14B John 6:35, 41-51. Bread of Heaven, Babette’s Feast
St. Mark’s Little Rock, August 8, 2021
Hallelujah!/ This one word is constantly repeated by an elderly villager in Isak Dinesen’s short story, “Babette’s Feast.” The venue for this Academy Award-winning film ( the best foreign film 1986) is a remote Jut(hut)land community in western Denmark. Babette, a refuge from the civil war in 1871 in Paris, arrives mysteriously one night to become the housekeeper and cook for two aging sisters, Martina and Philippa. She is sent by Philippa’s former singing coach, who wanted Philippa to become an operatic star. Instead, both pious sisters give up their own lives and loves/ to continue the puritanical ministry of their deceased father in this tiny coastal settlement. Their father was the founder of this religious sect based on a fundamental return to austere, severe Reformation principles. Martina is named for Martin Luther and Philippa for Luther’s friend, Philip Melanchthon (ma length thong). They and the few remaining sect members are suspicious of pleasure and eat only bland food.
Over time, Babette’s only French connection is a lottery ticket renewed by a relative each year. And you guessed it, after twelve years in exile, she wins the French lottery, a prize of ten thousand francs. The sisters are planning a simple celebration of the anniversary of their father’s hundredth birthday with the ten remaining aging members of the congregation. Babette surprises the sisters by offering to prepare “a real French dinner” for the event with some of her money. The two sisters live to serve; they are unacquainted/ with being served. The exchange between the sisters and Babette is an icon illuminating the generosity of God’s grace and our suspicious response to that generosity. The sisters reluctantly agree. /
Since their charismatic father’s death, the congregation has become joyless. Old quarrels and fears resurface. One woman constantly nags a man about whether God will forgive a sin of their youth. Old hymns they sing fail to bring any sense of comfort or community. The sisters’ devotion is no longer appreciated. What is ultimately lacking in this remote community is grace. Their religion has become abstract, remote, a set of brittle orthodoxies rather than a lived faith of love. The bread of heaven has become stale.
The sisters are alarmed as they grasp the scope of Babette’s plans when boatloads of supplies arrive from Paris, a live turtle, quail, exotic wines. Babette begins her elaborate preparations, and the sisters fear they have led their congregation to a Satanic Sabbath by a sorcerer. They decide they will eat the meal but pretend they have lost their sense of taste. They will pretend they are eating their usual bread-mush and boiled cod.
Martina, Philippa, and the others come to the elaborate dinner in their staunch plainness. However, Babette has become a vessel for the incarnation, for grace itself. Her meal becomes both a feast and a sacrifice, and, like a sacrament, it has an efficacious effect. The feast table is resplendent with silver candles, fancy serviettes (sur·vee·ets), sparkling china. General Lorens Loewenholm (Low in home), a last-minute guest, resplendent in full dress uniform, alone brings color and life to the banquet./ He tastes the first wine, the Amontillado (uh·maan·tee·aah·dow). “The finest wine I have ever tasted!” he says. Next come authentic turtle soup and Blinis Demidoff (bla niece demi doff) thin pancakes with caviar and sour cream.
The general’s astonished exclamation is “incredible!” Meanwhile, the other diners sit quietly eating, drinking with the same blank, disinterested expressions they have every day for thirty years. One woman tastes the vintage champagne and innocently, wonderfully describes it as a kind of lemonade. The finest wine is poured for each course. The main course is Cailles en sarcophage (k lon sac ro fage), truffle stuffed quails in their pastry shell coffins. Hmmm. Remember quail served at another feast some years earlier in another wilderness with another delicacy called manna. In typical French style the next course is salad, cheese, cake, exotic fruit, brandy and finally coffee. Too much food for 8 or 10:30 but probably not for 5!
But mysteriously, the meal changes the guests in unexpected ways. Some reminisce about their absent master, making the feast an authentic remembrance meal./
As the extravagant celebration works its transformation, the polarities blur; distance fades between apparent opposites. Sweet exchanges replace bitterness. Phillipa sings with an angelic voice. The company silently, peacefully listens, feeling, remembering. Martina and Lorens, her former lover, gaze lovingly at each other./ The two who agonized over a past elicit relationship kiss.
Our fortuitous military guest, Lorens, once, Martina’s lover, perceives the meal, and the hand behind it just as the disciples on the Emmaus road came to recognize the Lord in the breaking of bread. You have guessed it. Babette once owned a famous Paris restaurant. Lorens recounts only one comparable meal, years ago in Paris, prepared by someone with the “ability to transform a dinner into a love affair that makes no distinction between bodily and spiritual appetite.”
The concluding highlight is the General’s speech. He expresses the Pastor’s words spoken so long ago, now illuminating for all. “Mercy and truth, my friends, have met together. Righteousness and bliss shall kiss one another.”/ Babette reveals she is the famous chef of the Cafe Anglais (on glay) - an artist who longs to express her creative genius. She tells them the dinner cost all of the ten thousand francs. She is again poor. The village and the people are her home forever./ But the transformed sister, Phillippa, embraces Babette saying, “In paradise, Oh, how you will enchant the angels!”1,2,3
Jesus says, “I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever.”
Today’s gospel is about the Eucharist. It is about another feast by the one who gave all that we too might be transformed, have new life today, the beginning of eternal life. This modern story of love and sacrifice was Babette’s own version of the Eucharist, illustrating the life changing transformation, our own transfiguration that can occur when we partake of this sacrificial meal of grace and love with each other.
Some call this remembrance the Last Supper. We call it Eucharist, ευχαριστὠ.It is a Greek word (efkaristo) meaning thanksgiving. We are giving thanksgiving together for our new life in Jesus Christ.
Others call it communion. We are communing with The Holy One. But we also are communing with each other.4 The priest cannot celebrate alone. Others must be present. Remember the words we hear, “do this in remembrance of me.” Remembrance, a word meaning re- membering. Coming together again. We are giving thanksgiving as we become a member,/ again of the body of Christ together. We do not participate in a private communion. We come to the altar for transformation that only sacrificial love can give. We cannot explain it, but if this pandemic has taught us one thing, it is how much we miss receiving and sharing the Eucharist together and how different our lives are without it. remembering…remembering….re-membering.
Frederick Buechner writes that there are two ways of remembering. We go back from the present, back into the past. We are back with our spouse on our wedding day./ The second is to call, bring back up from the past/ to the present, a memory, a loved one comes from the past back up to the present. We remember those we loved who may have died, our spouse, our mother, our grandmother or grandfather and we feel them back beside us. Re-membering. The Eucharist is not a nostalgic trip. It is a real presence of Jesus that we are called to bring back up5 as we commune with Christ and commune with each other. This is what happens at Babette’s Feast. What returns from the past to the present is love, joy, reconciliation./ The same joy and celebration and love from Christ are offered here at this very table. Come;/ let us now partake of God’s Feast,/ even/ if it is only the bread of Heaven. Hallelujah!
1Robert A. Flanagan, “Babette’s Feast: The Generosity of God,” Jacob’s Well, http://www.jacwell.org Spring/Summer, 1998.
2Steven D. Greydanus, Babette’s Feast, Vatican film list, 1987.
3Valerie O’Connell, “Babette’s Feast, a Review” in John Mark Ministries, www.jmm.org, December 11, 2003.
4Frederick Buechner “Last Supper,” in Wishful Thinking (Harper Collins 1973) pp. 63-64.. also in Buechner Sermon Illustrations April 2, 2015.
5Frederick Buechner, “Memory,” Originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words, Frederick Buechner Quote of the Day, August 1, 2018.
Joanna Seibert