Besides making me hungry, this recent post by Bethany Jenkins at the Gospel Coalition was also good food for thought. It’s the introduction to a series TGC ran over there a couple of months ago about what pastry chefs do and what God has to do with it: (1) theological framework, (2) food sourcing, (3) consumer health, (4) innovative creation (haven’t you always wanted to build a better donut?), and (5) food waste.
In the post, she starts out by talking about what people in Biblical times actually ate:
The biblical landscape is full of stories that center on meals eaten in community together. Meals were opportunities to show hospitality to strangers and demonstrate fellowship to believers. In fact, sharing meals among believers was such an important extension of the gospel that Paul rebuked Peter for refusing to eat with redeemed Gentiles (Gal. 2:11-14).
The ingredients used in these meals were typical of their time and place. In Israel, grain, wine, and olive oil were staple commodities. Lentils, beans, and other vegetables were common, too. For the most part, meat was eaten only occasionally, while fish was the more customary animal protein.
As for dessert, although we tend to think of fruit as a healthy alternative to sweets, ancient societies reached for fresh and dried fruits as their main desserts. After all, they didn’t have refined sugar to make cakes or pumpkin bread. So they enjoyed fruits like grapes, apricots, pomegranates, melons, figs, and dates. Honey was “chief among desserts” and used to sweeten other foods.
Tracing the stories about food in the Bible–especially about dessert–she sees three lessons:
1) Our relationship with dessert is sweet but complicated.
When God created the world, he said, “Behold, I have given you . . . every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food” (Gen. 1:29). The Scriptures then affirm the goodness of fruit-bearing trees, saying they are “pleasant to the sight and good for food” (Gen. 2:9). Thus, God made fruit—the main dessert of their time—to be lovely and delicious. Yet this same dessert—when placed in a particular context—was used by God as a means to test our ancestors’ allegiance and affections. God told Adam, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat” Gen. 2:16-17).
2) Eventually, that relationship will be the “icing on the cake.”
Paul, however, re-narrates the idea of “forbidden fruit” by talking about “the fruit of the Spirit” (Gal. 5:22) and the fruit that “leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life” (Rom. 6:22). In Ephesians, he contrasts “the unfruitful works of darkness” with “the fruit of life [that] is found in all that is good and right and true” (Eph. 5:8-11). As we contemplate the eschatological reality of our future home in the presence of Christ, God once again turns our attention to desserts. First, he repeatedly tells our forefathers that Canaan will be “a land flowing with milk and honey,” combining milk (a rare and precious commodity in an era without refrigeration) with honey (the chief of desserts).
In the meantime, though, we live in between times:
Today, however, we do not yet live in the promised land. Instead, we live in the overlap of the ages, the already but not yet. How, in this context, do we think about dessert?
3) Dessert as the “feast” in “feasting and fasting”
In the Bible, Bethany says,
there are three primary modes of eating: ordinary, fasting, and feasting. “An ordinary family meal,” R. K. Harrison writes, “would not involve the preparation of more than one dish of food, so that, when it had been served, the member of the household who had cooked the meal would have no further work to do. This thought probably underlies the rebuke to Martha (Luke 10:42), when Christ suggested that only one dish was really necessary.” An ordinary meal, therefore, may or may not have included a simple, unadorned dessert like fruit.
But not every meal is ordinary. Sometimes God calls us to fast and depend on him: sometimes he calls us to celebrate.
In feasting we see the glorious purpose of dessert. Although it is not necessary to life for daily sustenance, dessert can give us a foretaste of the divine.
Visit Bethany’s blog for links to the rest of her series on pastry chefs and God–and for some recipes! You might also be interested in this interview by Bethany with a pastry chef on how she serves God and others in her work, and this short talk by David Kim of Redeemer Presbyterian Church on how the gospel changes our view of food.
Image: “Chocolate cake for today’s dessert” by Hideya Hamano, used under a Creative Commons license.
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