EARLY JANUARY MARKS the start of the season of Epiphany, during which Christians recognize the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Scriptures point to the disruptive nature of Christ’s messiahship: Jesus asks John to baptize him (Matthew 3:13-17), an act that surprises John, who believes he’s unfit to baptize the son of God. Then Jesus delivers his first miracle when he turns water not just into wine, but the best wine, upsetting the tradition of serving good wine first, and cheap wine later (John 2:1-12).
Both acts signal that Jesus’ ministry won’t be what people expect. Rules will be challenged. Abundance, not scarcity, will reign. These stories remind us to seek the living God in unexpected forms.
In this regard, Babette’s Feast is Epiphany-appropriate viewing. The 1987 Danish film centers on a French chef, Babette, who comes to live with a pious, ascetic Danish community in 1871 as a refugee from the Paris Commune government. After Babette unexpectedly comes into a fortune, she decides to spend it on an extravagant feast. The meal is a great challenge to the community’s minimalist lifestyle.
Like some Pharisees in the gospels, the community is obsessed with propriety. Believing all forms of pleasure to be sinful, they eat a bland diet of dried fish and gloopy soup. When they learn of Babette’s upcoming menu—which includes tortoise soup and roast quail—one woman has a nightmare in which her soul is damned to hell.
Of course, Babette simply wants to share what she loves through an act of creation and generosity. Ultimately, the meal helps the church members realize their strict lifestyle has held them back from the joy, spontaneity, and challenges of true community.
It’s tempting to look for God in practiced and prescribed ways: seasonally appropriate hymns and well-curated holiday celebrations. But we encounter God anew when we open our hearts to new people and unfamiliar experiences, like spending time volunteering to help unhoused families or learning how to protect our immigrant neighbors.
In so many ways, Jesus was unexpected. Our incarnate God arrived as an infant, who grew up to call unlikely people to minister alongside him—fishermen and tax collectors—and preached about a Reign of God that looked different from what the people of Israel understood it to be.
The season of Epiphany invites us to take our relationship to God out into the world, expose us to new experiences, and challenge us. For some of us, maybe that means going to church. For others, it might just mean sitting down to a meal.
Abby Olcese is a freelance film critic and writer based in Missouri. You can find her on Twitter @abbyolcese.
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