Let me speak of feasts I have eaten. I can recall most of my life through the prism of food made, served and shared. I have an early memory of sitting in the kitchen of our Vancouver home after trick or treating as a little boy and eating a hot dog and drinking hot chocolate on a cool Halloween evening, knowing that all was right with the world, with my mother beside me and a bag of candy at my feet. Every Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter were spent at my Grandma and Grandpa’s home, where we ate turkey, ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, and wurst bubbat. What is wurst bubbat you might ask? Some sort of food the Mennonites picked up in Germany, Prussia, Ukraine or Russia, but really it is a taste of heaven. You line a pan with bacon and then fill that pan with a raisin studded sweet yeast dough which you let rise in the pan. After it has risen, you cut a double smoked Mennonite farmer sausage into rounds and press them into the dough. You let it rise again and then bake it for 45 to 60 minutes. You cut it into squares and, if memory serves me correctly, Grandpa, Dad, and the Uncles fight over the corner pieces, which are doubly succulent, crisp and delicious, the bacon turning the bottom and sides into a crunchy crust, after which you bite into soft, warm bread filled with smoky sausage. But I could tell you, too, of the meals eaten with friends and family all over the world, deep fried zucchini flowers in Rome, lahmacun – crisp Turkish pizza – in Izmir, the best bread, sausages and beer in Germany, and the squash soup in my own kitchen, made with Triamble squash grown in the backyard.  With friends and family, all meals, accompanied with good wine, cider, or whatever is your drink of choice, can become a feast in which time temporarily goes on hiatus as you revel in the goodness of creation.

The prophet Isaiah points to that eschatological future in which every meal is indeed a feast without end, in which every dish is the choicest, every wine the best, and, what is more, it is a meal shared with all people. This, perhaps, is the most striking aspect of this passage from Isaiah 25:6-10, the delicious manner in which the prophet speaks of heaven as drawing away that which divided us from one another:

On this mountain the LORD of hosts
will provide for all peoples
a feast of rich food and choice wines,
juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines.
On this mountain he will destroy
the veil that veils all peoples,
the web that is woven over all nations;
he will destroy death forever.
The Lord GOD will wipe away
the tears from every face;
the reproach of his people he will remove
from the whole earth; for the LORD has spoken.

 

This is the feast, Jesus says, to which all were invited, but which some turn away from, due to other business, worldly concerns, regrets and worries (Matthew 22:1-14). It seems hard to imagine that we would turn down the invitation, but in our own world, driven by fast food, purchased while in a car, maybe eaten while in that car, or at a desk alone, is it not easier now than ever before to think that we would put other things against sitting down with friends and family and sharing a good meal, that we would refuse an invitation in order to attend to work and business?

Usually, I try to guard against rampant biblical literalism, but I am rather insistent on it when it comes to heaven: I am preparing for a real feast of choice foods and well-aged wines. In order to enjoy it, we need to be prepared to taste it; when we participate in the Eucharist and when we sit down with friends to share a meal in this world, however humble, we are getting ready for the feast without end. Savor and enjoy each meal with those you love while you prepare for the feast without end with friends and family whose names you do not yet know. You will have plenty of time to get to know them, given that you will be sharing with them “a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines” forever. I’m getting hungry not for a taste of heaven but for the whole meal.

John W. Martens

Follow me on Twitter @johnwmartens

John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn,where he teaches early Christianity and Judaism. He also directs the Master of Arts in Theology program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. into a Mennonite family that had decided to confront modernity in an urban setting. His post-secondary education began at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, came to an abrupt stop, then started again at Vancouver Community College, where his interest in Judaism and Christianity in the earliest centuries emerged. He then studied at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and McMaster University, with stops at University of Haifa and University of Tubingen. His writing often explores the intersection of Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman culture and belief, such as in "let the little children come to me: Children and Childhood in Early Christianity" (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), but he is not beyond jumping into the intersection of modernity and ancient religion, as in "The End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film and Television" (Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Press, 2003). He blogs at  www.biblejunkies.com and at www.americamagazine.org for "The Good Word." You can follow him on Twitter @biblejunkies, where he would be excited to welcome you to his random and obscure interests, which range from the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Timberwolves, to his dog, and 70s punk, pop and rock. When he can, he brings students to Greece, Turkey and Rome to explore the artifacts and landscape of the ancient world. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and has two sons. He is certain that the world will not end until the Vancouver Canucks have won the Stanley Cup, as evidence has emerged from the Revelation of John, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra which all point in this direction.