Hope and HospitalitySample

A Forbidden Meal

I love sitting at the kitchen table in my home. I have so many memories of delicious food shared with friends, family members, and even strangers. I’ve received good news sitting at my kitchen table and bad news, too. While the empty spaces around our table remind me of people no longer in my life, they also remind me that there’s hope: I have people yet to meet and family yet to break bread with.

The first meal recorded in the Bible didn’t happen around a kitchen table, but the ambience was perfect, nonetheless. God invited Adam and Eve to enjoy the Garden of Eden’s luscious buffet – barring one tree’s crop. Genesis 3 tells the regrettable story of how everything went wrong when God’s guests, for whom He had so richly provided, chose to make a meal of the forbidden fruit.

Food and hospitality were supposed to help us connect up, down, in, and out. Food connects us up to God, our Provider, who prepared a place for us with everything we needed for delight and well-being. Food connects us down to the planet, reminding us of God’s kindness and genius in filling the earth with wonderful things we can grow, harvest, cook, and eat. Food connects us in to ourselves, appealing to our senses and reminding us daily of our physicality, mortality, and dependence on God. Finally, food connects us out to others. Sustenance goes with celebration. Ingredients go with intimacy. Taste goes with trust. Food involves more than making meals – it’s about making memories, cultures, connections, and traditions. When food is shared, it’s good for our souls and bodies.

Tragically, that first meal in Eden changed the world. The food God offered humankind wasn’t only the means by which He proved His love for us; it was also the means by which we proved our love for Him. God didn’t forbid a place, word, thought, or activity – but a food. He wanted human beings to rule over their appetites rather than being ruled by them. The forbidden meal disconnected us from others, ourselves, our planet, and God. Hospitality turned into hostility. Many have a dysfunctional, shame-filled, or obsessive relationship with food. Ineffective, inequitable food distribution has led to widespread hunger and growing food insecurity. We’ve become an ungrateful people, abusing the hospitality God lavishes on humanity.

Food features prominently in the consequences for Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God: it will forever be associated with struggle, conflict, and pain. And yet, there’s hope! After the betrayal in the garden, God promises to restore all that’s been ruined. He doesn’t take away the gift of food but calls us to join Him in His movement of hospitality and hope as a way to repair all the fractured relationships that were broken in Eden.

Hope and hospitality are at the heart of Christian theology. It’s simple because everyone on the planet knows what it’s like to feed and be fed. It’s also challenging because God calls us to join Him in the renewal of all things by showing generous hospitality to others. May we be known as a people who gather around tables to love lavishly and serve sacrificially.