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September 29, 2011The Saving Grace of a Shared Meal
Recovering a lost tradition in Jesus' name.
A number of recent studies have confirmed what we’ve intuitively understood all along: Eating with others keeps us healthier, happier, and better connected to each other. Even so, shared meals — especially ones at home — have been on the decline for some time. Busy parents find it hard to gather everyone around the table, much less have people over for dinner. Take-out and drive-through are a part of many Americans' routines. And let’s face it: Having people over can be a pain. It’s hard to get the house cleaned up and prepare several courses and spend hours eating and chatting and face a mountain of dirty dishes at the end of the evening. If there are children involved, things are that much messier; you face the prospect of pickiness, stains on the carpet, and people who scream or tell bathroom jokes at the table.
There is an element of vulnerability in all this: we may feel that we are on display, that we will be judged by our guests and found wanting, that our cooking may come out badly or our family will embarrass us. Having people over for dinner is intimate, more intimate than most restaurant meals ever can be. Maybe that’s why we don’t do it that much. But maybe, also, that’s why we should do it. Recently, blogger David Swanson suggested that meals with friends at home, rather than in a restaurant, can be a sign of “our confidence in a hospitable God,” as meals out avoid the sometimes-complicated and uncomfortable roles of host and guest.
And, writes pastor Tim Chester in A Meal With Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission around the Table (Crossway), the early church didn’t just have meals along with their worship services; their worship services were meals. Throughout the Gospels (Luke’s gospel particularly), Jesus is the Son of Man “eating and drinking.” Scandalously inclusive table fellowship, Chester shows us, was characteristic of Jesus’ ministry and provided a real taste of his kingdom. When we sit to eat with one another, tasting the goodness of God with one another, we acknowledge our common creatureliness and dependence on food. There are to be no hierarchies at Christ’s table. That’s the source of the apostle Paul’s annoyance in 1 Corinthians 11:17–34. “I hear that there are divisions among you,” Paul writes; “in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk.” Why do you humiliate the poor? he asks; going so far as to say that when they have these inequitable feasts, “it is not the Lord’s supper” that they are eating, but in eating without sharing properly, they are profaning Christ’s blood and body. The opposite — meals shared equitably, without regard to social status — are a declaration of Christ’s blood and body.
Is it possible that restaurant meals and The Food Network and images of idealized 1950s dinner parties have convinced us that meals with others must be orchestrated perfectly against a background of cleanliness, or else not hosted at all? Don’t get me wrong: I would rather people not see my house when it is strewn with Lego pieces and toy train tracks, when my dining room table is heaped with clean laundry, all while I’m in the middle of an over-achieving food preservation project. But I have learned that eating together is a practice worth pursuing, even if the house is less than perfect. Even if the meal is nothing more than soup and bread.
When my husband and I lived in a small town in the mountains of northern California, the church where we worked was filled with older people, many of whom lived alone. Though our ministry included counseling, preaching, youth group, and hospital visitation, the part that seems to have made the biggest difference was our meals. At first, we simply had people over for dinner. A lot. Then, we started having potlucks after church. Pretty soon, the unchurched spouses of some of our members started showing up for the lunches. And other members began bringing their unchurched neighbors. Several of our older singles began meeting for casual, simple meals during the week, which helped enormously to ward off the cabin-fever blues of small-town single life. It’s now five years since we left that church, and the potlucks, they’ve told us, still keep them together.
Were all of those meals perfect? Not really. Sometimes the food choices were weird. Sometimes the conversations were awkward. When our son was born, there was regular crying. Once, everyone brought only dessert except me, and we had to make my pot of soup go all around and then feasted on apple crisps and green Jell-O. Another time, my friend Ruth’s lentils remained hard after simmering all day in the slow cooker. (We improvised some waffles.) But always, we were refreshed, and not just by the food. We were refreshed by one another, and by the presence of our Lord and Savior among us in the breaking of that bread.
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Comments
Amen! The congregation I belong to meets on Friday nights - several years back we all pitched in to help a woman clean out her mothers garage on the Friday after Thanksgiving - and then we all gathered afterwards to eat leftovers. Our congregational leader realized how important this time of fellowship was and so now once a month the normal services are cancelled and instead we have a fellowship dinner - its as you stated we end up still worshiping God; etc - but around the dinner table. Its pretty neat :)
Posted By: Leslie | September 29, 2011 10:55 AM
Excellent, excellent, excellent post! I have intentionally tried to practice this over the last several years, but you're right--it can be hard! When we invite people into our houses, we invite them into our lives, and sometimes it's a mess. It takes a LOT of humility!
But I have found that people appreciate that vulnerability. Once, we had some people from our church over for the first time, and my house was a DISASTER. I apologized, but then the woman admitted that she had always felt a little intimidated by me, but "now she knew we could be friends!" LOL! Admitting our humanness by admitting others into our personal spaces is a beautiful thing--even if our living rooms aren't!
Posted By: Jenny Rae Armstrong | September 29, 2011 11:19 AM
This is so timely, as I am hosting a monthly Supper Club this week! My husband and I believe so strongly about this kind of fellowship and so we found two like-minded families who would be committed to doing so every month. You have stated everything I have been thinking about this topic, so i just sent them your post.
Thank you for the reminder!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted By: Joline | September 29, 2011 11:27 AM
There's nothing quite like the sweet interaction of breaking bread together. Especially in our own homes around our own tables. The simple act of sharing a bowl of soup and a loaf of bread speaks volumes and fills souls.
Yet it seems that at least in this neck of the woods, we've gotten used to meeting friends for dinner anywhere and everywhere except in each other's homes.
I kind of miss that intimacy ...
Posted By: Linda Stoll | September 29, 2011 11:57 AM
@Linda-when I was a little girl, "Sunday Dinner" was still commonplace in my small town, and unexpected guests were the norm. Church friends were always dropping by for unexpected visits, and the coffee pot was always on. That was my grandma's generation, and I don't think they were ever lonely!!! Or at least if they WERE lonely, they weren't left alone to dwell on it.
But nowadays, it seems we don't have time for community. :-( I think the elders in my community are suffering the most from that. Of course, the rest of us are suffering from the lack of intimate community as well--we just have no idea what we're missing.
Posted By: Jenny Rae Armstrong | September 29, 2011 12:39 PM
I think the worst part for me is the cleaning up afterwards, and just not feeling like a very hospitable person altogether. Some of my fondest memories growing up were definitely eating around the dinner table at my grandmother’s house. Although many times these were around holiday events, it was always memorable - perfect or otherwise.
Unfortunately, I feel that another hindrance to my dinner table is that of technology. While many families make rules for no television, phone, or digital devices, I am beginning to see many people lighten up on those rules - even at restaurants.
Great article!
Posted By: Tia | September 29, 2011 12:51 PM
when I was first married, i wouldn't invite guests unless my house was spotless. Now that I have kids and a bathroom renovation, things would get lonely. My last dinner party involved people navigating the tile boxes and bathroom door in our dining room. You know what? no one complained!
Posted By: MelissaT | September 29, 2011 12:56 PM
I love the stories about meals that didn't work out so well. In a funny way, those are kind of the things that really "make" shared meals. It's like those Sundays when something doesn't go quite right with communion or the offering, and the reality of the incarnation -- of its miracle -- breaks through more clearly for a moment.
Posted By: Anna Broadway | September 29, 2011 1:46 PM
Convicted! :(
(Thank you.)
Posted By: Karen Swallow Prior | September 29, 2011 4:13 PM
My husband and I were just talking about how we missed the church potlucks of our youths--both the official church events that sometimes took place in the church gym after service, and the unofficial ones that took place in homes. Reading this post makes me wistful for those days. And also makes me think I should take some action instead of wistfully dreaming of days gone by. Thanks.
Posted By: Anne | September 29, 2011 4:39 PM
You know you are an intimate friend when you are (or have) a "refrigerator friend. "Refrigerator friends" are those people with whom you are so close that you (or they) can go to the frig (you in their home or they in yours) to get food or drink without asking, and without being embarrassed.
Posted By: Chip Watkins | September 29, 2011 9:31 PM
Thank you,thank you so much for this post.
Posted By: nars | September 30, 2011 4:16 AM
As I recall fond memories of friends and family, it is interesting that so many of them involve meals. Special recipes and traditions surrounding meals are beautiful reminders of loved ones near and far, especially those who are no longer with us. Certainly, our shared meals here are "a foretaste of the feast to come."
Posted By: Rebekah | September 30, 2011 5:14 AM
Beautiful post. The waffles and lime jello make me smile. I love eatdinner.org too - makes a very strong case for family dinners together - being hospitable to those people we live with.
Posted By: Jennifer Grant | September 30, 2011 8:10 AM
Love all this! And thanks for being realistic, I sometimes idealize a meal with friends, longing for a savory dinner, leisurely evenings with friends, candles, and good wine. But often, I burn things in the kitchen, and the food is never ready in time, and I am stressed.
But the grace is that we really don't need to be cleaned up to come to the table, and I find immense comfort in the fact that Christ invites us to the table to commune with Him, and in this simplest of ways, we can reenact His love with others by sharing a table with them.
Posted By: Stephanie S. Smith | September 30, 2011 9:03 AM
I guess maybe I'm just lucky that I come from a small denomination that's still completely sold on the idea of potlucks--monthly and highly attended--not to mention seasonal food-related events. It's baffling to me that some churches don't do them.
I'm currently reading "Whitebread Protestants: Food and Religion in American Culture" by Daniel Sack, which is good if anybody's looking for an anthropological (but still insider's) view of food's role in American Christianity (which apparently has a stronger history of communal food events than Christianity in some other parts of the world).
Posted By: Lark | September 30, 2011 6:54 PM
In my last church we had a regular monthly potluck. It was often mediocre food at best. But it was a place that allowed for use to talk and get to know people.
What was much better in my mind was a small group when we were first married and just out of grad school. We still lived in an urban college area and people lived close and were very flexible. We did a alternate group. We had longer heavier discussions one week and a full meal and lighter discussion the alternate week. It was one of my favorite small group experiences because conversation over a table is so much better than most other conversations.
But it was hard to do this. My wife made the majority of the food, we paid for most of it out of pocket because even though we didn't have much, everyone else had less. The time commitment to it was also hard. After a year of this, people moved and it took us four years to get back into another group.
Posted By: Adam Shields | October 2, 2011 11:06 AM
I loved this post too. Fellowship is so sweet when sharing a meal with loved ones especially our church families. No one is left out and God's love is flowing. Church homecomings are another example of this. People need people. This kind of gathering feeds the soul.
Posted By: Connie | October 4, 2011 2:22 PM