You are what you eat. Is that true? If so, then your staff and clergy here at Holy Cross are cream puffs and brownies.
Let me set the scene for you from this past week: Susan, our parish administrator, is also a master pastry chef. At Tuesday’s staff meeting—a farewell gathering—Susan brought a buffet of homemade treats. No shortcuts either. She prepared these while training for a 5K. Go figure. And when I mean buffet—the hospitality cart was overflowing: cream puffs, cinnamon cheesecake bites, lemon tarts, poundcake, and cookie dough brownies. Some of these were family recipes passed down for generations, others she experimented with after watching baking shows. I’m convinced at the marriage supper of the Lamb, Susan’s baked goods will be on the banquet table and I can enjoy those desserts without worrying about my waistline.
Now, maybe you’re more like me, looking for convenient solutions when it’s your turn to bring treats. But what Susan displayed was craftsmanship—and a hospitality that requires skill, patience, and love. It also reveals something deeper about our hunger… and what we are made for.
If food were just fuel, then why would Susan go through all the trouble? And why do we experience such joy around a shared table with delicious food?
Listen to what the late priest Robert Farrar Capon writes in The Supper of the Lamb: “To be sure, food keeps us alive, but that is only its smallest and most temporary work. Its eternal purpose is to furnish our sensibilities against the day when we shall sit down at the heavenly banquet and see how gracious the Lord is. Nourishment is necessary only for a while; what we shall need for ever is taste.” Isn’t that beautiful? To taste and see that the Lord is good. He goes on to say: “Food is the daily sacrament of unnecessary goodness, ordained for a continual remembrance that the world will always be more delicious than useful.”1
That brings us to the truth we encounter in Revelation 19, a truth that ties together the whole storyline of the Bible and the meaning of our existence: We are hardwired with a hunger only Jesus can satisfy, revealed fully and finally in the marriage supper of the Lamb.
A Hardwired Hunger: What do I mean by that? We are created with a longing, a deep desire to be with God and to experience his joy and peace. And one of the primary ways the Bible describes that experience is a feast. We don’t have to look far to find the very first one.
In Genesis chapter 1, God creates the heavens and the earth and everything in them. On the sixth day, God created humans in his own image. Created for relationship with God, to reflect his likeness and carry out his work in the world. But before they do anything, God says in Genesis 1:29: “Look at all that I have given you to eat.”
In other words, God begins humanity’s existence with an invitation to feast. And then on the seventh day God rests because he delights in creation. We are created with a desire to join in that same delight and joy. In Revelation, we see the end mirrors the beginning. Our created purpose to rest and rejoice in relationship with God will be fulfilled finally in the marriage supper of the Lamb and the arrival of the heavenly city.
We were created to feast with God, and God placed with each of us a hunger for relationship with him.
As St. Augustine says, “You have made us with yourself as our goal, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”2
We are hardwired with a hunger for God.
But what happens to that good, God-directed hunger?
In Genesis chapter 3, we discover how our hunger becomes disordered because of the Fall. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve chose deception. They ate what didn’t belong to them. Their hunger was no longer to glorify God, but to become God. That hunger became self-centered and prideful, and ever since has led humanity on a path that leads not to communion with God but to chaos and ruin.
And that quest to glorify ourselves instead of God? It can never take us home where we belong.
St. Augustine knew this firsthand. Graduates, this is for you. During Augustine’s college years, he went off to study in Carthage, a place he described as a “cauldron of hissing love-affairs.” He was rebelling against God. Chasing meaning and pleasure, he was hungry with an “inner famine.” A hunger he couldn’t satisfy.
That’s because, Augustine says, “I was inwardly starved of that food which is yourself, O my God.”3
He craved love but looked in the wrong places. The more he chased and consumed pride, wealth, and pleasure, the further it took him from the only source of true satisfaction with God.
We find this same disordered hunger Revelation 19:2, where God brings judgment on the harlot of Babylon. The name Babylon recalls the ancient empire from the Old Testament. But it’s more than history. Babylon is a symbol of our disordered desire, describing a world addicted to self-glorification. For John’s audience in Revelation, it points to the Roman Empire. But the symbol is timeless, and for us today, it describes any human effort to build a nation or society that boasts in wealth, distorts truth, oppresses the poor, and devours others to satisfy its cravings.4
Here’s the diagnosis: Because of our sin, our hunger for God is twisted into a hunger to make ourselves God.
Maybe you’re here today, and you know what that hunger feels like. You’ve wandered far and wide, searching for meaning, chasing success, craving affirmation or pleasure, and you’ve come up empty again and again. And the hunger is still there.
If that’s you, I want you to hear this: There’s hope. You’re not alone. You are here in this room surrounded by stories of transformed lives—by people who’ve found satisfaction in something this world can’t offer.
Here’s the good news… Jesus Satisfies.
“Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). This is what John the Baptist declares when he sees Jesus.
What does it mean for Jesus to be the Lamb who takes away our sin? Jesus satisfies the consequences of our disordered hunger. While we were endlessly striving for God’s throne, God’s Son stepped down from his. He became like us and took our place so that we could be restored to the fellowship we were made for. So we could belong again with our Creator and Redeemer.
Jesus heals our swollen pride and insatiable appetite. He emptied himself to fill us with his goodness. He laid his life down so that when we cling to him, he lifts us up.
In Revelation 19, we see the victory of the Lamb over the immorality of Babylon, that symbol of pride and corruption. Babylon represents every cheap substitute the world offers in place of God. But how does Jesus win? The Lamb conquers through humility, offering his perfect life for ours, enduring the cross, and defeating sin once and for all.
Jesus feeds us with his sacrifice for our salvation, with his humility that conquers our pride, and with his words that give us new life.
Jesus says in John 6:35, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”
Jesus, the Lamb of God, restores our hunger to its proper direction and satisfies our every longing.
And that longing is fulfilled finally when heaven erupts in praise at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.
We once gave ourselves away to the harlot Babylon, glorifying ourselves and seeking pleasure in that which would never satisfy. But look at verses 7 and 8: because of Jesus and his victory over sin and death, he has made us new. We have been transformed because of his humility and righteousness from death to new life, taking our filthy rags and clothing us in pure linen to be his Bride.5
Because we are hardwired with a hunger for God and satisfied in Jesus, we are destined and ready for a table and a wedding feast, not just spiritually but bodily too. When I say Jesus feeds us, I mean it literally. Consider how often the Gospels show Jesus at the table —turning water into wine at the wedding at Cana, reclining with Zacchaeus in his home, breaking bread in public with sinners and tax collectors, and sharing meals with his disciples. Salvation is not meant to be a private conversation between you and God but something we taste and share with others.
Every time you open your home to others and gather around a table you are bearing witness to our satisfaction in Jesus and our anticipation of the feast to come. This week has been filled with many goodbyes and last moments at Holy Cross. On Monday, our young adults Bible study concluded with a pizza party. We shared stories, engaged in friendly arguments, and laughed together. That too, along with our studies through Hebrews and Job, was formative for our destiny as the Lamb’s Bride.
In an age of loneliness, where our self-centered desires have turned so inwardly we’ve lost connection with others, keep setting the table. Do not underestimate the holiness of gathering around a table, not just with your family but especially with fellow Christians and your neighbors. Hospitality embodies love and forgiveness and acceptance.6 It resists the cheap, selfish ways of Babylon and heralds the coming marriage feast of the Lamb.
As a final word of exhortation, may I challenge you this summer: make room for others. Turn the Peace into an invitation to gather for a meal. Sit around the table instead of the television. Speak with love and listen carefully. If our destiny is a meal with Jesus, we ought to be well-practiced in feasting together.
And finally, come to the Lord’s Table. All who belong to Jesus are welcome here. When we lift our hearts, we are seated with our Risen Lord in the heavenly places. We taste the resurrected life and our hearts are exalted to the joy of our eternal home—and we proclaim the coming marriage Supper of the Lamb.
You are what you eat. So come, and be made like Jesus today, sanctified in his image and prepared for this feast to come.
Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb, 40.
Augustine, Confessions, translated by Sarah Ruden, Book I.1.
Augustine, Confessions, Book III.1.
Richard Bauckham, The Theology of Revelation, 130.
G.K. Beale highlights this contrast in his NIGTC commentary on Revelation (see pages 936-37).
Eugene Peterson, Reversed Thunder, 158.
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