The Glory Of ChristmasSample

Holiday Food

As one of the great feasts of the church, Christmas has been celebrated for many centuries with the preparation and sharing of food. Some see it as the best meal of the year, although some Americans see the Thanksgiving feast as the best. At Christmas potlucks in businesses and churches and homes around the country, people bring their favorite dishes to share.

Strangely, it seems that the biblical stories relating to Christmas do not record that anyone brought food to the holy family or anyone else, despite the comical assurances of no less an authority than Garrison Keillor that the word myrrh in fact referred to a Mediterranean hot dish. But in fact, someone did bring food to the first Christmas. 

In the Magnificat, Mary’s hymn of exultation about God’s miraculous act of filling her womb, she says “He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.” At the first Christmas, God provided the food. It might be objected that Mary exulted in God’s historical acts of salvation for his people, such as the provision of manna and quail to the Israelites in the dessert. But I believe she made an argument that God’s action in begetting a Messianic son through her constitutes a culmination and recapitulation of all God had done before.

In sending his Son, God truly brought us food. Born in a manger—a feeding trough—Jesus referred to himself as food on multiple occasions. After he fed the 5,000, Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35). On that same occasion, he said, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. ... This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever” (John 6:53–55, 58). Jesus recognized that the gift of his life was a recapitulation and a culmination of the giving of manna in the wilderness.

The Lord’s Supper follows up on this great truth and enjoins us to celebrate the feast regularly in remembrance of him and as prologue to the Great Marriage Supper of the Lamb, which he will eat with us at the end of history. This Christmas, let us celebrate the feast in the knowledge that God has given us True Food and True Drink in the person of Jesus. 

“The eyes of all,” O Lord, “wait upon thee, and thou givest them their meat in due season.” Thank you for the delightful foods we will eat this Christmas, but greater thanks we offer for the truth that we do not live by bread alone but by the Word that abides forever with us. Amen.