The Feast is Ready to Begin

I don’t really cook or bake much, so maybe I shouldn’t answer this question 😀. But I used to do a bit of cooking when we first got married. I was a part-time teacher, and I had more time on my hands than my wife had at that stage.

I always like to write something about music, and something about Christianity.

It’s the same sort of sentiment echoed by John Lennon’s Imagine. Just as Blue Mink’s song eradicates racism by putting us all into a melting pot and turning out “coffee-coloured” people, Lennon’s song imagines a world without countries and without religion.

But to be fair, maybe both songs are just intended to be thought-provoking. And maybe their real goal is tolerance. Though we are all different, we can share certain values, such as “Do unto others as you’d have them do to you.” That’s a quote from Jesus, but I’m sure that it was widely believed, if not always applied, across the world even before the time of Jesus. It simply makes sense if we want to avoid a hellish existance.

I’m not sure if I know any other songs about recipes or cooking. Here’s a couple that Microsoft Copilot mentioned, but I never heard them until now:

I did hear of Dr.Hook & The Medicine Show, though not that song. Way back in the autumn of 1972, Sylvia’s Mother was the first ever pop song that I learned the lyrics of. I found it in a “Words record song book” lyrics magazine.

I sometimes browse the web to see if I can find that precise magazine. I see lots of old Words magazines, but not that one. I think that it might have been the August or September 1972 edition.

What about the Bible? Does it say much about recipes? Well, you do get a fair bit of detail about food in the early chapters of the Old Testament and throughout. I remember a quote from 2 Kings 4:40:

2 Kings 4:40
 The stew was poured out for the men, but as they began to eat it, they cried out, “Man of God, there is death in the pot!” And they could not eat it.

Thankfully, no-one ever said that about my soups 😀. And I found these sites named The Bible Cookbook and Doughnut Lounge. Honestly, I don’t know what to make of them 😀, but they might be of interest to some.

In the New Testament, an interesting reference is where the risen Jesus prepares a meal for his disciples:

John 21:7-10
⁷ Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” As soon as Simon Peter heard him say, “It is the Lord,” he wrapped his outer garment around him (for he had taken it off) and jumped into the water. ⁸ The other disciples followed in the boat, towing the net full of fish, for they were not far from shore, about a hundred yards. ⁹ When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it, and some bread. ¹⁰ Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you have just caught.” 

Microsoft Copilot told me it’s a “beautiful example of hospitality and care”, but to me, it’s more a reminder of how tangible the resurrection of Jesus was. It wasn’t a matter of him just being alive in their hearts or them seeing a distant vision or some sort of a ghostly figure. They had a meal with him, and they met him on many occasions over 40 days.

And it wasn’t just one person who made a claim that they saw him. If it was, we might be asked to take their word for it. But hundreds saw him, and the thousands of early Christians in the New Testament period had the opportunity to investigate it all. If they found it to be false, they might have just carried on with the ethical teaching of Jesus and believed that he had some sort of a spiritual resurrection. But in 1 Cor 15, the Apostle Paul was adamant that it really was a physical resurrection.

Plainly, it was a matter of much discussion and debate not only among Jews and Christians, but between some new Christians or heretical groups from different areas of the Roman world. Many quirky groups were jumping on the bandwagon. Some, who were at a distance geographically and who didn’t have close contact with the apostles and the hundreds of witnesss, might have found the idea of a physical resurrection distasteful. In Greek thinking, you leave the physical world behind forever when you die. You can see the appeal of this when you focus on the shortcomings of life in this world, even with your own physical and mental health, relationships etc. But for Jewish people, and from the Bible, the New Heaven and New Earth will be physical and tangible, though it will undoubtedly be very different from the present creation. At very least, it won’t be flawed in any way. So, we won’t want to escape it 😀. And some who don’t accept the Bible have agreed that the claims for a physical resurrection of Jesus are substantial. Examples include Michael Grant and Jewish scholar, Pinchas Lapide.

Here are two hymns that touch on meals. The one on the left is a reminder that the word awful didn’t always mean awful, though an awful lot of people think it does 😀. I think it’s related to the word awe. The other one is a Graham Kendrick song from the late 1980s.

Rev 3:20
Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.