Why Food, Cooking, and Hospitality are Sacred

During my widow years, I lived in a lovely guesthouse high on the side of Awbrey Butte with tall trees growing up to the balcony. The kitchenette was the width of two cabinet doors, it featured a bar sink and below-the-counter fridge, and I had to unplug the hot plate to use the toaster oven. Needless to say, I didn’t throw large dinner parties.

Then I married Dan who came with plenty of kitchen countertop. And it has been so much fun pulling out cookie sheets and Pyrex baking dishes and measuring cups. It is a pleasure to slice olives, and measure chocolate chips, and sauté onions, and pare apples, and stir cinnamon and cardamom into pumpkin, and whip egg whites until frothy, and peel potatoes, and chop garlic.

I’m pretty sure I enjoy our countertop and stove and oven so much because I went without a standard kitchen for a handful of years. (Why do we humans have this tendency of not fully appreciating something until we lose it?)

Robert Farrar Capon wrote a thought-provoking comment that gave me pause. I don’t know that I’ve ever thought about the sacredness of food and preparing meals for the people I love:

“Food is not just some fuel we need to get us going toward higher things. Cooking is not a drudgery we put up with in order to get the fuel delivered. Rather, each is a heart’s astonishment. Both stop us dead in our tracks with wonder.”

I think there’s a third layer that contributes to that astonishment and wonder: the gathering of people around our tables as we open our hearts to one another, as we listen well and share stories and laughter, as we feed our family and our guests.

The Bible has much to say about sharing our food and our homes:

Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. 1 Peter 4:9

Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. Romans 12:13

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Hebrews 13:2

Food. Cooking. Hospitality.

Shauna Niequist wrote a book, Bread & Wine, as a love letter to life around the table. In the introduction, she says she doesn’t want to change the way we eat, necessarily, but she wants us to enjoy what we eat and share food with the people we love:

“... because I think the gathering is of great significance. When you eat, I want you to think of God, of the holiness of hands that feed us, of the provision we are given every time we eat.”

How would you live differently in 2023 if you recognized that food and cooking and hospitality are sacred things—this good provision, the ability to slice and dice and create something beautiful and delicious, the gathering of friends and family?