1 00:00:14,440 --> 00:00:17,440 Close your eyes and imagine you're soaring high above the 2 00:00:17,440 --> 00:00:21,280 landscapes of story, drifting like a dream between the worlds 3 00:00:21,280 --> 00:00:26,280 that have captured our hearts. First, you descend through the 4 00:00:26,280 --> 00:00:29,720 enchanted ceiling of Hogwarts Great Hall, where hundreds of 5 00:00:29,720 --> 00:00:33,040 floating candles illuminate tables groaning under the weight 6 00:00:33,040 --> 00:00:36,480 of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, treacle tart and 7 00:00:36,520 --> 00:00:39,760 pumpkin pasties. The very air shimmers with 8 00:00:39,760 --> 00:00:42,960 warmth as first year students discover Butterbeer for the 9 00:00:42,960 --> 00:00:46,760 first time, their faces glowing not just from the magical flames 10 00:00:47,040 --> 00:00:50,400 but from the simple joy of belonging, of finding at last a 11 00:00:50,400 --> 00:00:56,600 table where they are wanted. Your journey carries you next to 12 00:00:56,600 --> 00:00:59,640 the rolling green hills of the Shire, where you slip through 13 00:00:59,640 --> 00:01:04,160 the round door of Bag End. Here, Bilbo's pantry overflows 14 00:01:04,160 --> 00:01:07,800 with seed cakes and scones, wheels of cheese and crusty 15 00:01:07,800 --> 00:01:10,320 bread. At the kitchen table, meals 16 00:01:10,320 --> 00:01:12,680 aren't hurried affairs but celebrations. 17 00:01:12,960 --> 00:01:17,520 Second breakfast flowing into 11 ZS, each bite shared with the 18 00:01:17,520 --> 00:01:20,560 unhurried contentment of a people who understand that good 19 00:01:20,560 --> 00:01:23,640 food, like good fellowship, cannot be rushed. 20 00:01:26,480 --> 00:01:30,240 Westward you drift until the bells of Redwall Abbey call you 21 00:01:30,240 --> 00:01:33,960 down to witness a harvest feast of legendary proportions. 22 00:01:34,840 --> 00:01:39,240 The tables stretch across the Abbey grounds, laden with deeper 23 00:01:39,240 --> 00:01:43,080 ever turnip and cater and beetroot pie, strawberry cordial 24 00:01:43,320 --> 00:01:46,880 and honeyed nut bread. Young otters and mice work 25 00:01:46,880 --> 00:01:51,040 alongside ancient Badgers, their paws sticky with preserves, 26 00:01:51,040 --> 00:01:53,480 their bellies full. Not just a food, but of the deep 27 00:01:53,480 --> 00:01:56,800 satisfaction that comes from a community that knows how to 28 00:01:56,800 --> 00:02:02,120 celebrate together. Finally, you find yourself in 29 00:02:02,120 --> 00:02:05,640 the Great Hall of Care, Paravel, where the kings and Queens of 30 00:02:05,640 --> 00:02:09,280 Narnia gather around a table that radiates both majesty and 31 00:02:09,320 --> 00:02:12,520 joy. Here, the wine flows like liquid 32 00:02:12,520 --> 00:02:16,000 gold, the roasted meats are carved with ceremony, and 33 00:02:16,000 --> 00:02:20,040 talking animals partake in a feast that somehow manages to be 34 00:02:20,080 --> 00:02:23,440 both regal and wonderfully, utterly welcoming. 35 00:02:27,480 --> 00:02:30,960 Why do food and feasting feature so prominently in our favorite 36 00:02:30,960 --> 00:02:34,080 fantasy worlds? What is it about these visceral 37 00:02:34,080 --> 00:02:38,400 images that so easily moves us to nostalgia and longing for 38 00:02:38,400 --> 00:02:40,600 places we've never physically visited? 39 00:02:41,560 --> 00:02:44,480 The answer has less to do with the magic of those worlds, 40 00:02:44,480 --> 00:02:47,760 although it is significant, and more to do with a magic we've 41 00:02:47,760 --> 00:02:52,320 forgotten exists in our own. That magic has fragmented in the 42 00:02:52,320 --> 00:02:56,040 face of sin and its effects, broken families, eating 43 00:02:56,040 --> 00:03:01,120 disorders, obesity, alcoholism, industrial food, and so much 44 00:03:01,120 --> 00:03:04,040 more. But what if I told you that 45 00:03:04,040 --> 00:03:08,120 every meal, every actual meal you'll eat today is meant to be 46 00:03:08,120 --> 00:03:10,560 a small echo of those great feasts? 47 00:03:11,160 --> 00:03:14,320 What if the reason our hearts leap at these literary banquets 48 00:03:14,480 --> 00:03:18,320 is because they're showing us something true about reality 49 00:03:18,320 --> 00:03:22,360 itself? And what if just maybe there is 50 00:03:22,360 --> 00:03:26,600 a way for God to heal not only our relationship with food, but 51 00:03:26,600 --> 00:03:31,360 through it the world. Welcome to the imagination 52 00:03:31,360 --> 00:03:35,200 Redeemed podcast special House moot edition. 53 00:03:35,600 --> 00:03:39,000 I am Brian Brown with Sarah Howell and Christina Brown and 54 00:03:39,000 --> 00:03:42,520 today we are asking a question that might just transform your 55 00:03:42,520 --> 00:03:45,680 kitchen table. Why do we feast? 56 00:03:46,080 --> 00:03:48,560 Sarah and Christina, thank you for joining me today. 57 00:03:48,560 --> 00:03:50,080 Need to. Be here. 58 00:03:50,480 --> 00:03:54,520 Thanks for having us. Let's cause some trouble. 59 00:03:54,680 --> 00:03:59,440 Having flown over all of these fantasy worlds, let's just take 60 00:03:59,440 --> 00:04:04,040 a moment and contrast them with our world. 61 00:04:05,280 --> 00:04:09,360 We've got all these different ways that our relationship with 62 00:04:09,720 --> 00:04:15,200 food can be soured. Tell me a bit about what that's 63 00:04:15,200 --> 00:04:18,839 looked like for you or for the world that you see around you. 64 00:04:19,959 --> 00:04:23,360 My world, I don't know how much of it is nature or nurture. 65 00:04:23,360 --> 00:04:25,560 I can definitely tell you that a lot of it is nature. 66 00:04:25,560 --> 00:04:28,800 For me, my personality is food is fuel. 67 00:04:28,800 --> 00:04:31,400 I'm the kind of person who forgets to eat throughout the 68 00:04:31,400 --> 00:04:34,920 day because I'm so hyper focused into what I'm doing. 69 00:04:35,400 --> 00:04:38,440 Food is so much of an afterthought that I can't even 70 00:04:38,440 --> 00:04:41,960 fathom those people who eat breakfast and say what's for 71 00:04:41,960 --> 00:04:49,400 lunch. My mind goes straight to the the 72 00:04:49,400 --> 00:04:56,760 dieting world and and how it's been so Oh my goodness, it's 73 00:04:56,760 --> 00:04:59,320 changed a lot throughout the decades, but there's always a 74 00:04:59,320 --> 00:05:04,080 focus on calories, caloric intake, there's a focus on carbs 75 00:05:04,080 --> 00:05:08,080 and it's just gone through food is basically gone through like 76 00:05:08,640 --> 00:05:12,240 broken down into its like elements. 77 00:05:12,240 --> 00:05:15,720 And then of course, you have like evaluating food for its 78 00:05:15,720 --> 00:05:20,880 nutrient patterns. And so honestly, I have grown to 79 00:05:20,880 --> 00:05:23,560 see, to see food more in that light. 80 00:05:23,560 --> 00:05:28,120 And it's been really damaging to the way I've come to any piece 81 00:05:28,120 --> 00:05:31,800 of food, let alone a, a table laden with it, you know, but 82 00:05:31,800 --> 00:05:37,040 it's, it's become so disassociated with pleasure or 83 00:05:37,040 --> 00:05:40,080 it has been like thrown the other way. 84 00:05:40,080 --> 00:05:41,680 That's been like in the dieting world, right? 85 00:05:41,680 --> 00:05:44,040 It's been like, thrown into like guilt, right. 86 00:05:44,040 --> 00:05:49,880 So I just feel like we've lost the essence of the joy of 87 00:05:49,880 --> 00:05:53,080 eating. I think we've lost so much, 88 00:05:53,080 --> 00:05:56,400 Christina, because we've fundamentally lost what it means 89 00:05:56,400 --> 00:06:00,680 to be human in so many ways. And food is such a visceral 90 00:06:00,680 --> 00:06:03,880 flesh. You know, human need. 91 00:06:03,880 --> 00:06:07,320 Such a visceral, as you put it earlier, Brian, such a visceral 92 00:06:07,320 --> 00:06:09,840 need. There is a wonderful documentary 93 00:06:09,840 --> 00:06:13,640 called In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, and one of the 94 00:06:13,640 --> 00:06:18,160 key things he wants to know is something that you touched on, 95 00:06:18,160 --> 00:06:21,400 Christina, which is we've demonized certain kinds of 96 00:06:21,400 --> 00:06:24,080 foods, certain kinds of nutrients, certain kinds of 97 00:06:24,440 --> 00:06:26,880 chemical makeups that you find in food. 98 00:06:26,880 --> 00:06:30,480 Carbs are bad or no, it's fats now or what have you. 99 00:06:30,880 --> 00:06:34,400 But when it comes down to it, from my perspective as someone 100 00:06:34,400 --> 00:06:39,400 who sees food as fuel, so often that comes from an understanding 101 00:06:39,400 --> 00:06:44,040 of what my purpose is. If I'm a mechanism that's a 102 00:06:44,040 --> 00:06:48,280 machine that needs some input so I can have output, then the food 103 00:06:48,280 --> 00:06:51,560 itself becomes mechanistic as well. 104 00:06:51,560 --> 00:06:57,120 Whatever synthetic thing I can pull together to give me an 105 00:06:57,200 --> 00:07:00,440 outcome, the ends truly justify all the means. 106 00:07:00,440 --> 00:07:04,600 So whether that's guilt for binging or yeah, whether it's 107 00:07:04,800 --> 00:07:08,480 over fascination or under fascination with food, we've 108 00:07:08,800 --> 00:07:12,920 we've itemized it rather than seeing it as something that is a 109 00:07:12,920 --> 00:07:18,240 part of our world as we are a part of the world. 110 00:07:20,560 --> 00:07:22,840 Yeah, well said. I mean, between the two of you, 111 00:07:22,840 --> 00:07:26,160 you kind of just covered the what, what, what the world 112 00:07:26,160 --> 00:07:29,160 around us views as an unhealthy relationship with food or a 113 00:07:29,640 --> 00:07:33,080 disordered or damaged relationship with food and then 114 00:07:33,080 --> 00:07:36,880 a supposedly healthy one, right. You've got on the one hand, 115 00:07:36,880 --> 00:07:41,000 looking at food with a sense of fear, looking either because of 116 00:07:41,040 --> 00:07:44,720 eating disorders, body image issues, food allergies, these 117 00:07:44,720 --> 00:07:47,400 kinds of things, or with a sense of guilt. 118 00:07:47,400 --> 00:07:49,480 But then on, on the, at the other end of that spectrum, 119 00:07:49,480 --> 00:07:52,120 you've got the, the quote UN quote healthy version. 120 00:07:52,120 --> 00:07:58,040 And that's reducing food down to its component parts, which is 121 00:07:58,040 --> 00:08:01,680 kind of how the mechanistic scientistic world does 122 00:08:01,680 --> 00:08:03,080 everything. We learned the truth of 123 00:08:03,080 --> 00:08:06,240 something by breaking it down into little, little pieces. 124 00:08:06,240 --> 00:08:13,080 And so I'm not eating beef or tofu, I'm eating protein, which 125 00:08:13,080 --> 00:08:17,280 which sort of accentuates that that disconnection between US 126 00:08:17,320 --> 00:08:20,720 and the world. It's easy to get caught up in 127 00:08:20,760 --> 00:08:23,840 the current problems of our current society and how the 128 00:08:23,840 --> 00:08:27,240 industrial food complex looks right now. 129 00:08:27,240 --> 00:08:33,440 And if you you look at even a small amount of what's happened 130 00:08:33,440 --> 00:08:38,840 to our food, our systems, the way in which we create and Co 131 00:08:38,840 --> 00:08:43,320 create with creation, how damaging it is to ourselves and 132 00:08:43,320 --> 00:08:47,720 to the world. But history reminds us that 133 00:08:48,440 --> 00:08:53,000 there's never it's hard. You're hard pressed to find 134 00:08:53,000 --> 00:08:56,240 times where that something like that isn't going on. 135 00:08:56,600 --> 00:09:00,520 I was just reminded the other day that during the French 136 00:09:00,520 --> 00:09:06,080 Revolution, most of the peasants in France ate solely their diet 137 00:09:06,080 --> 00:09:08,520 was bread, about two to £3 a day. 138 00:09:09,560 --> 00:09:15,280 And I was talking to someone who loves that time of history and 139 00:09:15,280 --> 00:09:19,400 they were recounting to me that the majority of that bread 140 00:09:19,400 --> 00:09:23,480 wasn't flour, but filler. Filler full of things like grain 141 00:09:23,480 --> 00:09:27,840 husks and sawdust. And so the majority of the food 142 00:09:27,840 --> 00:09:33,080 that's even on our plates, whether it's during the 1700s or 143 00:09:33,080 --> 00:09:37,800 today, we're dealing with something that isn't quite 144 00:09:38,760 --> 00:09:40,760 right. So that's on the individual 145 00:09:40,760 --> 00:09:45,400 level. When you bring it up a level to 146 00:09:45,560 --> 00:09:49,400 the group level, the communal level, you see the same, the 147 00:09:49,400 --> 00:09:51,880 same challenges. Just as you, Sarah said, don't 148 00:09:51,880 --> 00:09:53,440 even want to think about the food. 149 00:09:53,440 --> 00:09:56,320 Don't even have time for food. I'm busy doing stuff. 150 00:09:56,360 --> 00:09:59,520 It's a truism at this point that almost nobody has family dinners 151 00:09:59,520 --> 00:10:01,280 anymore, right? And an actual meal where 152 00:10:01,280 --> 00:10:04,160 everyone, everyone in your household sits down and looks 153 00:10:04,160 --> 00:10:08,000 each other in the eye. And all of this mirrors other 154 00:10:08,000 --> 00:10:09,960 brokenness in the world, doesn't it? 155 00:10:09,960 --> 00:10:14,480 Like the relationship with food that is kind of guilt driven. 156 00:10:14,640 --> 00:10:18,000 Well, we also do life that way. You approach life in ways that 157 00:10:18,000 --> 00:10:23,040 are guilt driven and performance focus and guilt and shame. 158 00:10:23,440 --> 00:10:27,560 And we approach life with fear and we approach life with a 159 00:10:27,560 --> 00:10:30,760 constant sense of hurry. And you can you can kind of go 160 00:10:30,760 --> 00:10:35,200 down the list name almost any aspect of our dislocation from 161 00:10:35,200 --> 00:10:38,280 food. We're also doing it in other 162 00:10:38,280 --> 00:10:43,000 areas of life. We've talked before about how we 163 00:10:43,000 --> 00:10:46,880 don't really know how to relate to the created world anymore. 164 00:10:46,880 --> 00:10:49,000 And that's a gift. That's, that's an art we need to 165 00:10:49,000 --> 00:10:51,840 relearn. We have alienation from each 166 00:10:51,840 --> 00:10:55,360 other right at the the number of people, especially men, who have 167 00:10:55,560 --> 00:10:58,240 even one or two close friends keeps going down and down and 168 00:10:58,240 --> 00:11:00,800 down. We have so much tribalism 169 00:11:00,800 --> 00:11:04,360 without actually a true tribe. And meanwhile we're all still 170 00:11:04,360 --> 00:11:06,200 asking in the middle of all of it, just as the human race 171 00:11:06,200 --> 00:11:08,280 always has. God, where are you? 172 00:11:08,280 --> 00:11:11,480 It's the alienation from God. Peace. 173 00:11:13,040 --> 00:11:16,680 And just to throw one more little piece of wood on the 174 00:11:16,680 --> 00:11:22,200 fire, if you are a Protestant in the United States, there may 175 00:11:22,200 --> 00:11:27,280 also be a theological dimension for you that we don't know how 176 00:11:27,280 --> 00:11:31,320 to reconcile ourselves. Too much of anything in the 177 00:11:31,320 --> 00:11:34,560 created order. We really struggle to have a 178 00:11:34,560 --> 00:11:38,200 category between indifference and idolatry. 179 00:11:38,560 --> 00:11:41,880 We're so afraid of turning something into an idol, 180 00:11:41,880 --> 00:11:46,240 especially something that can be seen, that we tend to write all 181 00:11:46,240 --> 00:11:50,480 of it off as bad, distracting, meaningless, irrelevant. 182 00:11:51,400 --> 00:11:56,640 So here we are. We are going about life in 183 00:11:56,680 --> 00:12:01,400 bodies that require food, increasingly alienated from that 184 00:12:01,400 --> 00:12:07,280 food, and here we are to talk about why we feast. 185 00:12:11,040 --> 00:12:13,280 Feasting feels like a strange place to start. 186 00:12:13,360 --> 00:12:17,240 If I can't even figure out how to put some food on the table, I 187 00:12:17,240 --> 00:12:19,280 don't know how to get to a feast. 188 00:12:19,320 --> 00:12:22,360 If I can't walk, how am I supposed to run? 189 00:12:23,680 --> 00:12:28,120 So I am curious like why would we move to a feast when there's 190 00:12:28,120 --> 00:12:30,760 so much brokenness? How would we ever even get there 191 00:12:30,760 --> 00:12:33,200 at? The root of what you just said, 192 00:12:33,200 --> 00:12:37,360 Sarah, is, is essentially this question of yeah, I don't, I 193 00:12:37,360 --> 00:12:39,720 don't even know how to eat. Why are we talking about 194 00:12:40,200 --> 00:12:42,200 feasting? And, and that's an incredibly 195 00:12:42,200 --> 00:12:45,160 important leading question, I think for us. 196 00:12:46,320 --> 00:12:48,160 And I'm not going to answer it right away, and I'm not going to 197 00:12:48,160 --> 00:12:52,280 ask you to either, but I want to raise it as kind of the 198 00:12:52,280 --> 00:12:55,080 fundamental question behind the question for today. 199 00:12:55,360 --> 00:12:58,960 What is the difference between eating and feasting? 200 00:13:01,880 --> 00:13:04,920 Yeah, Brian, there's a quote by Alexander Schmeman that we've 201 00:13:04,920 --> 00:13:07,840 talked about before, and I know he's one of your favorite 202 00:13:07,920 --> 00:13:10,800 authors, but we have the quote here because we like it so much. 203 00:13:11,640 --> 00:13:14,920 And so I'll read it. It's it's this the natural 204 00:13:14,920 --> 00:13:18,880 dependence of man upon the world was intended to be transformed 205 00:13:18,880 --> 00:13:24,800 constantly into communion with God, in whom is all life In our 206 00:13:24,800 --> 00:13:29,280 sinfully alienated world. Man still loves, he is still 207 00:13:29,280 --> 00:13:32,160 hungry. He knows he is dependent on that 208 00:13:32,160 --> 00:13:35,800 which is beyond him. But his love and his dependence 209 00:13:35,880 --> 00:13:37,760 refer only to the world in itself. 210 00:13:39,160 --> 00:13:42,280 He does not know that breathing can be communion with God. 211 00:13:43,200 --> 00:13:47,440 He does not realize that to eat can be to receive life from God, 212 00:13:47,440 --> 00:13:51,040 and more than its physical sense, he forgets that the 213 00:13:51,040 --> 00:13:55,840 world, its air, or its food cannot by themselves bring life, 214 00:13:56,520 --> 00:14:00,640 but only as they are received and accepted for God's sake and 215 00:14:00,640 --> 00:14:03,960 in God as bearers of the divine gift of life. 216 00:14:05,120 --> 00:14:08,240 By themselves they can produce only the appearance of life. 217 00:14:08,960 --> 00:14:11,760 Things treated merely as things in themselves destroy 218 00:14:11,760 --> 00:14:14,800 themselves, because only in God have they any life. 219 00:14:16,080 --> 00:14:19,800 The world of nature cut off from the source of life, is a dying 220 00:14:19,800 --> 00:14:22,520 world. For one who thinks food in 221 00:14:22,520 --> 00:14:26,320 itself is the source of life. Eating is communion with the 222 00:14:26,320 --> 00:14:29,040 dying world. It is communion with death. 223 00:14:30,120 --> 00:14:35,200 Food itself is dead. It is a life that has died and 224 00:14:35,200 --> 00:14:38,480 it must be kept in refrigerators like a corpse. 225 00:14:39,280 --> 00:14:41,680 I can never read that part without Oh gosh yes. 226 00:14:41,800 --> 00:14:44,720 Yeah, that last line, it really sticks with you. 227 00:14:44,720 --> 00:14:49,320 It does. And, and, and we've talked about 228 00:14:49,320 --> 00:14:53,440 this in in the context of a harvest feast in particular, 229 00:14:53,440 --> 00:14:57,680 because it's when, when you are especially in these these books 230 00:14:57,680 --> 00:15:00,040 that we refer to at the beginning, there's often, you 231 00:15:00,040 --> 00:15:02,680 know, a Halloween feast or a harvest feast or something, 232 00:15:02,800 --> 00:15:05,760 which is the time when all of we think of all the food as being 233 00:15:05,760 --> 00:15:08,560 ripe, right. We've spent all year growing it. 234 00:15:08,560 --> 00:15:11,280 It's at its peak. But it is also food that is all 235 00:15:11,280 --> 00:15:16,760 about to die. It's it's either if you leave it 236 00:15:16,760 --> 00:15:19,640 and unharvested, it will just sit there and rot. 237 00:15:19,880 --> 00:15:22,880 And now that it has been harvested, it's on borrowed 238 00:15:22,880 --> 00:15:27,760 time. So yeah, it is, it is, it is 239 00:15:27,760 --> 00:15:30,080 death. And what's what's really, really 240 00:15:30,080 --> 00:15:34,360 crucial there scripturally in what Schmemmen does, I think is 241 00:15:34,360 --> 00:15:36,920 what what you see in that paragraph is an incredibly 242 00:15:36,920 --> 00:15:41,040 important insight into what Saint Paul talks about when he 243 00:15:41,040 --> 00:15:43,800 is talking about the relationship between something 244 00:15:43,800 --> 00:15:46,280 being of the world and something being of the spirit. 245 00:15:46,280 --> 00:15:50,280 There's this simplistic reading of the New Testament that is 246 00:15:50,280 --> 00:15:55,120 constantly wanting to push the heavenly realm in the earthly 247 00:15:55,120 --> 00:16:00,240 realm apart from each other and wanting to be more heavenly by 248 00:16:00,240 --> 00:16:04,640 being as cut off as possible from all things that are of this 249 00:16:04,640 --> 00:16:07,200 world, but just to say all the things that God has made. 250 00:16:07,200 --> 00:16:10,680 But that's not what Paul means when he says something is of the 251 00:16:10,680 --> 00:16:12,840 spirit or of the world. He means it in much the same 252 00:16:12,840 --> 00:16:15,680 sense that Augustine means when he's talking about the city of 253 00:16:15,680 --> 00:16:18,360 God versus the city of man. It's not a question of 254 00:16:20,120 --> 00:16:21,800 interaction with one or the other. 255 00:16:22,000 --> 00:16:25,800 You are an embodied soul. You have no choice about 256 00:16:25,800 --> 00:16:29,560 interaction and you also have no choice from an obedient 257 00:16:29,560 --> 00:16:32,600 standpoint when it comes to gratitude to God for the good 258 00:16:32,600 --> 00:16:36,760 things that he has given you. But what you what what Paul 259 00:16:36,760 --> 00:16:39,680 means is what Schmeman is describing there. 260 00:16:40,160 --> 00:16:43,240 If you are taking the good things that God has given and 261 00:16:43,240 --> 00:16:46,320 you are sort of worshipping, worshipping them for themselves, 262 00:16:46,520 --> 00:16:50,280 yeah, that is communion with death, both in an ultimate sense 263 00:16:50,280 --> 00:16:52,480 and in that kind of immediate sense. 264 00:16:52,480 --> 00:16:57,480 But when they are linked together in your mind, when the 265 00:16:58,000 --> 00:17:03,320 taking the breath in is also this opportunity to remember 266 00:17:03,320 --> 00:17:06,960 that you are literally receiving life from God, not just oxygen 267 00:17:06,960 --> 00:17:09,359 and from the air. It's those two things together. 268 00:17:11,400 --> 00:17:15,040 For my Protestant brain, that's a little bit of a stretch to 269 00:17:15,119 --> 00:17:20,280 wrap my head around, to love the material thing and the spiritual 270 00:17:20,280 --> 00:17:21,800 thing all wrapped up in each other. 271 00:17:23,040 --> 00:17:30,080 It, it is such a beautiful motif of, you know, played over and 272 00:17:30,080 --> 00:17:32,520 over and over again with every single interaction we have in 273 00:17:32,520 --> 00:17:35,240 this physical world of the upside down Kingdom. 274 00:17:35,640 --> 00:17:39,560 You know what is last? It's, it's the menial stuff. 275 00:17:39,560 --> 00:17:45,520 How do we enter into abundance? It's through the faithfulness 276 00:17:45,520 --> 00:17:49,440 and gratitude of what God has placed in front of us, which 277 00:17:49,480 --> 00:17:55,320 with the eyes of the natural person, the natural man, by 278 00:17:55,320 --> 00:17:58,880 definition looks like scarcity. By definition, it is dying, it's 279 00:17:58,880 --> 00:18:02,680 dead, it's a corpse in a fridge. And yet he asks us to take those 280 00:18:02,680 --> 00:18:07,800 things and use them for his glory, for eternity, for through 281 00:18:07,800 --> 00:18:09,640 his abundance. And that doesn't make sense 282 00:18:09,680 --> 00:18:11,480 either, right? But but again, that's that's 283 00:18:11,520 --> 00:18:16,120 upside down, which which should ring true to all that we know 284 00:18:16,120 --> 00:18:18,600 about Christ. Yeah, yeah. 285 00:18:18,720 --> 00:18:25,600 So let's dig there because I think if, if we are to boil all 286 00:18:25,600 --> 00:18:29,040 of this down to to one thing, it's that the entire dynamic, 287 00:18:29,080 --> 00:18:32,160 the negative dynamic we've been describing of the way we are 288 00:18:32,160 --> 00:18:37,520 alienated from food, the creation, each other, God, It's 289 00:18:37,520 --> 00:18:42,280 it's the effects of the fall. It's not what we were made for. 290 00:18:42,440 --> 00:18:46,240 We were made for life together, right? 291 00:18:46,240 --> 00:18:50,520 The imago day with the rest of creation, shepherding the rest 292 00:18:50,520 --> 00:18:54,360 of creation, humans with each other, man with woman, parents 293 00:18:54,360 --> 00:19:01,120 with children, separating into competing tribes and things is a 294 00:19:01,120 --> 00:19:04,680 post Tower of Babel thing. We were meant for life together. 295 00:19:06,000 --> 00:19:12,040 And I love that phrase from from Dietrich Bonhoeffer and 296 00:19:12,040 --> 00:19:15,880 feasting. This is why it's so important to 297 00:19:15,880 --> 00:19:17,840 talk about feasting rather than just eating. 298 00:19:18,400 --> 00:19:22,120 Feasting is an act of faithfulness that symbolizes our 299 00:19:22,120 --> 00:19:27,360 participation in Christ, healing that breach. 300 00:19:29,000 --> 00:19:31,680 Seeing more on that, Brian, I don't particularly understand 301 00:19:31,680 --> 00:19:36,520 how. So let's let's get real 302 00:19:36,520 --> 00:19:40,440 controversial right away. Always a good plan. 303 00:19:40,920 --> 00:19:47,040 Love it. Well, I think to do to do 304 00:19:47,040 --> 00:19:51,720 anything right in the world, it helps to go back to the source 305 00:19:51,720 --> 00:19:55,000 of what is it that what's sort of the higher thing that we're 306 00:19:55,000 --> 00:20:01,240 trying to to participate in and our little feasts, whether it's, 307 00:20:01,520 --> 00:20:04,120 you know, you and your significant other on a date or 308 00:20:04,280 --> 00:20:06,400 the Thanksgiving huge Thanksgiving feast or anything 309 00:20:06,400 --> 00:20:11,840 in between are echoes of a big feast and it's. 310 00:20:12,920 --> 00:20:14,960 The future feast that we're looking forward to, but it's 311 00:20:14,960 --> 00:20:18,960 also something that we do, many of us, every week, and that is 312 00:20:18,960 --> 00:20:22,440 Holy Communion. This is not something that I 313 00:20:22,440 --> 00:20:25,040 grew up with my my church did communion once a month. 314 00:20:25,040 --> 00:20:29,920 So I would have looked funny at myself now saying what I'm about 315 00:20:29,920 --> 00:20:32,600 to say, but. You would have looked funny at 316 00:20:32,600 --> 00:20:34,440 your now wife who did grow up that way. 317 00:20:34,480 --> 00:20:39,520 That's right, although if I saw how cute she was, I would have 318 00:20:39,520 --> 00:20:41,760 would have started rethinking my theology. 319 00:20:41,760 --> 00:20:44,000 But but what I was about to say was the the Christian worship 320 00:20:44,000 --> 00:20:49,080 service is built around a feast. The the center point of the 321 00:20:49,280 --> 00:20:52,800 Christian worship service is feasting on the word of God in 322 00:20:52,800 --> 00:20:55,240 two senses. And a lot of American 323 00:20:55,240 --> 00:20:58,880 Protestants have picked up this mythology that it is in fact a 324 00:20:58,880 --> 00:21:02,480 Protestant thing to insist that the bread and the wine are just 325 00:21:02,480 --> 00:21:04,600 stuff that the whole thing is just a symbol. 326 00:21:04,600 --> 00:21:08,080 And we when we say symbol, we have a much lower understanding 327 00:21:08,080 --> 00:21:10,360 of the word symbol then our ancestors would have. 328 00:21:10,360 --> 00:21:13,440 When we say symbol we just mean it's meaningless. 329 00:21:13,960 --> 00:21:17,600 Fundamentally it's just a thing, it doesn't really matter. 330 00:21:17,600 --> 00:21:20,960 But even the Protestant Reformers, up until a couple 331 00:21:20,960 --> 00:21:26,000 generations of spin offs after, we're actually quite adamant 332 00:21:26,000 --> 00:21:29,960 that Christ literally met and infused his people with his 333 00:21:29,960 --> 00:21:34,240 presence through communion. Their disagreements both with 334 00:21:34,240 --> 00:21:37,080 Roman Catholics and with each other were not about whether 335 00:21:37,080 --> 00:21:39,880 Christ was present in the sacrament. 336 00:21:39,880 --> 00:21:43,240 It was they were, they were about a whole bunch of other 337 00:21:43,240 --> 00:21:45,640 things. And in communion, we don't just 338 00:21:46,320 --> 00:21:51,160 look back at the Last Supper. We also look forward to the day 339 00:21:51,160 --> 00:21:53,560 when God's presence will fill the whole earth. 340 00:21:53,800 --> 00:21:56,400 And if you want to read a whole book on just that, we quoted it 341 00:21:56,400 --> 00:21:58,960 already, Alexander Schmeman's For the Life of the World, which 342 00:21:58,960 --> 00:22:02,520 is really short and really ecumenical, but let's just look 343 00:22:02,520 --> 00:22:05,720 at the Eucharist for a SEC. There's a three-part, this is my 344 00:22:05,720 --> 00:22:09,920 highly UN theological sort of layman's explanation of the the 345 00:22:09,920 --> 00:22:13,440 process of the Eucharist that I want to be able to, for us to 346 00:22:13,640 --> 00:22:16,400 kind of point back to our own feasting with. 347 00:22:17,040 --> 00:22:19,240 It starts with Thanksgiving, step one. 348 00:22:21,000 --> 00:22:25,840 It goes into Step 2, which is offering the gifts we have 349 00:22:25,840 --> 00:22:32,320 thanked God for back to him. And then it concludes with a 350 00:22:32,320 --> 00:22:37,040 request for him to do the real Sacramento work. 351 00:22:40,720 --> 00:22:45,600 This breaks all of the broken rhythms and broken relationships 352 00:22:45,600 --> 00:22:50,120 that we've been describing like starting with Thanksgiving. 353 00:22:51,480 --> 00:22:55,840 I understand easier said than done, but if someone could wave 354 00:22:55,840 --> 00:22:58,680 a wand on our historical relationships with food, the 355 00:22:58,680 --> 00:23:03,280 three of us and make us properly thankful for the gifts that God 356 00:23:03,280 --> 00:23:05,560 has given us in that food. There's a reason we always, 357 00:23:06,120 --> 00:23:08,840 historically speaking, say grace before a meal that would make 358 00:23:08,840 --> 00:23:14,200 you Sarah, perhaps hurry less, pay attention more, get a little 359 00:23:14,200 --> 00:23:16,320 bit out of a rhythm of I got to do the next thing. 360 00:23:16,320 --> 00:23:19,160 And maybe my value is in the next thing. 361 00:23:19,160 --> 00:23:23,200 Maybe, maybe my value is sitting quietly and receiving. 362 00:23:24,680 --> 00:23:29,920 And Christina, the dynamic you described, it's instead of the 363 00:23:30,160 --> 00:23:33,320 the posture of guilt or fear or some of these other elements we 364 00:23:33,680 --> 00:23:39,200 we've talked about again, it's grateful, trusting, reception. 365 00:23:39,360 --> 00:23:42,160 Just that if that's all we did differently and we could 366 00:23:42,160 --> 00:23:46,600 magically do it tomorrow, what would that change? 367 00:23:48,960 --> 00:23:53,000 And it's completely fascinating and, and beautiful and, and I 368 00:23:53,000 --> 00:23:56,160 think especially as a, as a gardener, like is I think about 369 00:23:56,160 --> 00:23:59,040 like our direct relationship to land and the food, like the food 370 00:23:59,040 --> 00:24:01,720 we grow and the tilling of it. But I think it's fascinating if 371 00:24:01,720 --> 00:24:04,080 you really think about it and how weird it is in some ways. 372 00:24:04,480 --> 00:24:06,120 Like you can think about it two ways. 373 00:24:06,120 --> 00:24:08,200 You can think, OK, that's kind of weird, but you think, oh, 374 00:24:08,200 --> 00:24:12,960 that's actually really natural. But how Christ actually says 375 00:24:12,960 --> 00:24:17,680 about food, bread and wine to his disciples, take, eat, this 376 00:24:17,680 --> 00:24:21,800 is my body given for you. And again, like the blood, the 377 00:24:21,800 --> 00:24:24,520 wine. And like how odd it seems in 378 00:24:24,520 --> 00:24:28,440 some ways that that the God of the universe would be like, Hey, 379 00:24:29,480 --> 00:24:33,040 think of me as this food, you know, given for you. 380 00:24:33,200 --> 00:24:38,000 And yet, and yet it really does point to like how the sacrifice 381 00:24:38,000 --> 00:24:43,720 is of Christ in general. His entire life and death is 382 00:24:43,840 --> 00:24:47,480 more than just symbolic. It's it's complete sustenance. 383 00:24:47,480 --> 00:24:51,680 It's life. And in our death, like we're all 384 00:24:51,760 --> 00:24:55,280 inexorably tied to Christ's giving of that flesh and blood 385 00:24:55,280 --> 00:24:57,920 and the blood, the bread and the wine that he broke for us. 386 00:24:57,920 --> 00:25:03,040 It's truly like life for life, all so that we can have life 387 00:25:03,400 --> 00:25:07,320 unto life. So it's just really crazy. 388 00:25:07,360 --> 00:25:12,200 But anyway, I was thinking about how nutty it is that, you know, 389 00:25:12,200 --> 00:25:16,840 if you think kind of aside from the normal ways we, we as 390 00:25:16,840 --> 00:25:21,000 Christians approach communion, how out of sync it sometimes can 391 00:25:21,000 --> 00:25:25,360 be that Christ is saying I'm food for you, eat me, come to 392 00:25:25,360 --> 00:25:30,720 me, Sup of me, not just Sup with me, but Sup of me. 393 00:25:30,760 --> 00:25:33,080 I think that's pretty cool. It's wild. 394 00:25:33,080 --> 00:25:36,480 And that death is a part of that right Death, the death of 395 00:25:36,480 --> 00:25:40,240 Christ, the death of the food. Verily I say unto you, unless a 396 00:25:40,240 --> 00:25:43,920 wheat, a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies it, it 397 00:25:43,920 --> 00:25:50,240 shall not bear life, right. But I think that I have seen in 398 00:25:50,320 --> 00:25:54,640 lots of different channels, not necessarily only the, the 399 00:25:55,160 --> 00:25:58,600 Judeo-christian channel, this idea that gratitude and 400 00:25:58,600 --> 00:26:03,320 Thanksgiving is paramount to shifting our orientation to the 401 00:26:03,320 --> 00:26:06,640 world from one of fear to one of trust and love. 402 00:26:07,080 --> 00:26:09,000 But Brian, I'm, I'm really interested. 403 00:26:09,280 --> 00:26:11,000 What do you mean by the second one? 404 00:26:11,000 --> 00:26:14,680 Offering something back? Because there seems to be an 405 00:26:14,680 --> 00:26:16,520 offering. And then you said that there is 406 00:26:16,520 --> 00:26:20,880 something like a request and that has a relational dynamic to 407 00:26:20,880 --> 00:26:24,400 those two things that I often don't find when when I hear 408 00:26:24,400 --> 00:26:30,240 people kind of stop at at the gratitude portion because what 409 00:26:30,240 --> 00:26:32,200 now? Yeah, what now? 410 00:26:33,320 --> 00:26:36,560 So I love the way that that Christina framed it. 411 00:26:36,560 --> 00:26:40,280 It's so rooted in the way that we receive gifts. 412 00:26:40,280 --> 00:26:43,160 That posture of Thanksgiving is so rooted in the way that Christ 413 00:26:43,160 --> 00:26:46,880 himself told us to receive the gift and the way that those are 414 00:26:46,880 --> 00:26:50,240 symbolic of the way he made for us to relate to everything Good, 415 00:26:50,520 --> 00:26:52,760 right? You can't sweep aside this stuff 416 00:26:52,760 --> 00:26:55,880 and say I only need Jesus because he's literally handing 417 00:26:55,880 --> 00:27:03,800 it to you saying yes. And and so OK, if if that's the 418 00:27:03,800 --> 00:27:07,440 reality, if if all good things are from him. 419 00:27:07,960 --> 00:27:10,320 And this is another place where Schmeman is so good. 420 00:27:11,000 --> 00:27:13,920 The why? Why is it that the church is 421 00:27:13,920 --> 00:27:16,720 referred to as as a Kingdom of priests? 422 00:27:17,080 --> 00:27:20,440 Well, it's because that's what we were made for and that's what 423 00:27:20,440 --> 00:27:23,200 we were redeemed for. We are literally on the planet 424 00:27:23,720 --> 00:27:26,200 to offer the planet back to God in worship. 425 00:27:27,480 --> 00:27:31,800 So when you receive a gift, whether it is a skill or a 426 00:27:32,520 --> 00:27:37,680 chicken wing, you offer the gift back to him and say this is not 427 00:27:37,680 --> 00:27:41,080 mine, it is yours. I want to use it for your 428 00:27:41,960 --> 00:27:45,680 purposes in that action, whether it is at the start of a creative 429 00:27:45,680 --> 00:27:49,240 process, I want to write a book or the start of a meal or 430 00:27:49,240 --> 00:27:52,000 something else. We are acknowledging that 431 00:27:52,000 --> 00:27:56,360 symbolic reality, that the gifts of the world are ultimately for 432 00:27:57,000 --> 00:27:59,960 His world. They are not simply the physical 433 00:27:59,960 --> 00:28:05,240 objects or the mental acuity or whatever it is, but they are 434 00:28:05,720 --> 00:28:08,080 something more. We are offering our bodies and 435 00:28:08,080 --> 00:28:11,120 souls and everything that is going into them as a living 436 00:28:11,120 --> 00:28:15,720 sacrifice, because only when we love the things of earth as a 437 00:28:15,720 --> 00:28:20,640 part of heaven are we really inviting God's will to be done 438 00:28:20,960 --> 00:28:27,000 on earth as it is in heaven for earth to follow the pattern of 439 00:28:27,000 --> 00:28:29,240 heaven. So you with the, the, you fight 440 00:28:29,240 --> 00:28:32,760 the, the, the guilt and shame and all those kinds of things 441 00:28:32,760 --> 00:28:35,720 with Thanksgiving. You fight the temptation toward 442 00:28:35,720 --> 00:28:39,000 idolatry through sacrifice. This is yours. 443 00:28:39,320 --> 00:28:43,040 This is for you. The the communion service in 444 00:28:43,040 --> 00:28:45,560 many churches has some variation of the phrase. 445 00:28:45,600 --> 00:28:50,720 All gifts are yours, O God, and of your own have we given thee. 446 00:28:52,440 --> 00:28:55,000 My goodness, yes, I I have something I really want to say. 447 00:28:55,000 --> 00:28:59,800 So this all is making me think so much of well, you know what? 448 00:28:59,800 --> 00:29:03,280 OK, I'm just going to read it because I think it needs to. 449 00:29:03,280 --> 00:29:05,240 I need it needs its own little introduction. 450 00:29:05,240 --> 00:29:08,480 So in case you're wondering, this was written a couple years 451 00:29:08,480 --> 00:29:13,560 ago at Cultivating Oaks Press. So it's called take and eat. 452 00:29:13,560 --> 00:29:14,880 And I just, I need to say it. Here we go. 453 00:29:14,880 --> 00:29:19,880 OK, He's sitting still on the hillside. 454 00:29:21,000 --> 00:29:25,080 A light breeze scented thickly with blooming cowslips and wild 455 00:29:25,080 --> 00:29:29,720 hawthorn tossles his hair. Closing his eyes, he tips his 456 00:29:29,720 --> 00:29:32,240 face to the sky, inhaling deeply. 457 00:29:33,160 --> 00:29:38,120 The sun, that wondrous orb of fire, warms his bones. 458 00:29:38,120 --> 00:29:41,960 He wiggles his toes deep into the cool mud that proudly boasts 459 00:29:41,960 --> 00:29:47,720 Tufts of fresh green and opens his eyes as he surveys the vast 460 00:29:47,720 --> 00:29:51,840 expanse of the valley below him. Tears of joy begin to form in 461 00:29:51,840 --> 00:29:56,080 his eyes. This, this is beauty. 462 00:29:57,160 --> 00:29:59,440 A wild red poppy catches his eye. 463 00:30:00,280 --> 00:30:05,520 Her petals form a perfect cup turned up to the heavens like a 464 00:30:05,520 --> 00:30:09,480 chalice, offering glory back to the one who gave it to her. 465 00:30:11,120 --> 00:30:15,520 He sifts through his satchel beside him and pulls out his pen 466 00:30:15,760 --> 00:30:18,840 and notebook. He leans over the sun washed 467 00:30:18,840 --> 00:30:23,400 page and scrawls for the beauty of the earth. 468 00:30:25,000 --> 00:30:29,480 Folliot Sanford Pierre .29 year old Queen's College graduate, 469 00:30:29,480 --> 00:30:34,880 penned these words in 1864 on a hilltop in Bath, England and his 470 00:30:34,880 --> 00:30:38,880 poem became one of the most well known hymns sung around the 471 00:30:38,880 --> 00:30:42,400 world. Today his words describe our 472 00:30:42,400 --> 00:30:46,960 ecstatic encounters with creation and the love of God who 473 00:30:46,960 --> 00:30:52,040 placed us within. He writes for the love which 474 00:30:52,040 --> 00:30:57,240 from our birth, over and around us lies hill and veil, and tree, 475 00:30:57,240 --> 00:31:00,560 and flower, sun and moon, and stars of light. 476 00:31:01,160 --> 00:31:06,360 Lord of all, to thee we raise this our hymn of praise, or this 477 00:31:06,360 --> 00:31:09,560 our joyful hymn of praise. But what many people don't know 478 00:31:09,680 --> 00:31:13,000 about Pierre points Hymn for the beauty of the Earth is it was 479 00:31:13,000 --> 00:31:15,200 actually written as a communion hymn. 480 00:31:15,840 --> 00:31:18,920 And this is my favorite part. It's actually one of many 481 00:31:18,920 --> 00:31:22,040 eucharistic poems that he compiled along others. 482 00:31:22,040 --> 00:31:24,600 My favorite is called the Chalice of Nature that were 483 00:31:24,600 --> 00:31:26,680 eventually collected into published volumes. 484 00:31:27,120 --> 00:31:30,920 But for pure point beholding the beauty of the earth inspired him 485 00:31:30,920 --> 00:31:33,680 to offer that praise back to God on the altar. 486 00:31:34,040 --> 00:31:35,280 And we were just talking about that. 487 00:31:35,280 --> 00:31:36,640 So this is what I need to say this. 488 00:31:37,000 --> 00:31:41,400 So most of us have never heard these long omitted stanzas in 489 00:31:41,400 --> 00:31:43,320 this original hymn for the beauty of the earth. 490 00:31:43,320 --> 00:31:45,840 So I wanted to read them here. So he this is of the other 491 00:31:45,840 --> 00:31:50,080 stanzas. It says Yesu victim undefiled, 492 00:31:50,080 --> 00:31:56,840 offer we at thine own shrine thyself, sweet sacrament, divine 493 00:31:57,480 --> 00:32:02,760 for thyself, best gift, divine to the world, so freely given 494 00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:05,840 for that great, great love of thine. 495 00:32:07,200 --> 00:32:10,800 So I love that because as we were talking about like offering 496 00:32:11,000 --> 00:32:15,080 back to God and the whole concept of Christ saying take, 497 00:32:15,080 --> 00:32:19,000 eat, this is my body. The bread and the wine were 498 00:32:19,000 --> 00:32:21,680 things that man made. It's not that Christ gave us a 499 00:32:21,680 --> 00:32:25,440 grain of wheat and a grape and said this is me. 500 00:32:25,760 --> 00:32:29,240 He gave bread and wine, which is the participation and gratitude. 501 00:32:29,240 --> 00:32:33,200 It's a making of bread. It's a pressing of the wine and 502 00:32:33,200 --> 00:32:38,480 so we are giving him back to himself in that weird, weird 503 00:32:38,480 --> 00:32:41,320 way. And so like when peer point says 504 00:32:41,320 --> 00:32:45,720 offer we thine own shrine thyself sweet sacrament divine. 505 00:32:45,760 --> 00:32:49,200 He's talking about again the beginning of the poem as he's 506 00:32:49,200 --> 00:32:53,360 sitting on that hill, the chalice of nature, that the way 507 00:32:53,360 --> 00:32:57,000 you cannot pull God from nature and nature from God. 508 00:32:57,240 --> 00:32:59,800 And anyway, it's just so beautiful and mind blowing if 509 00:32:59,800 --> 00:33:00,920 you really stop and think about it. 510 00:33:00,920 --> 00:33:03,880 So thank you for allowing me to read that because I just got so 511 00:33:03,880 --> 00:33:05,960 excited about that. Yeah. 512 00:33:05,960 --> 00:33:08,320 And I'm glad you did. And because it's again, like we 513 00:33:08,320 --> 00:33:12,040 have this instinctive for, for those of us who are have 514 00:33:12,040 --> 00:33:14,720 Protestant backgrounds, we often have this very instinctive kind 515 00:33:14,720 --> 00:33:19,000 of recoiling from not only this, this Eucharistic theology, but 516 00:33:19,000 --> 00:33:24,080 also this sense of just reconciliation with anything in, 517 00:33:24,160 --> 00:33:26,360 in, in the world, because we're so afraid of it. 518 00:33:26,840 --> 00:33:29,720 And we forget that that's not only is that not a Protestant 519 00:33:29,720 --> 00:33:32,800 thing, as I said earlier, it's also, it's, it's pretty recent 520 00:33:32,800 --> 00:33:35,080 thing. There are so many good old hymns 521 00:33:35,080 --> 00:33:38,160 like that one that have communion verses. 522 00:33:38,360 --> 00:33:41,240 And if you get out your, you know, whatever Methodist timnal 523 00:33:41,240 --> 00:33:43,600 or something, they probably don't have those verses. 524 00:33:43,760 --> 00:33:46,200 But if you Google them and look at the original ones, they're 525 00:33:46,200 --> 00:33:48,840 there. So many of our best hymn writers 526 00:33:48,840 --> 00:33:53,560 knew this stuff and wanted us to remember we are living in the 527 00:33:53,560 --> 00:33:56,760 world and not of the world. And to live in the world and not 528 00:33:56,760 --> 00:34:00,480 of the world is to live in the world like we are participating 529 00:34:00,480 --> 00:34:05,520 in that larger heavenly reality. So we meet it with Thanksgiving, 530 00:34:05,960 --> 00:34:11,760 we offer it back to God, and then we invite Him to do the 531 00:34:11,760 --> 00:34:14,880 real work, right? That's the third step. 532 00:34:16,120 --> 00:34:21,280 We, we don't get to Jesus by looking past the things that he 533 00:34:21,280 --> 00:34:23,719 has given us. Just shove it all aside. 534 00:34:23,719 --> 00:34:26,400 I only need Jesus. There might be seasons of 535 00:34:26,400 --> 00:34:30,520 fasting and things like that for us, but overall we the only way 536 00:34:30,520 --> 00:34:34,560 forward is through. So God goes about transforming 537 00:34:35,280 --> 00:34:38,400 the gifts that he gives us. When we offer them back, he sort 538 00:34:38,400 --> 00:34:41,960 of completes them, but he also in the process is transforming 539 00:34:42,440 --> 00:34:46,360 us. So to bring that full circle, 540 00:34:46,360 --> 00:34:49,719 then our little feasts and now we can start talking about what 541 00:34:49,719 --> 00:34:52,400 feasting actually is in our context. 542 00:34:53,320 --> 00:34:57,920 Echo that big one. It's an opportunity for us to 543 00:34:57,920 --> 00:35:01,760 practice something very radical, very different, very 544 00:35:01,760 --> 00:35:04,320 countercultural, whatever one of these buzzwords you want to use 545 00:35:05,920 --> 00:35:09,800 and and doing something that's actually pretty easy to do, 546 00:35:09,800 --> 00:35:11,720 which is invite others into it, right? 547 00:35:11,720 --> 00:35:14,440 Think about all the people in your life, whether they are sort 548 00:35:14,440 --> 00:35:17,200 of disaffected Christians going through rough stuff or whether 549 00:35:17,200 --> 00:35:20,600 they are not Christians at all. Who would not accept an 550 00:35:20,600 --> 00:35:23,400 invitation to come to church with you on Sunday? 551 00:35:23,720 --> 00:35:25,960 Who would accept an invitation to dinner? 552 00:35:28,960 --> 00:35:34,400 This is what we do. We re enact in this smaller way, 553 00:35:35,000 --> 00:35:40,680 this practice of Thanksgiving and offering an invitation to 554 00:35:40,680 --> 00:35:43,240 God. And in that process we kind of 555 00:35:43,240 --> 00:35:47,960 live out this little ritual of mankind reconciled to creation, 556 00:35:49,680 --> 00:35:54,680 people reconciled to each other, and God reconciled to man. 557 00:35:55,000 --> 00:35:57,880 So let's talk details. Yeah, yeah. 558 00:35:57,920 --> 00:36:00,240 What does this look like? Because that sounds really 559 00:36:00,240 --> 00:36:02,760 great. Maybe I'll ask it this way. 560 00:36:04,400 --> 00:36:10,840 Think about a a favorite feasting memory could be from a 561 00:36:10,840 --> 00:36:13,800 book, it could be from your own life, and it could be a one time 562 00:36:13,800 --> 00:36:15,880 super memorable thing. Or it could have been this this 563 00:36:15,880 --> 00:36:19,520 ritual that you had with family or certain friends or something 564 00:36:19,520 --> 00:36:25,080 at some point in in your life. Well, something Brian, that you 565 00:36:25,080 --> 00:36:30,400 probably said this and I'm catching up, but it seems like 566 00:36:33,080 --> 00:36:35,360 feasting has to involve hospitality. 567 00:36:36,560 --> 00:36:43,440 It has to involve a welcoming and of not only the food on the 568 00:36:43,440 --> 00:36:47,560 table, but of others to come around the table as well. 569 00:36:47,560 --> 00:36:50,280 So it's a communion in all sorts of ways. 570 00:36:50,680 --> 00:36:58,200 And so, yeah, my first thought about feasting and when I've 571 00:36:58,200 --> 00:37:02,760 experienced it before primarily is when someone has welcomed me 572 00:37:02,760 --> 00:37:04,560 and and shared in their abundance. 573 00:37:04,560 --> 00:37:07,000 The thing that I keep thinking of, there are two specific 574 00:37:07,000 --> 00:37:10,160 families, one from San Diego and 1:00 here in Boston. 575 00:37:10,480 --> 00:37:12,400 And they don't know each other at all. 576 00:37:12,400 --> 00:37:15,800 They're from completely different cultures, but they 577 00:37:15,800 --> 00:37:18,680 both in their own ways from their little means, 578 00:37:18,920 --> 00:37:23,720 continuously, continuously say when you come over to visit, we 579 00:37:23,720 --> 00:37:30,600 have so much, please, please eat more, please take more. 580 00:37:30,680 --> 00:37:34,800 We have so much. That phrase, we have so much is 581 00:37:34,800 --> 00:37:37,280 something that I, I can't seem to shake when I think about 582 00:37:37,800 --> 00:37:40,120 hospitality in in in relation to feasting. 583 00:37:40,120 --> 00:37:43,440 It's. Beautiful, I even think of it 584 00:37:43,440 --> 00:37:45,400 too. When you asked that question, 585 00:37:45,400 --> 00:37:48,160 Brian, I thought of a lot of, you know, big feasts or 586 00:37:48,160 --> 00:37:49,960 whatever. And I was lucky to to grow up 587 00:37:49,960 --> 00:37:53,200 with parents who really did believe in in feasting large, 588 00:37:53,360 --> 00:37:56,520 you know, holiday feasts and inviting strangers in. 589 00:37:56,560 --> 00:37:59,960 But just shaped a lot of, you know, my approach to feasting 590 00:37:59,960 --> 00:38:02,200 and hospitality as an adult, as I think we've talked about 591 00:38:02,200 --> 00:38:06,440 before and and in turn, you know, the way you and I like to 592 00:38:06,480 --> 00:38:12,680 to to host people and to feast. Brian But it's funny that when 593 00:38:12,680 --> 00:38:15,960 you ask that question, the thing that came to my mind was 594 00:38:15,960 --> 00:38:22,480 actually way more simple. And it was having a family movie 595 00:38:22,480 --> 00:38:28,920 night, but doing it with all kinds of treats and goodies and 596 00:38:28,920 --> 00:38:33,280 putting it on like charcuterie board and baking cookies and 597 00:38:33,280 --> 00:38:36,160 just sitting there and enjoying this experience of a movie 598 00:38:36,160 --> 00:38:39,240 together, maybe one that our kids haven't seen yet and 599 00:38:39,240 --> 00:38:41,840 sharing the experience and like eating this food. 600 00:38:43,000 --> 00:38:45,480 And sometimes, you know, Brian and I will have a glass of wine 601 00:38:45,480 --> 00:38:48,280 around. You know, the kids will have 602 00:38:48,280 --> 00:38:50,760 like this little sparkling like goodiness. 603 00:38:53,040 --> 00:38:55,880 And I just thought like that in and of itself is just this 604 00:38:55,880 --> 00:39:00,600 beautiful way to invite even small children into like the 605 00:39:00,600 --> 00:39:05,080 goodness of celebrating time together and food and story. 606 00:39:05,960 --> 00:39:08,920 So anyway that that's something that that came to mind when you 607 00:39:08,920 --> 00:39:11,640 said that. Yeah, you can. 608 00:39:11,640 --> 00:39:16,320 You can layer all these additional feasts on top of the 609 00:39:16,320 --> 00:39:19,600 literal food one. It can be, you can be feasting 610 00:39:19,600 --> 00:39:24,240 on a yeah, a story together or a conversation or any number of 611 00:39:24,240 --> 00:39:26,480 different things, but it's above and beyond the food. 612 00:39:26,480 --> 00:39:30,360 It starts with the food. Because food, like we said at 613 00:39:30,360 --> 00:39:32,840 the beginning, it's transforming death into new life, right? 614 00:39:32,960 --> 00:39:35,280 This is this is a hill that I'll die on. 615 00:39:35,280 --> 00:39:39,680 Like I, I love, I love cooking and I love cooking for people 616 00:39:39,680 --> 00:39:42,240 specifically. I can look down, I'm cooking. 617 00:39:42,280 --> 00:39:48,520 Last night I was just making these stuffed Peppers, just rice 618 00:39:48,520 --> 00:39:53,600 and ground beef and fennel and garlic and things and everything 619 00:39:53,600 --> 00:39:55,800 on my counter was dead or dying, right? 620 00:39:57,480 --> 00:40:00,960 And, and many of them wouldn't be, wouldn't be considered food 621 00:40:00,960 --> 00:40:03,920 in and of themselves, right? They all have nutritional value, 622 00:40:03,920 --> 00:40:05,080 but none of them are food by themselves. 623 00:40:05,080 --> 00:40:07,160 I. Don't know, I love to eat raw 624 00:40:07,240 --> 00:40:10,400 onions like apples. Just kidding. 625 00:40:10,440 --> 00:40:13,480 Just kidding. Raw garlic, like apples or like 626 00:40:13,480 --> 00:40:15,920 oranges anyway. But but yeah, like it's, it's, 627 00:40:15,920 --> 00:40:19,040 it's all dead. And then I put it together into 628 00:40:19,040 --> 00:40:22,120 something that it wasn't before and never would have been 629 00:40:22,120 --> 00:40:25,160 naturally something that is life. 630 00:40:25,240 --> 00:40:29,160 And I'm offering life to my family. 631 00:40:29,400 --> 00:40:32,720 In that case, you're transforming death into life. 632 00:40:32,720 --> 00:40:37,760 You're you're doing this literal physical embodied thing which 633 00:40:37,760 --> 00:40:43,680 builds in you the habit A to do that and B to CI was cooking 634 00:40:44,080 --> 00:40:47,440 with our our nine year old. He was helping me and he's 635 00:40:47,440 --> 00:40:52,080 seeing, learning to see as normal this transformation of 636 00:40:52,520 --> 00:40:55,200 death into life. Like that is a part of the world 637 00:40:55,480 --> 00:40:57,680 that we're offering to him and that is a part of the world that 638 00:40:57,680 --> 00:40:59,160 you're offering your guests, right? 639 00:40:59,160 --> 00:41:02,120 That's sort of step one. They come in and you have that 640 00:41:02,120 --> 00:41:03,720 just sense of eat more, eat more. 641 00:41:03,720 --> 00:41:06,960 Like you said, Sarah, if I make a cocktail for somebody and then 642 00:41:06,960 --> 00:41:09,720 they want a second cocktail, I always, I absolutely refuse to 643 00:41:09,720 --> 00:41:12,800 let them reuse their glass, to take the glass, stick it in the 644 00:41:12,800 --> 00:41:15,800 sink, get them a fresh glass because it just those little 645 00:41:15,800 --> 00:41:17,120 tiny things. You don't have to do that 646 00:41:17,120 --> 00:41:20,520 literal thing, but those little tiny things give them that sense 647 00:41:20,520 --> 00:41:24,480 of abundance, that sense of no, it's not going to be the last 648 00:41:24,480 --> 00:41:28,680 cookie, Eat the cookie. This is not inconvenient. 649 00:41:28,800 --> 00:41:31,600 Yeah, of course. I will wash this dish later. 650 00:41:31,600 --> 00:41:33,560 I want you to have this abundance. 651 00:41:33,560 --> 00:41:36,240 Yeah. And practicing that abundance 652 00:41:36,560 --> 00:41:41,680 think, like you said, Brian, has to be something you build as a 653 00:41:41,680 --> 00:41:45,640 habit because it does not come naturally in a world where we 654 00:41:45,640 --> 00:41:48,640 see scarcity. I think it's interesting. 655 00:41:48,880 --> 00:41:50,560 Interesting is not even the right word. 656 00:41:50,920 --> 00:41:56,720 It's fantastical that in the Gospel of John, Jesus's first 657 00:41:56,720 --> 00:42:01,600 miracle, his first sign is making 750 bottles of wine 658 00:42:02,040 --> 00:42:04,920 equivalents halfway through, you know, at the end of the 659 00:42:04,920 --> 00:42:10,400 celebration. And that screams the from Amos 660 00:42:10,400 --> 00:42:16,480 and from Joel, this idea that when the Messiah comes, there 661 00:42:16,480 --> 00:42:22,320 will be streams of wine flowing from the mountains, like just 662 00:42:22,320 --> 00:42:26,840 this overabundance that the, that we're we're moving towards 663 00:42:27,040 --> 00:42:32,480 in the ultimate feast, when God's bride, his people come and 664 00:42:32,480 --> 00:42:35,680 have true communion with him. But that's that's really, really 665 00:42:35,680 --> 00:42:40,240 hard. Yeah, it's really, really hard 666 00:42:40,240 --> 00:42:44,640 for me. So I'm curious, how, how do we 667 00:42:44,640 --> 00:42:47,200 begin to practice that? What does this actually look 668 00:42:47,200 --> 00:42:51,240 like to begin that habit? Maybe I'll, I'll love this one 669 00:42:51,240 --> 00:42:56,520 over to Christina and, and ask to just pile on to Sarah's 670 00:42:56,520 --> 00:42:59,520 question a little bit. We, we, we talked about all 671 00:42:59,520 --> 00:43:01,440 these different ways in which our relationship with food is 672 00:43:01,440 --> 00:43:05,040 broken. So at this point and, and as a 673 00:43:05,040 --> 00:43:07,560 species, we're still figuring out why the heck this is. 674 00:43:07,560 --> 00:43:10,680 But at this particular moment in time, a lot of people, almost 675 00:43:10,680 --> 00:43:14,240 anyone at any given table is bringing some aspect of a broken 676 00:43:14,240 --> 00:43:17,920 relationship with food, right. She can't eat gluten. 677 00:43:18,160 --> 00:43:20,800 She doesn't drink. She's is an alcoholic. 678 00:43:21,160 --> 00:43:26,040 So and so is watching sugar. So and so can technically eat 679 00:43:26,040 --> 00:43:30,080 everything, but is bringing this unspoken guilt or shame thing 680 00:43:30,080 --> 00:43:32,800 with them. Almost anyone at your table has 681 00:43:32,800 --> 00:43:35,800 something broken in them in your relationship with food. 682 00:43:35,920 --> 00:43:39,640 So what does it look like? Christina, you've put a lot of 683 00:43:39,640 --> 00:43:41,200 thought into this over over the years. 684 00:43:41,440 --> 00:43:47,280 What does it look like to invite a group of people to your table 685 00:43:47,480 --> 00:43:52,880 and have them, you know, 5 or 10 minutes later, sort of all of 686 00:43:52,880 --> 00:43:56,720 that has been overcome because of what you've done in terms of 687 00:43:56,720 --> 00:44:00,040 hospitality choices. Well, I mean, of course, 688 00:44:00,040 --> 00:44:02,600 practically speaking, because there is so much broken 689 00:44:02,640 --> 00:44:05,680 relationships with food or dietary considerations and 690 00:44:05,680 --> 00:44:08,520 sickness and autoimmune things, when you do have someone over 691 00:44:08,520 --> 00:44:12,120 who you don't know particularly well, you just kind of want to 692 00:44:12,120 --> 00:44:14,920 ask, are there food allergies or restrictions you guys are 693 00:44:15,200 --> 00:44:17,360 dealing with right now? You know, because you want them 694 00:44:17,480 --> 00:44:20,960 to feel comfortable. We as a family have dealt with a 695 00:44:20,960 --> 00:44:23,240 number of those ourselves. And it is uncomfortable when 696 00:44:23,240 --> 00:44:24,640 you're invited to someone's house. 697 00:44:24,640 --> 00:44:27,760 I'm like, oh, but I'm so sorry we can't have gluten, you know, 698 00:44:27,760 --> 00:44:30,160 like, or we can't have cheese right now or whatever it is. 699 00:44:30,160 --> 00:44:32,920 And you just, it's, you feel terrible when you're invited to 700 00:44:32,920 --> 00:44:35,920 someone's home and you're putting them out in that way. 701 00:44:36,960 --> 00:44:42,120 So when someone says we'd love to cook for you, do you have any 702 00:44:42,200 --> 00:44:46,720 food allergies or restrictions that we can accommodate that is 703 00:44:46,720 --> 00:44:48,520 already takes a ton of pressure off. 704 00:44:48,520 --> 00:44:52,760 So that's just a way to kind of immediately counter sort of some 705 00:44:52,760 --> 00:44:56,760 of that, you know, guilt that someone might be coming in with. 706 00:44:58,320 --> 00:45:03,320 And then I think honestly, for me, one of the biggest things 707 00:45:03,320 --> 00:45:05,600 that I've found is setting a beautiful table. 708 00:45:06,040 --> 00:45:09,880 I think having flowers or drinking from the fancy water 709 00:45:09,880 --> 00:45:14,160 glasses, it doesn't have to be that way. 710 00:45:14,240 --> 00:45:16,960 And you don't want to over formalize, you know, a casual 711 00:45:16,960 --> 00:45:19,880 come over for dinner, but lighting a candle, just making 712 00:45:19,880 --> 00:45:22,640 someone feel like you have intentionally prepared a space 713 00:45:22,640 --> 00:45:26,600 for them can be really, really welcoming. 714 00:45:27,160 --> 00:45:30,080 It really shows them that you're not being put out and that 715 00:45:30,080 --> 00:45:33,160 you're excited to have them. You know, I think those things 716 00:45:33,160 --> 00:45:36,200 are really, really encouraging and in that way. 717 00:45:37,320 --> 00:45:39,720 And then if you want to go the opposite way, I know, I know 718 00:45:39,720 --> 00:45:42,800 people who say like, I don't like my house being perfectly 719 00:45:42,800 --> 00:45:44,560 clean when people come over because I don't want them to 720 00:45:44,560 --> 00:45:48,400 feel like pressure, like, oh, their life is so put together. 721 00:45:48,400 --> 00:45:50,440 And I wish I could cook like this and I wish I could, you 722 00:45:50,440 --> 00:45:53,200 know, whatever. And why doesn't my house look 723 00:45:53,200 --> 00:45:55,800 this like pristine? And, you know, then they start 724 00:45:55,800 --> 00:45:58,080 feeling like this shame and this pressure. 725 00:45:58,200 --> 00:46:00,760 So, you know, you could go the other way and say, no, this is 726 00:46:00,760 --> 00:46:03,720 just a casual meal we're having together, you know, like 727 00:46:03,720 --> 00:46:08,080 mismatched dishes, plates, but eat what you want, Eat as much 728 00:46:08,080 --> 00:46:10,680 as you want. Like there's more on the stove. 729 00:46:10,680 --> 00:46:12,240 Oh, do you want this? Do you want this? 730 00:46:12,240 --> 00:46:16,800 And but anyway, those are just some of the ways that I've found 731 00:46:16,800 --> 00:46:19,560 in some of those more immediate contexts, Brian. 732 00:46:19,960 --> 00:46:25,680 Yeah, well, so so you had the the immediate food sense of your 733 00:46:25,680 --> 00:46:29,320 transforming death into new life and offering it to your guests 734 00:46:29,320 --> 00:46:31,520 and you're doing it in a way that they that they can all 735 00:46:31,520 --> 00:46:33,040 receive, they can all partake in. 736 00:46:33,080 --> 00:46:35,600 And then what I heard in what you just described, both in that 737 00:46:35,600 --> 00:46:38,520 respect and in the more sort of relational aspect, what I heard 738 00:46:38,520 --> 00:46:40,640 was I thought of you before you got here. 739 00:46:42,080 --> 00:46:44,120 Yeah, right. It's that echo of of Christ. 740 00:46:44,120 --> 00:46:48,760 I go to prepare a place for you. There was you're you're walking 741 00:46:48,760 --> 00:46:51,960 in and you could be AI mean you and I have had literal total 742 00:46:51,960 --> 00:46:55,160 strangers plenty of times that just walked in because a friend 743 00:46:55,160 --> 00:46:59,480 of a friend invited them and you're making a stranger into a 744 00:46:59,480 --> 00:47:02,600 friend, which is almost like making an enemy into a friend. 745 00:47:02,600 --> 00:47:05,880 That's actually the the root of the word hospitality means. 746 00:47:06,560 --> 00:47:08,760 Well, yeah. Do you know that exact route? 747 00:47:08,760 --> 00:47:10,480 I I remember we had talked about that at 1:00. 748 00:47:10,480 --> 00:47:17,320 Point Hospice HOSES. Yeah, it's, I forget the the 749 00:47:17,320 --> 00:47:21,440 detail detail of the etymology, but it was like frending an 750 00:47:21,440 --> 00:47:22,760 enemy, essentially the something. 751 00:47:23,280 --> 00:47:24,960 Like that the. Stranger becoming a friend. 752 00:47:25,160 --> 00:47:30,800 So, so in that you're modeling again the reconciliation of the 753 00:47:30,800 --> 00:47:33,840 human race with, you know, with each other itself. 754 00:47:36,680 --> 00:47:44,080 What about the what about the God component? 755 00:47:44,320 --> 00:47:46,840 This is where I think you push furthest into the difference 756 00:47:46,840 --> 00:47:48,680 between eating and feasting, right? 757 00:47:48,680 --> 00:47:51,400 Because when you're transforming death into new life, that's not 758 00:47:51,400 --> 00:47:53,880 unique to feasting. That's that's an eating thing 759 00:47:53,880 --> 00:47:56,240 across the board. Strangers becoming friends, 760 00:47:56,240 --> 00:48:00,120 inviting the man, making those little choices to say, I thought 761 00:48:00,120 --> 00:48:03,360 of you before you got here and recognizing that there are times 762 00:48:03,360 --> 00:48:06,680 for that to be fancy and formal and how you went to that much 763 00:48:06,680 --> 00:48:08,680 effort for me. And there are times for that 764 00:48:08,680 --> 00:48:10,760 that will overwhelm someone, and you want them to just feel 765 00:48:11,200 --> 00:48:13,400 comfortable, like they could just take a nap on your couch. 766 00:48:15,200 --> 00:48:16,920 So there's eating, there's hospitality. 767 00:48:17,200 --> 00:48:21,320 The vert, that vertical dimension of connection with the 768 00:48:21,320 --> 00:48:24,880 divine and with past and future, I think is what really elevates 769 00:48:25,360 --> 00:48:29,480 eating into feasting. Tell me about that. 770 00:48:29,880 --> 00:48:33,600 To me, I, I know that this verse has a lot of different other 771 00:48:33,600 --> 00:48:36,560 contexts, but something that keeps coming to mind in this 772 00:48:36,560 --> 00:48:41,960 conversation is in Psalm 23 where it says, God, you prepare 773 00:48:41,960 --> 00:48:44,960 a table before me in the presence of my enemies. 774 00:48:45,360 --> 00:48:48,880 And while we're talking about all these things that we can do 775 00:48:48,880 --> 00:48:51,680 with Thanksgiving, what we can do to offer things back up to 776 00:48:51,680 --> 00:48:55,680 God at the end of the day, this world is still so broken. 777 00:48:55,920 --> 00:49:01,440 And when we look at the grand narrative of history, it is this 778 00:49:01,440 --> 00:49:06,560 Exodus way where we are taken out of slavery through Christ. 779 00:49:06,760 --> 00:49:10,200 And in the here and now we are with him. 780 00:49:10,200 --> 00:49:12,960 And yet we are still walking in this wilderness before we get to 781 00:49:12,960 --> 00:49:14,880 the Promised land, just like the Israelites. 782 00:49:15,200 --> 00:49:18,360 And so in this wilderness, we might be able to do our 783 00:49:18,360 --> 00:49:21,400 participation, our part with Thanksgiving and offering back. 784 00:49:21,400 --> 00:49:24,240 But at the end of the day, what we have is still broken. 785 00:49:24,600 --> 00:49:27,480 At the end of the day, even though he calls us to feast in 786 00:49:27,480 --> 00:49:31,520 seven different feasts in in the desert and like the Israelites 787 00:49:31,520 --> 00:49:34,280 and feast upon feast and remembrance upon remembrance, 788 00:49:34,280 --> 00:49:36,560 we're still we're still in a desert. 789 00:49:36,640 --> 00:49:40,440 It's still not totally right. There's still mostly sawdust 790 00:49:40,440 --> 00:49:44,320 bread on the table. And so to remember that it's the 791 00:49:44,320 --> 00:49:48,800 Lord who prepares the table, that it's the Lord who creates 792 00:49:48,800 --> 00:49:51,400 the space. And like you said, Brian, maybe 793 00:49:51,400 --> 00:49:55,640 it is just as simple as asking him to come and to take our 794 00:49:55,640 --> 00:50:01,160 small couple loaves of bread and couple of fish and multiply them 795 00:50:01,200 --> 00:50:07,280 in a way that is outside of the realm of how we think death to 796 00:50:07,280 --> 00:50:10,240 life happens in food. Maybe. 797 00:50:11,080 --> 00:50:16,120 Maybe it really is as simple as remembering he's the one who 798 00:50:16,120 --> 00:50:19,680 prepares and that we are the ones who ask. 799 00:50:22,520 --> 00:50:25,040 Yeah, you can't take the gratitude piece out. 800 00:50:25,040 --> 00:50:31,000 You can't take the serving God, offering things back to God out 801 00:50:31,000 --> 00:50:32,840 of this. It just doesn't work. 802 00:50:32,840 --> 00:50:36,960 Yeah, sanctify these gifts by the power of your Holy Spirit. 803 00:50:37,680 --> 00:50:39,480 And you said Sarah over and over. 804 00:50:39,760 --> 00:50:44,680 Remember, remember, remember. That's again a recipe that's in 805 00:50:44,680 --> 00:50:49,120 Scripture that Americans are terrible at, maybe just humans 806 00:50:49,120 --> 00:50:53,720 are terrible at, but we it's another thing that feasts are 807 00:50:53,720 --> 00:50:57,160 great for. It's why the church year is 808 00:50:57,160 --> 00:51:00,840 filled with feasts. It's why things like big things 809 00:51:00,840 --> 00:51:04,200 like Christmas and Easter, but also every Sunday is a feast you 810 00:51:04,280 --> 00:51:06,160 you have this built in opportunity to remember. 811 00:51:06,160 --> 00:51:08,400 And we can echo that in our feasts. 812 00:51:08,400 --> 00:51:11,680 The the I remember the first one of the first times we had a 813 00:51:11,680 --> 00:51:14,960 bunch of people over for cocktails happened to be on the 814 00:51:15,960 --> 00:51:19,200 feast day of Saint Agustin, who's, among other things, the 815 00:51:19,200 --> 00:51:22,360 patron sanctif or one of the patron Saints of Brewers. 816 00:51:22,360 --> 00:51:26,880 And so we found in the book of Common Prayer, we found a a 817 00:51:26,880 --> 00:51:30,560 collect for Saint Agustin and it just thanked God for the life 818 00:51:30,560 --> 00:51:33,640 and witness of Agustin and asked us to follow in a couple 819 00:51:33,640 --> 00:51:36,760 specific in his in his example, in a couple specific ways. 820 00:51:36,760 --> 00:51:39,360 And boom, a whole bunch of 21st century Americans just 821 00:51:39,360 --> 00:51:42,520 remembered this long dead Christian. 822 00:51:42,520 --> 00:51:46,080 And similarly, that's the role of the people of God to 823 00:51:46,080 --> 00:51:49,600 constantly be telling the stories of his faithfulness. 824 00:51:49,600 --> 00:51:52,480 And it's another way in which you kind of invite God to the 825 00:51:52,480 --> 00:51:56,560 table by remembering. And then you don't really have 826 00:51:56,560 --> 00:51:59,560 to work too terribly hard to to look forward. 827 00:52:00,200 --> 00:52:03,840 You can you can spend time in Revelation and think about the 828 00:52:03,840 --> 00:52:06,960 marriage supper of the lamb and how it that might color how you 829 00:52:06,960 --> 00:52:09,800 feast. But we've heard over and over, 830 00:52:09,800 --> 00:52:14,000 Christina and I, in our hospitality, in our house, we've 831 00:52:14,000 --> 00:52:17,640 heard over and over from people some variation on. 832 00:52:18,160 --> 00:52:21,400 I walked away from such and such an occasion feeling like I'd 833 00:52:21,400 --> 00:52:23,360 gotten a little glimpse into what heaven is like. 834 00:52:23,360 --> 00:52:27,920 And that was just the grace of God at our table. 835 00:52:29,040 --> 00:52:31,120 In the. Cases that fairly simple things. 836 00:52:32,320 --> 00:52:35,080 Yeah, it wasn't. Yeah, like we don't have to not 837 00:52:35,160 --> 00:52:36,320 taking. Credit for that one. 838 00:52:36,640 --> 00:52:38,680 No, like we don't hear it because we worked the hardest 839 00:52:38,680 --> 00:52:41,560 that time or did the fanciest thing. 840 00:52:41,560 --> 00:52:44,960 It's because it's not ourselves that we're offering. 841 00:52:46,480 --> 00:52:48,480 And that's the hardest thing to remember, especially when you 842 00:52:48,480 --> 00:52:51,360 just worked really hard for an hour or four hours or four days 843 00:52:51,600 --> 00:52:54,520 to to prep for something that you can get that sense of 844 00:52:54,520 --> 00:52:57,040 pressure, just like you can get the sense of pressure for any 845 00:52:57,040 --> 00:52:59,440 other thing that you're putting sweat into. 846 00:52:59,480 --> 00:53:02,080 But it's not us that we're offering. 847 00:53:02,600 --> 00:53:07,400 I'm also thinking about that the, the story of, of a siege in 848 00:53:07,400 --> 00:53:13,160 the Old Testament where God, God has the whole army that's 849 00:53:13,160 --> 00:53:17,680 encamped around the city dispersed. 850 00:53:17,680 --> 00:53:20,240 They freak out, they hear something and they all run away. 851 00:53:20,480 --> 00:53:23,440 And these, these there are these three, I think two or three 852 00:53:23,440 --> 00:53:28,640 beggars who they're, they, they just say to themselves, well, 853 00:53:28,640 --> 00:53:31,160 we're going to die in here. We're going to die out there. 854 00:53:31,160 --> 00:53:35,000 So I, we might as well leave. And they leave the city, the the 855 00:53:35,000 --> 00:53:39,720 city under siege, and they find just a trillion army's worth of 856 00:53:39,720 --> 00:53:44,600 feasts of food just sitting there with no one around. 857 00:53:44,840 --> 00:53:48,440 And after they gorge themselves for as long as they possibly 858 00:53:48,440 --> 00:53:52,080 can, they finally get to the point where they're like, well, 859 00:53:52,840 --> 00:53:57,160 we can't eat this all. We have so much, we might as 860 00:53:57,160 --> 00:53:59,000 well go tell everyone in the city. 861 00:54:00,440 --> 00:54:03,160 It's no skin off our teeth, so to speak. 862 00:54:03,320 --> 00:54:06,240 We're we've had our full and Brian, I've heard you and 863 00:54:06,240 --> 00:54:09,200 Christina say that a lot, that you can't invite someone into 864 00:54:09,200 --> 00:54:12,480 something unless you have something to give, something 865 00:54:12,560 --> 00:54:15,240 that you're living in. Yeah, you can't invite someone 866 00:54:15,240 --> 00:54:18,160 into a life you're not living. Yes, yes. 867 00:54:18,200 --> 00:54:22,640 And I'm just reminded at the grace that God commands every 868 00:54:22,640 --> 00:54:31,400 seven days for us to rest, for us to, to drink in, to stop to 869 00:54:31,400 --> 00:54:37,760 drink in and to to taste and see that he is good in the literal 870 00:54:37,760 --> 00:54:41,760 food that we eat that day in the Eucharist, in the time together 871 00:54:41,960 --> 00:54:46,360 in the communion of Saints, but also in just the beauty of the 872 00:54:46,360 --> 00:54:49,400 world that we don't often stop and look and see. 873 00:54:50,200 --> 00:54:54,000 When I think back to the people who have offered their feast to 874 00:54:54,000 --> 00:54:57,960 me, it does seem like they are always coming from a place where 875 00:54:57,960 --> 00:55:02,760 they really, really do believe that they have so much to give. 876 00:55:03,080 --> 00:55:08,920 Like the beggars who just they can't see any reason why not. 877 00:55:08,960 --> 00:55:12,880 And, and I think that might be a place where we can begin and ask 878 00:55:12,880 --> 00:55:17,600 God for help to begin and to to just ask him to help us have the 879 00:55:17,600 --> 00:55:22,440 eyes of abundance and to see his goodness while we are still in 880 00:55:22,440 --> 00:55:25,880 the wilderness, not yet at the marriage supper of the Lamb. 881 00:55:26,160 --> 00:55:28,520 That's a good note to end on, Sarah. 882 00:55:28,520 --> 00:55:32,160 Christina, thank you for joining me and lending your wisdom as 883 00:55:32,160 --> 00:55:35,840 always, listeners. Both are normal Imagination 884 00:55:35,840 --> 00:55:38,720 Redeemed podcast listeners and our Rabbit Room friends 885 00:55:38,720 --> 00:55:41,800 participating in this conversation as part of House 886 00:55:41,800 --> 00:55:43,880 Moot. Thank you for joining us. 887 00:55:43,880 --> 00:55:48,320 Feel free to shoot us an e-mail on ansamsociety.org with follow 888 00:55:48,320 --> 00:55:51,160 up questions. We'd love to help get you 889 00:55:51,160 --> 00:55:53,120 started in your feasting, if it's not a habit you have 890 00:55:53,120 --> 00:55:56,720 already. The Imagination Redeemed podcast 891 00:55:56,720 --> 00:55:59,440 is the production of the Anselm Society, whose mission is a 892 00:55:59,440 --> 00:56:01,480 renaissance of the Christian imagination. 893 00:56:02,040 --> 00:56:04,720 It's easy to see this world as disenchanted and to give up hope 894 00:56:04,720 --> 00:56:07,160 that there's more. But you were made to see the 895 00:56:07,160 --> 00:56:10,480 world with the eyes of heaven and to live a bountiful life 896 00:56:10,480 --> 00:56:12,480 that participates in the life of God. 897 00:56:12,600 --> 00:56:15,640 Like in the great stories, the Ansam Society is a place where 898 00:56:15,640 --> 00:56:19,560 you can come in and experience that beauty, joyful celebration, 899 00:56:19,560 --> 00:56:23,160 and ancient wisdom and go out renewed, bringing that life to 900 00:56:23,160 --> 00:56:27,160 your vocation, home, and church. Join us next time as we pursue a 901 00:56:27,160 --> 00:56:29,520 renaissance of the Christian imagination together.