8. Meals in Luke
Luke's gospel indicates that the Evangelist may have particularly appreciated good food – at least it shows clearly that he noticed and commented on food more than any other gospel writer! For example, while Matthew uses the word "eat" eighteen times, and John only fifteen times, Luke uses the word thirty–three times. Mark also uses this word quite frequently (twenty-five times), but overall Luke uses a number of eating and food–related words twice as many times as Mark and the other gospels, so his emphasis on this is clear.
In fact, Luke weaves much of his account around eating – in most of his stories, Jesus is either going to a meal, at a meal, or coming from a meal. But Luke does not simply mention food and meals – he draws lessons from them. Uniquely, he describes ten meals in which Jesus participated:
1. Luke 5: Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners at the home of Levi (Matthew). 2. Luke 7: Jesus is anointed during a meal at the home of Simon the Pharisee. 3. Luke 9: Jesus feeds the five thousand. 4. Luke 10: Jesus eats in the home of Martha and Mary. 5. Luke 11: Jesus condemns the Pharisees and teachers of the law at a meal. 6. Luke 14: Jesus is at a meal when he urges people to invite the poor to their meals. 7. Luke 19: Jesus invites himself to dinner with the tax collector Zacchaeus. 8. Luke 22: Jesus eats the Last Supper with the disciples. 9. Luke 24: The resurrected Jesus sits for a meal with two disciples in Emmaus. 10. Luke 24: Jesus eats some food with the disciples in Jerusalem.
Luke shows that even when Jesus was not eating, he frequently made reference to food in his teaching. Jesus used food to describe salvation and judgment (Luke 1:53; Luke 6:21, 25), and described people in terms of good food and bad food (Luke 3:17; Luke 6:43– 46; Luke 12:1). When he was asked if few are saved, Jesus warned that on the last day people will say, "We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets." But he will reply, "I don't know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!" Instead "People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God." (see Luke 13:22–30). In Luke 14 Jesus tells a parable of a great banquet. In Luke 15 he tells the parable of the prodigal son, which ends with a banquet. In Luke 16 he contrasts a rich man "who feasted sumptuously every day" with a beggar "who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table" (Luke 16:19 ESV). In Luke 22 Jesus tells his disciples: "I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom" (Luke 22:29–30 ESV).
So throughout the Gospel of Luke we see that Jesus' meals were not just eating food, and they were far more than just symbols. Luke shows that Jesus used meals to engage with people and to teach important lessons. This last fact is particularly important, because if we read the accounts of the ten meals he records, we find that every one of them was used to teach something.
But the meals in Luke were often also exercises in friendship and spiritual community. In a very real way they also often prefigured the kingdom of God itself. Perhaps this was the reason for the emphasis the early Christians placed on their so–called "love feasts" – they were not only reminders of how Jesus connected with his followers through meals, they were also expressions of the coming kingdom in miniature. Certainly we see that in the meals in Luke.