As humans, we hunger for so many things that extend beyond physical appetite. We hunger to know and to be known. We hunger for others to accept, understand, and adore us. We hunger to have someone to love and cherish with our affection. Knowing we were created this way, I began to suspect that food was created not just to satiate our bellies as we gather around the table but to create a place where God could meet us and fill our hearts. I started investigating the meaning and purpose of appetite in the Scripture.
As it turns out, food plays a major role in the pages of the Bible. Long before Rachael Ray learned to eat on forty dollars a day and Michael Pollan outlined the dilemma we omnivores face, God was the original foodie.
THE BIBLE’S DELICIOUS FIRST COURSE
The creation narrative in Genesis unfolds like a feast with fruits and vegetables everywhere. Birds fill the tree branches, fish school in the sea, and livestock roam free. Less than a thousand words into the Bible and God has already crafted every ingredient needed for an epic meal, so he takes the next logical step and creates someone to eat the fruits and veggies of this delicious bounty.
God handcrafted humanity to be dependent on food. The Creator could have required us to survive on air or water apart from eating, but He designed the human body so food is not an option but a necessity.
Even more delicious, God creates food as a source of pleasure. One of the marvels of our bodies is that we come equipped with between 2,000 and 10,000 taste buds, each one harboring 50 to 100 receptors that distinguish between the five main flavors: salty, bitter, sweet, sour, and umami (savory—think ripe tomatoes or shitake mushrooms). The tongue could exist without these nubbins, but God imbues us with the ability to delight in eating.
But food in the Bible is more than a commodity to be consumed. It is often sacred and symbolic, showing up both on tables and in temples. Food plays a prominent role in the most spiritually significant events from the moment the story starts.
In Genesis, the first humans take delectable strolls with the Creator in the bountiful Garden of Eden. I imagine the first couple plucking raspberries and peeling tangerines as they enjoy togetherness with God in the cool of the day. In Eden, God consecrates the first farm-to-table dining experience.
Then the sweetness of the story comes to an end in a bite of fruit, of all things. Much like us today, the couple want what they can’t have and reach for the forbidden. With a few chews and chomps, their lives derail.
As Adam and Eve are removed from the garden buffet, God unfolds a blueprint to draw humanity back to himself. And—once again—our daily diets are involved. Food plays a significant role in helping us taste and see God’s goodness in our lives. Everyday edibles become both a source of sustenance and sacred symbols. They often take on a spiritual dimension, a physical representation of God’s grace and provision. And something beautiful happens when we gather around the table.
For the remainder of Genesis, a primary symbol of God’s blessing is—you guessed it—food. Tasty treats spring up throughout the book. God uses Noah to preserve food in the ark and establishes his covenant with Abraham over a meaty offering. Abraham’s wife, Sarah, bakes up bread cakes for angelic visitors and their son, Isaac, breathes a sigh of relief when roasted ram appears on the menu as a substitute offering. Later, Esau trades his blessing for lentil soup, and Jacob tricks his father into giving the blessing with goat stew. When famine threatens the globe, Joseph blesses all who come to him by feeding them. In this act, he foreshadows a day when the Son of God will bless all who come to him by feeding them the Bread of Life.
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Food plays a significant role in helping us taste and see God’s goodness in our lives.
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The story of God’s people continues with Moses and his sidekick brother, Aaron, whose staff produces miracles and wild almonds. When the dynamic duo face off against Pharaoh, who has enslaved the Israelites, Moses pronounces ten plagues on Egypt. The list reverses the Genesis creation order and decimates the food sources of Egypt, including livestock, poultry, fish, vegetables, fruit—even the water.
After their escape, the great Israelite exodus is memorialized through a delectable meal of sacred remembrance. Roasted lamb, bitter herbs, and flatbread still adorn Jewish tables each year as a means of passing the harrowing story on to future generations.
Once freed from Egypt, the Israelites receive a forty-year sabbatical in the Sinai desert, a barren place where food is difficult to find. Less than a fifty-day journey from Egypt, the Israelites awake in the wilderness of Sin (yes, that’s really the name). They’re willing to barter their newfound freedom for memories of food from an animal fleshpot and hard, stale bread back in Egypt. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. They probably developed a taste for these in utero or as infants. They craved the comfort of the only life they had ever known.
The Lord persists in displaying his loving affection to the grumblers by providing food. One of the first courses on the menu arrives during a stopover in Elim where God’s people drink from twelve springs of water and enjoy the natural candy of seventy date palm trees.
God soon sprinkles the desert with “manna.” You won’t find this sweet bread of heaven in aisle seven, but it’s prominently displayed in the book of Exodus. Since humans cannot live on bread alone, God also rains down quail on the Israelites. The book of Numbers says the poultry reached a yard high as far as anyone can walk in a day. To translate the scene into classic Forrest Gump terms—you can barbecue it, boil, it, broil it, bake it, sauté it. There are quail kabobs, quail creole, quail gumbo. Pan-fried, deep-fried, stir-fried. There’s pineapple quail, lemon quail, coconut quail, pepper quail, quail soup, quail stew, quail salad, quail and potatoes, quail burgers, quail sandwiches. God is the first foodie, but he apparently loves a good buffet too.
The divine menu of the desert sets the table for daily worship and adoration of God—dependence for every meal, trust for every step, a pathway to joy. During those years, the Israelites are tempted to lose heart and give up hope, but God promises he is cooking up something delectable for them and uses mealtime for their spiritual formation. In the hands of the Great Chef, food provides more than nourishment. It becomes a doorway to the divine and the gateway to transformation.
Through food, the Israelites will break free from their unhealthy upbringing.
Through food, the Israelites will grow in dependence on and trust in God.
Through food, the Israelites will discover new ways to think and talk about God.
Through food, the Israelites will experience the goodness of God together.
The story of the Israelites challenges us to be expectant for God to do the same in us whenever we gather around the table.
THE BIBLE’S DELECTABLE NEXT COURSE
When God bursts through the swinging doors of silence separating the Old and New Testaments, it’s a buffet all over again. Jesus uses a variety of foodstuff to teach spiritual lessons. He compares the kingdom to wheat fields and bountiful banquets, and mountain-moving faith to a mustard seed. The Jesus we meet not only dies on a cross, but he also picks wheat, craves figs, and commands fish to be caught in Galilean nets.
Jesus’s first miracle is a culinary conversion of water into wine at a wedding banquet, and later he feeds thousands with a basket of barley loaves and a handful of fish.
Mealtimes provide an opportunity for Jesus to gather his disciples and introduce them to the kingdom of God. Often the way Jesus consumes food and who he eats it with angers the religious establishment. They appear baffled when Jesus eats with unwashed hands, and they rage over the sketchy people who pull up a chair—tax collectors, prostitutes, and other “sinners.”
Many of Jesus’s most famous stories center around food as well. There’s the one about the prodigal son who hopes to fill his stomach with pig slop but ends up with a steak dinner. And the beggar Lazarus who longs to eat from the rich man’s table. And the parables about the vineyard workers and the rich man who
stockpiles grain, unaware his life will soon end.
Crucial conversations, including the defense of Mary of Bethany with her alabaster jar and even Judas’s betrayal, take place surrounded by food. On the night of his betrayal, Jesus offers his disciples a spiritual practice that they should continue until he returns: a holy supper. And let’s not forget the moment when the disciples who walk the road to Emmaus alongside the risen Christ have their eyes opened . . . as they break bread.
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Jesus reveals himself as foodstuff: the bread of life, the true vine, the one anointed with olive oil, the sacrificial lamb.
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Jesus reveals himself as foodstuff: the bread of life, the true vine, the one anointed with olive oil, the sacrificial lamb. The Son of God is even described as someone who knocks on the doors of our souls, so we’ll invite him in for supper. And when this whole shindig reaches its culmination, God handpicks the menu for the best banquet of all time—one that supersedes anything Adam and Eve experienced in Eden. Though food played a role in the fall, it plays a bigger role in God’s redemptive plan.
If the God of the Bible uses food to open his people to divine possibility, and God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, then it stands to reason that God wants to do the same with us now.
A RECIPE FOR A RICHER RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD
The design of our modern world makes it easy to miss mealtime blessings. With harried schedules, many of us find ourselves grabbing anything that can be thrown inside a wrap, on a bun, or over a bed of lettuce. The meal, whether wolfed down behind a desk or behind the wheel, may be tasty but not memorable. Yet a blessing awaits whenever we carve out an appointed time to gather together and become fully present with God and one another. When we hold hands and give thanks and remember those who planted, harvested, and prepared the meal, we reconnect with ourselves and each other as humans made in the image of God.
Pause for a moment and ask, “What am I hungry for?” No, I don’t mean nacho cheese Doritos or Häagen-Dazs peppermint bark bars. What are you really hungry for? When you gather around a table with those you most love and are most loved by, with those you know best and who know you best, what do you hope will be served? A savory entrée and a satisfying dessert, sure, but what are the unseen menu items you’re hoping will appear as you’re together?
Sometimes, in times of scarcity, we can be literally starving. But other times, our deepest hungers may seem more metaphorical or existential. Around the table, we discover something about longing. We recognize our need for someone to look us in the eye and truly see us, for someone to lean in and listen to us, for someone to nod and acknowledge that we’re not alone. We may need someone to laugh at our jokes, tell us when we have spinach trapped in our teeth, or ask, “How are you really doing?”
When we gather to eat, God wants to nourish more than our bodies: he wants to nourish our souls with transcendent joy and supernatural community and divine presence. When we feed our physical appetites in community, we open our hearts for God to feed something deeper as well. He has connected our bodies and bellies to our spirits and souls. That, it seems, is the way God has designed us. God created us to give and receive, not just in our bodies but in our spirits.
The psalmist invites: “Taste and see that the LORD is good.” Through these two sensory expressions, we are invited to become more attentive to God and the everyday aromatic, savory, and tactile expressions of his love.
Maybe you’ve never considered the Bible a book about food. I hadn’t for most of my life. A tool to recognize God’s voice in your life? Sure. An encouraging guide to awaken to the wonder of God? Of course. A road map for a more joyful relationship with God? Definitely. But a foodie road map? Not a chance. An opportunity to think about the deep hungers of my life? Nope.
Once I realized the spiritual significance of food in the Bible, I decided to zero in on six foods that God uses to reveal and heal our deepest hungers. Since I’m not a food expert, only an aspiring foodie, I wanted to spend time with people who know these foods intimately, whose lives and livelihoods intertwine with these delicacies and could help me recognize Christ in their craft.
As always, God answered my prayer in the most unexpected ways. This expedition took me fishing in the Sea of Galilee, plucking figs in the farm belt of California, and baking fresh matzo at Yale University. I descended 420 feet into a Utah salt mine, harvested olives along the Croatian coast, and graduated from a Steakology 101 course in Texas.
What you hold in your hands is an invitation to take this adventure with me. This book is a spiritual travel and food guide designed to ensure you never read the Bible the same way again . . . you never approach the table the same way again . . . you never see food the same way again.
In hunger and fullness, may we draw closer to the one who fashioned us. More than a journey of food, this is a journey of faith, one designed to nourish our bellies and heal our souls. Let us taste and see God’s goodness together. Let us follow our hunger and see what’s cooking.
The table is set, drinks are poured, the meal is ready.
Pull up a chair.
Bon appétit and let’s eat.
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A Flaky Filet of Fish
TASTE AND SEE GOD’S POWER
I’m 6,941 miles from home on the southern rim of the Sea of Galilee, slogging through the marsh in rubber waders that I borrowed from a stranger. Israeli fishermen lay a gillnet in waist-deep water before me. They shout at each other in what I assume is Hebrew, but what my ears fail to hear, my eyes understand clearly. They have determined to fill their boats with St. Peter’s fish. I am the only woman in the bunch—a female Bible teacher from America, no less—and one of the men is stripped down to his underwear.
How did I get myself in this mess?
The month prior, I had decided to throw myself into a study of food in the Bible, and my expedition would be incomplete without an exploration of fish. I prayed a (big) prayer that I’d meet the right people at the right time, and soon one divine encounter led to another. Thanks to my friend Christine, I connected with an Israeli man named Ido (pronounced Eee-dough). He grew up in Tiberias, on the edge of the Galilee in Israel, and now works as a jack-of-alltrades for his family’s restaurants and boat tours.
“If I travel to Tiberias, will you take me fishing on the Galilee?” I asked after explaining how I got his number.
“Of course,” he assured with a thick Israeli accent. Ido had a community of friends who were lifelong fishermen, and they would take us on their boats.
Now I had a decision to make: I could play it safe and learn about fish somewhere closer to home. Or I could take a risk and fly halfway around the world by myself (I’m not known for my street smarts) to meet a man that I didn’t know (I flunked out of kickboxing) in a country that’s a powder keg of geopolitical tension (my husband tends to worry).
Leif raised every possible concern, but in the end said he would support my decision to go. (He knew what he was signing up for when he said, “I do.”) That was all my inner-adventurer needed to hear. Two clicks on the trackpad, and my itinerary was set.
As we counted down the days until takeoff, Leif and I could feel our shared anxiety rise. I’m stepping into a scenario in which anything can happen and, as much as I crave adventure, I confess I don’t like being out of control. So I arm myself with a plan of all I want to accomplish, and on the morning of my departure, with nerves afire, Leif wraps me in his arms and whispers, “God, make a way so your power and presence may be seen by all.”
After multiple plane changes between Salt Lake City and Tel Aviv, I rent a car and soon pull into Lido Beach on the shores of the Galilee. Built around a shady harbor, the Lido compound hosts a fleet of boats and two restaurants, the Pagoda and the famed Decks, which attract everyone from dignitaries to Jewish families celebrating bat and bar mitzvahs.
A six-foot-four man wearing a black T-shirt and jeans emerges from behind a gate carrying a mug of tea in
each hand. With bluish eyes, a shaved head, and deep laugh lines, he is a dead ringer for Bruce Willis.
Ido carries himself with an affable gait and gregarious grin. Knowing the sharing of food is an act of friendship in Middle Eastern culture, I accept the piping cup of licorice tea as Ido leads me on a tour of his family’s property. He highlights everything he has made by hand—custom chairs and tables, guardrails and concrete decks, even the grills in the kitchen. He’s a high-energy Jewish Renaissance man.
He ushers me toward the docks, where he points out his latest project: a fiberglass replica of the Ancient Galilee Boat, also known as “The Jesus Boat,” to take pilgrims on tours. Discovered four miles away from Lido in 1986, the wooden vessel dates to the first century AD and provides insights into the watercraft used during Jesus’s lifetime.
Twenty-seven feet in length and seven-and-a-half feet wide, its flat bottom and shallow draft allow the vessel to inch close for inshore fishing. The boat, with its four staggered rowers and a mast for sailing, could adapt to the ever-changing weather conditions on the lake. A cooking pot and lamp found inside the vessel confirm the fishermen worked late into the night and prepared meals aboard their boats just as they do today.
I remember the scene in Mark’s Gospel when a sudden squall catches the disciples off-guard. The waves crash over the boat until it’s nearly swamped. Yet, amazingly, Jesus dozes on a cushion in the aft. When I see the shape and dimensions of the original discovery, as well as Ido’s re-creation, I grasp both the credibility and the absurdity of the scene.
The Sea of Galilee is relatively shallow, just 200 feet at its deepest point. The result is that wind stirs up the water more readily because the energy cannot be absorbed as quickly as with deeper lakes. As a result, the waves on the lake are abnormally close together. Vessels, especially of this size, would be tossed with more severity during a storm. The scene of Jesus snoozing seems outrageous with a backdrop of disciples straining at the oars, gusts of wind screaming, gallons of saline breaking over the bow. Yet Christ slumbers in peace.
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