Scripture Sunday: A Rich Feast

by Ashtyn Adams

Isaiah 25:6-9 (CEB)
6 On this mountain,
the Lord of heavenly forces will prepare for all peoples
a rich feast, a feast of choice wines,
​of select foods rich in flavor,         
of choice wines well refined.
7  He will swallow up on this mountain the veil that is veiling all peoples,     
the shroud enshrouding all nations.
8  He will swallow up death forever.
The Lord God will wipe tears from every face;     
he will remove his people’s disgrace from off the whole earth,         
for the Lord has spoken.
9  They will say on that day, “Look! This is our God,
for whom we have waited--     
and he has saved us!
This is the Lord, for whom we have waited;     
let’s be glad and rejoice in his salvation!”

Chapters 13-27 of Isaiah are a sort of mini-apocalypse concerning the nations, with a theological emphasis on the universal worship of Yahweh. Isaiah’s mini-apocalypse is interrupted with a stunning feast here in chapter 25 though, where we see that Yahweh’s universality as the Creator of the whole earth also takes on an intimate particularity: on this mountain God will prepare a feast, on this mountain God will swallow death, on that day the people will rejoice in this Lord. God is neither aloof nor distanced from his creation, but wrapped up in the many layers of it, cozily familiar with the stuff of the land. The Lord of “heavenly forces” displays her divinity as the one who dedicates time to cook a fabulous and savory meal for all peoples; it’s an endearing image to think of God as the host who goes back into the wine cellar, deliberating and choosing the best aged and refined wine for our sheer delight. ​

God is neither aloof nor distanced from his creation, but wrapped up in the many layers of it, cozily familiar with the stuff of the land. 

We are hearing this passage on Easter Sunday as we celebrate the resurrected Lord. The obvious Christological reading of Isaiah will emphasize Jesus as the one who “swallows up death forever.” The power of the passage, which overcomes violence and death-dealing forces, should not be overlooked in favor of more sentimental images; however, it is vital to pay attention to the passage as a whole, seeing that the Lord who swallows up death, who wipes away our tears, is not a Lord that abandons the Earth in the process. Resurrection is no escape from materiality, but the opposite, infusing materiality with new life. Salvation, as the Israelites rightly proclaimed, is a rich feast that honors and celebrates creatures and creation alike; it removes “disgrace from off the whole Earth”; it whispers come, taste and see that the Lord is good. Resurrection and salvation are too often reduced to the absence of death or punishment, dismissing the inseparable call to freshness, liberation, and restoration to communal wholeness that infuses creation with shalom.

Jesus was often accused of being a glutton and a drunkard because the practices and images of feasting were so central to understanding the Kingdom of God. Norman Wirzba in his book Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating reminds us that the evidence of the early church was communities that regularly ate together and “in their eating they tried to bear witness to Christ’s way of dwelling on earth.” The Church today is not known for its sustainable food practices, for its radical hospitality towards people and the land. We too often celebrate Easter as a commemoration of what Christ did in the past, but the only way to truly “rejoice,” as evidenced by Isaiah and the early Church, is by reinstituting Christ’s way of being: in this moment, with these people, with this land. The feasting images that pervade Scripture challenge us this Easter to discover our rootedness in this Earth as we celebrate the risen Christ, to question our relationships to the food systems we are grossly alienated from, and to consider who it is we honor at our tables. To quote Wirzba again, “Thoughtful eating reminds us that there is no human fellowship without a table, no table without a kitchen, no kitchen without a garden, no garden without viable ecosystems, no ecosystems without the forces productive of life, and no life without its source in God.”

Jesus was often accused of being a glutton and a drunkard because the practices and images of feasting were so central to understanding the Kingdom of God.

As we sing our songs about overcoming, ask “O death where is your sting?”, and proclaim Christ’s resurrection as our own, may we be empowered to hold fiercely to Isaiah’s image, knowing we are not saved from something, but for something: a rich feast.  It is in our feasting that we learn to receive God’s sweet aroma, trying to wrap ourselves around such exquisite flavors previously hidden from us. Our task is to actively partake, sharing the newfound beauty we discover by attending to the world in ways that nurture and feed all of life on this Earth. Christ lives indeed, and we meet him in our preparations for such holy, rich feasts.

Books:

Norman Wirzba, Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

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Ashtyn Adams is a Seminary Intern at Creation Justice Ministries. Ashtyn earned her B.A. in Religion from Pepperdine University and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Divinity at Duke University.

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