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“Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.” –– Isaiah 55:1-2
It resurfaced in an ad for Publix, and given its bouncy melody, gastro-centric vibe, and catchy internal rhymes, I’m surprised some enterprising grocer hadn’t applied for the song’s use earlier.
Have a banana, Hannah
Try the salami, Tommy
Get with the gravy, Davy
Everybody eats when they come to my house
The tuxedoed showman and bandleader, Cab Calloway, was an energetic performer of the Swing Era who had a knack for engaging Harlem’s Cotton Club audiences in call-and-response scat phrases between song verses. Folks of my era caught a glimpse of this through his cameo appearance in Belushi and Akroyd’s Blues Brothers flick –– Hi-de-ho.
Cab’s recording of Everybody Eats When They Come to My House celebrates a culture of gastronomic hospitality. Thus, the song evokes in my mind the memory of my Aunt Dorothy who was legalistically insistent that a visit wasn’t a visit and a meal wasn’t a meal unless a table was laden with three kinds of meat, four bowls of vegetables, a couple of casseroles, two starches, and a stack of bread to soak up the gravy. Everybody ate when they came to Dorothy’s house. In fact, throughout my formative years, I only remember eating out in a restaurant with her once, and that was for a mid-day Wimpy’s cheeseburger. Though she lived alone, and rarely carried a spare ounce on her frame, there was always an explosion of food when we arrived –– nothing fancy, just stick-to-your-ribs abundance.
I've fixed your favorite dishes
Hopin' this good food fills ya
Work my hands to the bone in the kitchen alone
You better eat if it kills ya
Pass me a pancake, Mandrake
Try a tomato, Plato
Everybody eats when they come to my house
The prophet Isaiah gushes to a people hungry for home about a God of prodigious generosity –– Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price … eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Somehow, it seems to me that our Lord would be a bit bewildered by the high-brow restaurants identified by $$$$ on Yelp, where even God would have to fill out a mortgage application to get an artfully presented entree of never-thought-of-before ingredients that when combined, add up to something smaller than a McNugget. My lack of taste is exposed by three words –– Is that it? But hey, if class is manifested by unpronounceable menu items, I’ll stick with a bag of Cheetos because no one can articulate what you are swallowing with each crunch.
When I read Isaiah’s invitation to the Lord’s feast, I imagine this large, always-room-for-one-more table where joy and laughter abound as Jesus enchants all gathered with another story that consistently begins –– Do you remember when we… It is a place where the grace is always free, the spirit of fellowship is always rich, no one is left out, and God is the host ushering you in while saying, or even singing, Everybody eats when they come to my house.
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