Gospel Feast

Our Advent traditions have become numerous: we cut down our tree at the Beck family farm in the shadow of Mt. Hood; we make cinnamon rolls for our neighbors; we go ice skating at the mall; I take the girls to see the Nutcracker; and we go on a hike through the snow and forest on Christmas morning. Between all of these moments, we experience the normal hustle and bustle of America drinking hot chocolate, shopping, wrapping, and many times traveling. The most revered and treasured tradition, however, is our Christmas Eve feast.

This family tradition pre-dates our marriage when my wife and her mother would welcome in anyone without a family to be with and without a place to go. This meal was important to my late mother-in-law because it depicted generosity, family, and the entire message of the gospel. Our Christmas Eve meal is the most spiritual and religious moment of our entire holiday season. Mirela prepares great food from appetizers to dessert. We buy the best beer, the best wine, the best whiskey. We decorate our home and we welcome in friend, stranger, and acquaintances. I remember our first year in Portland saw us welcome a couple we met on the street searching for live music, our landlord, and friends from long ago. Each year we see a different collection, and yet each year is the same; we have a feast on the evening we celebrate God’s arrival. There’s hardly anything more appropriate in our worship. More than hymns, more than sermons, and even more than candles, we see God’s arrival to us at a table with other people.

Our Longing for the Feast

Food is significantly religious. It is through food that Adam and Eve rebel. The first biblical meal is the perversion, pollution, and de-creation of all God had made. Adam’s feast ushers the world into chaos. Through food, humanity enters a groaning and waiting for wholeness, restoration, and peace. Sin—everything that is unkind, unmerciful, destructive, wicked, lonely, murderous, and mortal—has its birth in that first meal. Through Advent, we weep over the consequences of Adam and Eve’s meal in which they doubted God’s goodness and believed God to be withholding. Advent is necessary because of the separation caused by sin.

Advent is the season we observe the agony of war and hope for peace. We aspire to hope while we acknowledge our own despair. We long for love while confronting our inability to receive love from another or muster the courage to love another. The world watches for God’s light, peace, joy, salvation, and love to break into our world. We wait for the abundance, blessing, and eternal life of God that overpowers our sin and cleanses us. It was through a meal creation fell apart, and it’s through a meal that God is restoring all things, including us.

The Arrival of the Gospel Feast

You’ve likely never heard an Advent or Christmas sermon on Isaiah 25, but it is a deep song of arriving hope and peace to the world.

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples

a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,

of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.

And he will swallow up on this mountain

the covering that is cast over all peoples,

the veil that is spread over all nations.

He will swallow up death forever;

and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces,

and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,

for the Lord has spoken.

It will be said on that day,

“Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.

This is the Lord; we have waited for him;

let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation. (Isaiah 25:6-9 ESV)

Isaiah points us to a moment when the waiting will be over. When God will gather all people for a rich feast, an incredible celebration. It’s in that gathering in that shared feast that we will see the swallowing up of death, the removal of mourning, the extinguishing of condemnation, and the tearing of the separation between God and humanity.