Sports stars, rock stars and Hollywood stars we are used to. Yet there's a new group of megastars on the scene. Chefs are big business.
From dominating prime time TV (those of us in the UK watched on in disbelief as Gordon Ramsey conquered America) to getting involved in politics (Jamie Oliver's school dinners campaign, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's battle against waste etc), chefs are headline news.
There is a mystique that has gathered around the very top chefs. This week in the Guardian I read a fascinating account of one of them and his restaurant. Magnus Nilsson is the chef at Fäviken in the north of Sweden. It's one of the world's most exclusive restaurants and also happens to be inaccessible to most of us. The restaurant is, "Set 375 miles north of Stockholm, deep in the forested province of Jämtland... Fäviken's 32-course tasting menu demands a journey: an hour's flight from Stockholm to Östersund, then a 75-minute drive north-west."
At £250 ($300) per meal (in addition to the cost of flights and other travel), with the meal taking several hours to serve and with only 24 seats in the whole place, it has become a sold-out sensation – though despite being open for nearly 10 years, only around 5,000 people have ever been there.
This is food that the likes of you and me won't try. It's a meal to which only the wealthy are invited. A meal which requires you to have not only an appetite but money, time and the ability to get to it. It's the sort of place and experience that so few of us will have that it's worth writing about in depth. But reading about it is only ever going to be a poor second to tasting the food itself.
Reading the article, my mind turned to a story Jesus told in Luke 14. He talked about a man who was throwing a great banquet and invited many people. But when the time came, those who'd been invited came up with a series of excuses.
Jesus says the man was angry at all the refusals: '"Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame." And the slave said, "Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room." Then the master said to the slave, "Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled.For I tell you, none of those who were invited will taste my dinner."'
It's one of Jesus most fascinating parables. Jesus tells the story in response to a challenge from someone at a dinner He was attending: "Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!" This was seen as an invitation to Jesus to offer His thoughts on the great banquet at the end of time – the coming kingdom.
The 'correct' answer would have been to say that those who had kept the rules would have been invited and attended. But in Jesus' story, the invitees all come up with excuses (depending on which commentator you believe, they were either legitimate or flimsy reasons not to attend a banquet), which cause the host to be angry. Then the story turns on its head. The answer to his anger is grace – he decides to open up the banquet to those who weren't expecting to be allowed in.
The servant goes out and offers the unlikely guests – the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame – a chance to come in. When that had been done, the servant is again sent out to 'compel' guests to come in. Not by force, but by persuasion, since the offer was so radical. The man was inviting passing strangers to eat a banquet with him.
Just what is Jesus suggesting here? Is He proposing an ethnic division? Is He implying that we shouldn't eat with friends and family?
More than any of those factors, it seems to be about the unexpected nature of the Kingdom of God. That God isn't primarily interested in attracting the 'winners', the cultural influencers, the celebrities, the brightest and the best, or even the friends and family of the banquet host – who would no doubt have been wealthy and successful themselves.
Instead, God is primarily concerned with inviting those who appear to be losers. According to priest and writer Robert Farrar Capon (who was also a chef!): "None of the people who had a right to be at a proper party came, and all the people who came had no right whatsoever to be there. Which means, therefore, that the one thing that has nothing to do with anything is rights. This parable says we are going to be dealt with in spite of our deservings, not according to them. Grace as portrayed here works only on the untouchable, the unpardonable and the unacceptable. It works, in short, by raising the dead, not by rewarding the living."
What a challenging but refreshing vision. A banquet taking place right where we are, open to all so long as they realise they don't deserve it. How much more appealing than an expensive banquet in a far away place which is only open to the 'right people'...
