Probably you have seen Babette’s Feast, or at least have heard about it. In it, an impoverished fine chef from Paris makes her way into a tiny Danish town where the religion of the area made people hard and cold to each other, at least according to this movie, afraid to enjoy or even to relate to one another. Babette, the cook, had only a small stash of possessions, but she was a top chef.

So she prepared, over many days, a huge, delectable, exquisite feast, serving after serving, all for the uptight townspeople. As they began to taste and enjoy, they began also to communicate in kindness to each other. They even danced!

I have heard critics say that this movie promoted self-indulgence, and I do not endorse such a thing. But I do notice similarities to the huge feast we hear about in the First Reading.

There we find the famous invitation from the Lord of Hosts, full of unstinting promise. “A feast of rich food and choice wines,” Isaiah says. A great feast, a “groaning board” in the language of medieval England, just like the banquet in Babette’s Feast.

Sunday's Gospel reading also has a sumptuous feed. The king gets his very best livestock fattened up, seasoned, readied for cooking, with invitations sent out. If you thought the people in Babette’s town were reluctant, look what happened here. Some people refused outright to come. Others simply ignored the invitation as if it had not been given, and others “laid hold of his servants, mistreated them, and killed them.” The king punished these and then invited in street people.

Food is meant to be enjoyed, not refused.

But with so many people starving in today’s world, how dare we fatten ourselves up with rich food and every other kind of riches? Shouldn’t we much more becomingly abstain and deny ourselves? Isn’t the “First World” currently fattening itself on food far more lavish than the ancient world could ever have even imagined? Advertisements in the United States tell us we should luxuriate, should pamper ourselves, should not hold back. “Who says you can’t have it all,” they say.

How are we to respond, we who try to be faithful to God and God’s promises?

Remember that Jesus feasted as well as fasted. He abstained from food for forty days at the beginning of his public ministry; but later on his words were, “the Son of Man came eating and drinking—and they said, ‘Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners’” (Mt. 11:19). How would he have gotten such a reputation except by enjoying his times at meals with others?

Which is it for us, then, fasting or feasting?

I think the answer is simple yet difficult to grow into. I think we are meant to receive humbly and to give to others as well. The mistake is to adopt a stance of, on the one hand, only receiving (getting, grabbing) or on the other hand, only giving (denying oneself for the sake of the other). Sunday’s readings invite us to come into the kingdom, to open up, to eat, to enjoy what is there.

To receive as Jesus did.

He went deep, accepting all things as coming from God’s hand. When it was time to let go of it all—life, friends, peace, and possessions—he did that with love.

Receive and give. Jesus wants us to receive his life and then give it out to the world.