when seeds are planted for a new year’s crops.  I will close with a traditional prayer offered at Rogation.

Lord, when you came among us, you proclaimed the kingdom in villages and lonely places.  Have mercy on those who work hard at lonely jobs, where they can’t talk to others or can’t be heard when they do.   Remind all country people that you are never far from those who plant and harvest.   Help everyone in our nation to say grace over their food and to respect those who produce it.  O God, hear us as we bless earth, sun, wind, and water, in the Name of Jesus, Amen.