What's for Dinner?

Communal meals are one of the earliest traditions in Christianity. In the second chapter of Acts, it says " Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people."  One of the last acts of Jesus before his arrest was to have a meal with his closest followers.  A symbolic meal, the Eucharist or Communion, springs from that very instance.  We've gotten away from that these days.  Oh, once in a while there will be a special dinner at church.  Homecoming, dinner-on-the-grounds (that's a southern thing for you yankees), fundraisers, and the like.  But, a churchwide dinner after every Sunday service?  Not hardly.  Most Sundays, it's like the green flag dropping at Daytona once the service is over.  At my church, we used to have a 5th Sunday dinner when..., well, whenever there was a 5th Sunday in a month.  Since we've moved to our new building and haven't been able to stock our kitchen.  I miss them and I'm not the only one.  It's not just the food, which is elegant and plentiful, but the fellowship with friends that I miss.  These are people I genuinely like and I don't get to spend anywhere near enough time with them.

Meals are powerful.  How often do the Gospels mention food?  The feeding of the 5000, the numerous times he's confronted over a meal, the meals in Bethany with Mary, Martha and Lazarus.  Jesus used meals, which carried a huge amount of weight in 1st century Jewish culture, to teach.  Another quote from one of my favorite blogs, Jesus The Radical Pastor, John Frye puts it better than I, "In Jesus’ day a meal was a controlling cultural map. Who was eating with whom? Where? and What? And who was in charge? –all said something significant about social relationships. Powerful social code was telegraphed. It was what anthropologists call “the language of meals.”Are you one of us or one of them? Every meal in Jesus’ day was an answer to that question. Meals portrayed legitimate and illegitimate social relationships. “This man (read “scum bag”) welcomes ’sinners’ and eats with them” (Luke 15:1-2). Who was clean and unclean? Who was pure and who was polluted? Meals answered these questions." Later in the blog, Frye continued "Enter radical pastor Jesus and his new code. His meal-time good news message. He was subversively, non-violently redrawing Israel’s cultural-spiritual map. He offered new, happy redefinitions of who’s pure and who’s polluted. He didn’t have to say a lot. All he had to do was host a meal and break the bread and pour the wine. By these actions Jesus literally broke Jewish society apart, even family members had to chose (or not) to be in the new social structure Jesus was creating" . 

I think that bonding with others is also an important part of a communal meal.  In my work as a firefighter, I've seen how important shared meals are to a group.  Those that eat together are well-oiled companies.  Those that don't..., not so much.  I've seen in the church also.  Since our move into the new building and the ending of the dinners, gossip and political manuevering has increased and we're not as close.  I don't know that not eating together has caused all that, but it sure hasn't helped.  For years, in our youth group, dinner was an integral part of the meeting.  I got to know many of the kids over a plate of whatever the providing family sent in.  Meals naturally lead to talking and talking is how you find out things.  Sounds so simple and easy it should be a no-brainer, eh?  Well, some folks wanted to change the time of the meeting and have their kids eat at home so we did away with the meal and worked out a compromise.  We thought.  The time change was nixed, but the meal wasn't returned.  And, it makes a difference.  Oh sure, the kids can bring something in to eat, and some do.  But, it's just not the same.  There's something about sitting down to a shared meal that changes the atmosphere and pulls everyone together.  And, I miss it greatly.

So, what are we to do about all this?  Wouldn't it be nice to sit down with your church friends (and we all have "church" friends, "work" friends, etc) and have a big meal every Sunday?  Meet in the fellowship hall and extend that time away from the outside world and all it's crap just a couple more hours?  But, it's not that simple, is it.  That outside world is just too insistent.  The demands of family, work and everything else won't let us do that.  At least, not every Sunday.  But, what if we found a way to do it a little more often?  And, we made an effort to bring somebody new with us every so often?  What if they saw what happened at those dinners?  And, what if that brought them back to us, if they'd strayed away or just brought them in with us?