There are so many meals and banquets in Luke, so much talk about food and drink,
one scholar even wrote a book called Eating Your Way through Luke’s Gospel! (R. Karris, 2006)
Texts in the Gospel according to Luke:
I) Jesus Participates in Meals in Luke’s Gospel
5:29-32 – Levi hosts a banquet for Jesus; Pharisees complain that Jesus eats with tax collectors & sinners. (similar complaints in 15:2 and 19:7; see also Jesus’ response in 7:33-35)
7:36-50 – Jesus eats at Simon the Pharisee’s house; a sinful woman comes to anoint his feet.
9:10-17 – Jesus feeds a crowd of 5000 with five loaves and two fish; twelve baskets of leftover food.
11:37-52 – Jesus eats at the home of another Pharisee, who complains that Jesus didn’t wash before the meal.
14:1-24 – Jesus eats at a leading Pharisee’s house; there he heals a man & teaches with several parables.
22:1, 7-13 – Jesus tells two disciples on the Feast of Unleavened Bread to prepare for the Passover meal.
22:14-38 – Last Supper: Jesus & his disciples share a Passover meal, at which he talks of eating & drinking in God’s Kingdom, institutes the Eucharist, foretells Judas’ betrayal and Peter’s denials, and teaches further.
24:30-35 – Risen Jesus “breaks bread” with two disciples at Emmaus; they return to Jerusalem and report to the other disciples that they recognized him “in the breaking of the bread” (cf. Acts 2:42, 46; 20:7-11).
24:41-43 – Risen Jesus eats some fish as he appears to his disciples in Jerusalem, to show he’s not a ghost.
II) People “Serve” or “Provide” for Jesus and His Disciples in Luke’s Gospel
4:38-39 – After Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law, she “serves them” (usually diakonew = serving food)
8:1-3 – [The twelve were with Jesus, and Mary Magdalene] “and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.”
10:38-42 – Jesus is welcomed in the home of Martha & Mary; Martha does “much serving” (diakonia)
19:5-7 – Jesus sees Zacchaeus; asks to “stay at your house” (hospitality implies sharing food & drink)
22:26-27 – Jesus tells his disciples at the Last Supper: “But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. 27For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.”
III) Parables and Major Teachings of Jesus Involving Food & Drink in Luke’s Gospel
5:36-39 – Garments & Wineskins: “no one puts new wine into old wineskins…”
6:43-44 – Trees with Good or Bad Fruit: also, one can’t pick figs from thorns or grapes from brambles.
8:5-8, 11-15 – Sower & Seed; also the Interpretation of the Parable of the Sower & Seed.
10:29-37– Good Samaritan: uses “oil and wine” to treat the wounds of the one who had been robbed and beaten; then tells the innkeeper to “take care of him” (implicitly also providing food & drink).
11:3 – Lord’s Prayer: “Give us each day our daily bread.”
11:5-8 – Friend Asking for Help at Midnight: “Friend, lend me three loaves of bread.”
12:16-21 – Rich Fool: “I will pull down my barns and build larger ones… relax, eat, drink, and be merry.”
12:35-38 – Faithful Servants: Master returns from wedding banquet; then serves his faithful servants.
12:42-46 – Faithful Manager: gives allotment of food at proper times to other servants.
13:6-9 – Barren Fig-Tree: fruitless for three years; tend it one more year, to see if it will bear fruit.
13:18-19, 20-21 – Mustard Seed & Leaven: parables about the growth of God’s Kingdom.
14:7-14 – Places at Wedding Banquet Tables: choose the lowest places, not the places of honor (cf. 20:46).
14:15-24 – Great Supper: “Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” (cf. 13:29; 22:30).
Those who were first invited refuse to come, but many others are then invited to the supper.
15:11-32 – Lost/Prodigal Son: has to feed pigs, but is himself hungry, with nothing to eat; remembers his father’s house; after returning, his father kills the fatted calf and throws a big party!
16:1-8 – Unjust Steward: negotiates the bills of client who owe his master olive oil and wheat.
16:19-31 – Rich Man & Lazarus: Rich man feasts sumptuously, but ignores poor hungry beggar at his door.
17:7-10 – Servant’s Reward: normally first prepare supper for the master; then eat later themselves.
20:9-18 – Wicked Tenants: refuse to give a share of the vineyard’s produce to the owner.
IV) Hunger and Fasting in Luke’s Gospel
1:53 – Mary’s Magnificat: “he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”
4:1-4 – Jesus fasts 40 days in the desert;3The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” 4Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”
4:25 – “But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land;”
5:33-35 – “John’s disciples… frequently fast and pray, but your disciples eat and drink.” 34Jesus said to them, “You cannot make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you? 35The days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.”
6:3-4 – Jesus recalls: when David and his companions were hungry, they ate “the bread of the Presence.”
6:21, 25 – First of four Beatitudes & Woes: “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled…. / “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry….”
7:33-34 – “For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon’; 34the Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’”
15:17 – Prodigal Son thinks of his father’s servants having enough bread, “but here I am dying of hunger!”
18:9-14 – Parable of Pharisee & Publican: Ph boasts about fasting twice a week, and tithing all his income.
V) Other Metaphorical Uses of Food & Drink in Luke’s Gospel
3:8a, 9 – “Bear fruits worthy of repentance… / every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
9:27 – “…there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.”
12:1 – Jesus warns his disciples: “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees, that is, their hypocrisy.”
14:34 – “Salt is good; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?”
17:6 – Apostles ask: “Increase our faith.” Jesus replies: “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”
22:31 – “Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat.”
22:42 – “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.”
VI) Briefer References to Food & Drink in Luke’s Gospel
1:15b – Angel tells Zechariah about his son, John the Baptist: “He must never drinkwine or strong drink.”
2:7, 12, 16 – The newborn Jesus is laid “in a manger” (an animal feeding trough)
3:11 – John the Baptist tells the crowds: “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.”
3:17 – John Baptist preaches: “His winnowing fork is in his hand… to gather the wheat into his granary.”
5:1-10 – Jesus calls Simon & other fishers as his first disciples, after a miraculous catch of fish.
6:1 – “One sabbath while Jesus was going through the grainfields, his disciples plucked some heads of grain, rubbed them in their hands, and ate them.”
8:32 – “Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission.”
8:55 – After Jesus raises Jairus’ daughter to life: “Then he directed them to give her something to eat.”
9:3 – “Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money—not even an extra tunic.”
10:7-8 – “Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid…. / Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you;”
11:11-12 – “Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? / Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion?”
12:22-29 – Jesus teaches his disciples: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. 23For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing… / 29And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying.”
13:15 – Jesus replies to a complaint: “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water?”
13:26 – Those standing outside the shut door: “We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.”
13:29 – “Then people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God.”
15:2 – Pharisees and scribes grumble: “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
17:27-28 – “They were eating and drinking, and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed all of them. / Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot: they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building,”
17:35 – “There will be two women grinding meal together; one will be taken and the other left.”
20:46 – “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets.”
21:11 – there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.
21:29 – Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees;”
21:34 – “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly,”
22:30 – Jesus confers a kingdom on his faithful apostles, “so that you may eat and drink
at my table in my kingdom, and you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
23:36 – “The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine,”
I) Jesus Participates in Meals in Luke’s Gospel
