Christian Formation

51. Reaching In, Reaching Out: Meals, Food, and Church

~ This Side of the River ~ Leave a comment

I have taken a long hiatus from the blog to relax, rewind, refresh, and rest in Scripture this winter.  Thanks for sticking with me!  Here is the beginning of the final chapter of this e-book about shared meals as a Christian practice.  This, and the following weekly posts can help nudge you to think about the food ministry at your own church.

There are multiple approaches to food and hunger through food ministries in the North American Church. All do good things. Some give out food from a pantry or a cash gift card to a grocery store. Others prepare or organize a meal to feed new parents, the ill, the grieving, or the aged. Still others use a meal for evangelical purposes, always letting participants hear that God loves them. And some intentionally create a formal atmosphere more similar to the original practice of marrying the meal with worship and teaching. Some churches work alone, others together, often in partnership with local secular organizations.

I interviewed stakeholders from multiple and different ministries in an attempt to describe the scope of mission and vision where meal ministry is concerned, and to get a sense of how that is working out in practice.[1] Certainly, feeding the hungry is an action believers are called to do, no strings attached. But my visits were predicated on the desire to know if feeding someone a meal rather than sharing one around the table together were practices with different motives, possibilities, and results.

Going in, my intuition said that feeding people can become a community’s collaborative way of loving neighbor without necessarily bringing Jesus and the kingdom of heaven into the shared conversation. And this phrase shared conversation is critical. If the shared meal as a distinctive Christian practice was and is always about being around the table together in God’s presence, and giving voice and assent to that presence, then programs in which one can stop in to pick up some food (no shared meal), or come in and be seated and served by church members (a meal served but not shared between visitors and believers) is fundamentally different from the shared meals of the first century church.   The people providing the meal go away feeling good about themselves, about having met the physical needs of their neighbors, but with little to no acknowledgment that we are all hungry and in need of God’s grace-filled presence and provision, no different than my experience in Seattle with the unnamed and hungry homeless woman. (see post #18)

In essence, it is a fulfillment of the second commandment that may give little or no regard to the first, and as a practice it is not distinctively Christian because it misses this point: we should know the names of the hungry and share with them a meal and Jesus’ favorite mealtime teaching that the Kingdom of God is at hand. We must remember that a Christian practice is only a practice when it is done together, regularly, and with a focus on the presence of God and his kingdom. The meal, then, is meant to be an intimate shared practice, one which most of us must admit is an uncomfortable proposition because adding strangers into the mix intrudes on our personal space and plays on our insecurities.

It might be easy to become defensive at this point and insist that the shared meal of the first century church was shared among believers. But scholars contend that although the early church did meet for worship and teaching and the breaking of bread together, all were welcome to eat and hear and see God’s goodness, believers and unbelievers, Jews and Gentiles alike. These meals did feed the hungry, but they were not focused first and foremost on that goal. The emphasis was (and still should be today) on Christ and the kingdom.

Moreover, the distinctive Christian practice of hospitality is at play in the shared meal. The four components of hospitality outlined by Amy Oden elegantly describe how these meals should proceed. First, the greeting and welcome. Second, nourishment and dwelling together (food and Word). Third, a challenge to know God and live a life which pleases him (this is a most important component of the practice that is usually missing when a meal is not shared). Fourth, the sending back into the world fortified with Word and prayer as well as a full stomach. And so I set out to do this research because I wanted to find out what people and programs are doing and why.

Over the course of two years, I met with stakeholders, visionaries, pastors, and lay members of various churches-inner city, rural ones with membership challenges, and suburban ones with lots of resources. Several overlapping program characteristics emerged from these interviews, including the type of program and individuals carrying out the programming, as well as the ownership, faith basis, and sustainability of each program. My main goal was to try and identify the commonalities and substantive differences across programs, and see if the shared meal-as a Christian practice- was an ingredient in the recipe of various church food ministries.

In Post 52, we will begin to survey the themes that arose from these interviews. Stay tuned!  As always, your comments are helpful as I continue editing the book.  Use the LEAVE A REPLY box below!

~Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

[1] As part of the formal research process, interviewees were required to give written consent to be interviewed in exchange for guaranteed confidentiality.

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44. Tricky Balance:Food Idolatry vs Quick, We Need to Eat!

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Actually, food preparation is an important concept to think about. We are currently experiencing a rash of new writings about food- what constitutes real food, why fast food threatens our health and way of life, why we should consider eating only locally grown foods, and why the planet cannot sustain food production for the anticipated population of nearly nine billion people worldwide by 2050. The latter chapters of this book attempt to address our individual connection and ease of access to food in the United States with issues of food and water scarcity in much of the rest of the world. For now, suffice it to say that our present national attention to food is, perhaps, overindulgent, and a fascinating study in human nature. On the one hand, we idolize food and nearly make food practice a religion. Food critics, cable cooking shows, and internet bloggers remind us that the world of food has its own language and rules, where food takes on godlike characteristics. On the other hand, such obsession-compulsion and misplaced fidelity is contradicted by a post-modern and relatively mainstream insistence that food be characterized, above all else, by convenience. We don’t have time to fuss over food, and we just want something to mollify our hunger. Somewhere in this dilemma, most of us find ourselves having to work very hard to find middle ground. We want to provide healthy food for ourselves and our families, and wish we could enjoy it together more often.

Unless you have hired help, procuring, storing, and preparing food is a necessity that someone in the home must meet on a consistent basis. Because nutritional needs across the age span can only be met by regular consumption of a variety of healthy foods, we need to understand the importance of the roles of planning menus, buying food, keeping ingredients on hand, and making time and space for preparing food in ways that are appetizing, wholesome, and, yes, even convenient. What’s more, most of us need to do this on a tight budget.

More often than not, this obligation falls to the adult women of a household, but more and more, men are taking an active role in a family’s food needs. One of my colleagues is a single father with two elementary school-aged daughters. The three of them have a routine for the four nightly meals they share each week. On Mondays after school, they go together to the grocery store. Each girl plans the menu for one meal and dad plans two. They walk and talk themselves through the store, picking out the ingredients they need for their planned meals. Once home, they work together in the kitchen to put foods away and begin the evening meal prep. It is not unusual for some of the girls’ friends to stay for a meal with this little family. Each meal begins with prayer, and dad intentionally guides the conversation around biblical stories and themes while having the girls replay the day’s events. My colleague says that this activity of planning, shopping for, making and sharing meals has bonded the three of them together like nothing else they do. In the process, the girls are learning to shop and compare prices, consider substitutes, store and prepare food, and entertain friends in their home over a shared meal.

No matter who sees to the food provision in your home, that person must be well-versed in the age-appropriate nutritional needs, within budgetary limits, of all of the family members being fed. And, if time is tight, it is a job that requires planning, discipline and creative thinking. In Post #45 we will begin to address where to start.

~Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

Photo credit:  K. Luymes

43. Table or Trough? Does Your Family Dine or Feed?

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Have you ever stopped to wonder if the shared meal is less about food and eating as it is about the time set aside (meaning sacred) for coming together? In this way, the shared meal sets us apart from the animals. Animals feed, eating whatever they find on their sorties, and as their appetite dictates. Humans, on the other hand, dine- a process of planned menu and shared dishes and, in families, companionship (com meaning with, pan meaning bread). When eating at home is degraded to each family member grabbing food whenever it suits them, we lose much of what it means to be both human and family.

For those with children still at home, you might, at this point, be tempted to say that although this all sounds great, it would never work in your family. Your table is messy and noisy, and people are distracted. Your mealtimes are more like boxing matches or a three-ring circus, with fights over food, over who sits where (or won’t stay seated at all), over who manipulates the conversation and hijacks attention. The hour is not settling but restless. I have a friend whose three children argued constantly over who got to sit in between both parents at their round table. With one more child than parent, it always turned out that at least two of the siblings had to sit next to one another each night without a parent on both sides. The poking wars, verbal as well as physical, were endless. I know of another family whose table was always in such constant motion that the mother began reading children’s adventure stories during the meal as a way to keep the children seated throughout the meal’s entirety.

Despite the chaos, it is good to remember that the table is probably the best place in the home for teaching children about respect, manners, and service and sensitivity to the needs of others. It is at the table we learn firsthand what it means to work for the common good. This helps fortify the notion that each child is indeed a member of the family, this tight little community called “us.” At the table a sense of belonging, of kinship is born and nurtured. Will there be times of conflict, of petulant teenage resentment, of childish behavior?   Most certainly. Just remember, there will also be times of shared joy where drama and comedy play out around the table every night as food is shared. If you want to build family, share the table.

There are, of course, other barriers to regularly sharing meals at home. Often, children are so hungry when they get home from school they fill up on snacks then aren’t hungry for dinner. For some children with attention disorders, medication has begun to wear off toward evening making this a frustrating time for parent and child alike.[1] What’s more, it is not unusual for a family with two or more children to have something scheduled for every night of the week. It is also typical for one adult in the family to bear the lion’s share of food-related acquisition and preparation; let’s face it, somebody has to be in charge of the food, a responsibility that is difficult to sustain in very busy families.

~ Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

Are you NEW to Shared Table Blessings?  WELCOME!  I invite you to join a growing number of people interested in the importance of the shared meal amongst family, friends, and strangers. Each post is numbered that you may follow the book I have written about the Christian Practice of Shared Meals.  For the best understanding, start reading posts in order, and send comments or questions my way using the LEAVE A COMMENT box found at the bottom of every post.  ~JAPW

[1]Families with children with attention disorders may experience evening mealtime challenges related to both behavior and medication side effects like appetite suppression and insomnia. When the last dose occurs at noon, a behavioral rebound effect (in particular hyperactivity) around late afternoon is probable, and if a subsequent medication dose is taken, appetite for the evening meal will be blunted, and the child more likely to have trouble sleeping at bedtime. Sometimes, a lower dose at 4:00 p.m. is helpful. In these cases, it is often advisable to delay the evening meal so that appetite is less negatively affected. Working closely with a pediatrician is highly recommended.

41. Be GENERATIVE. Sit. Eat. With. Your. Kids.

~ This Side of the River ~ Leave a comment

You must make it happen. There is NO OTHER WAY.  The evening family meal is restorative; it provides time, space, food, and companionship for soothing the rough patches created by the demands of both this day, and of the day anticipated tomorrow. It helps cement people together and organize the family as a team. Table time as a family is for discovery too. We share our experiences and the things we’ve learned, and can discuss whether our responses to particular situations were the right ones.

When our daughter began fourth grade at a new school she encountered her first bully. Week after week, we spent time as a family, almost always at the dinner table, discussing what the bully said today, how she acted on the bus, and what we, as a family should do about it. We prayed together. My husband and I advised our daughter to adopt a “kill the situation with kindness” attitude, but not because we wanted to teach her non-confrontation.[1] On the contrary, we felt that intentionally-responsive smiles and kind words on our daughter’s part comprised precisely the type of loving confrontation Jesus would have practiced. At first, our daughter’s responses only infuriated this bully to grander displays of meanness (all verbal), but, to give her credit, our daughter persevered and trusted that this decision, made as a family at the dinner table, was the right course of action. We also counseled our daughter to try her hardest to imagine what could make another little girl so angry and mean, and to pray for her to experience the joy of a changed heart. Was this bully unloved at home? Was she sad? Did she really just need a friend and not know, socially, how to make one? Our daughter prayed for this girl for many weeks. Eventually, the bullying stopped. Our daughter learned that responding in kind is never as good as responding with kindness. She learned that some people are unloved and unloving. She learned to pray for an enemy, and to ask for prayer. And, she learned that, as a family, we took her problem seriously and were concerned for the outcome. All in the intimacy of the family table.

This helps demonstrate how a shared family meal is powerfully generative, meaning that it has the power to produce, or generate a way of thinking, acting, and responding to circumstances. In particular, children learn from the adults at the table not only civilized table manners and social customs, but about life and death, good and evil, right and wrong. In short, the table is a place for a child to observe what it means to be an adult. For believers, this becomes even more significant, because this is our shared practice for learning what it means to be a man, woman, child, and family of God.

It is also deep mystery how shared table time as a routine practice helps children develop a healthy attitude toward ritual and tradition. It has a potent and lifelong carryover effect on their sense of family and belief, acting as a liturgy of sorts for creating that daily rhythm of how a flourishing family life should flow. And, in this day and age, when culture kidnaps our children at younger and younger ages, this table time protects them. The physical food they eat with us is a symbol of God’s ever-present provision, help and sustenance. This family table is the place we can teach our children what we know of God, and where they can watch us live that love out.

[1] This particular eight year-old girl was not a physical threat, nor did she act as part of a larger group of bullies picking on our daughter, and this happened before social networking made e-bullying a reality. This little girl was just miserably mean. One reason we monitored the situation so closely each night at the supper table was to discern if adult intervention was called for.  But, we also wanted our daughter to learn to positively handle life’s challenges on her own with God’s help and wisdom.

Until next time!

Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

40. Family Supper-Are You Kidding Me???

~ This Side of the River ~ Leave a comment

With schools starting, this is a great time for us to start Chapter 6:Table Time at Home for Families in this blog book called Come Back to the Table: A Countercultural Call to the Christian Practice of Shared Meals.  Hopefully, the preceding chapters have convinced you that sharing meals, as a distinct Christian practice, should be an important part and pattern of your daily family life.  But, as any parent will tell you, mustering the family around a nightly meal can be a harrowing, energy-sucking experience. This may be particularly true for one-parent families, those in which both parents work full time outside the home or in homes with children with special needs. When I began working full time at our local hospital after years of being home all day while going to school at night, I was not prepared for the panicky rush that the dinner hour became. One of us had to eat and run back out for a meeting or school event. A child forgot to tell you on the way home that she needs a large neon-green poster board (no, the white one in the closet simply won’t do) for an ecology assignment that’s due tomorrow. Your spouse ate a big lunch out today with co-workers and isn’t hungry. Dirty breakfast dishes in the sink need clearing out before dinner preparations can begin. Lunchboxes need cleaning out. You forgot that the frozen ground beef you were counting on for tacos tonight got used up in last week’s meatloaf.  The dog is starving and needs to go out, and the laundry should be started before supper to ensure that the volleyball uniform is ready for tomorrow’s big game.

Is it any wonder that the shared meal becomes sacrificed to the tyranny of more pressing issues? Yet, for me and my family, dinner together around the family dining table remained a critically important activity, and we were determined to make it all work even after I began putting in 45-hour weeks at the hospital around the same time our daughter started middle school sports. This is because the table is where we build family. It is the one time each day we can each sit in a place we call “ours” and, for even twenty blessed minutes, know we are in this life together, and that God is at its center. Miriam Weinstein believes a family evening meal “sort of forces an environment when everyone has to stop and sit down. It creates a boundary when you’re sitting around a table. It’s a designated time. It focuses attention on what is going on here and now between the people around the table. It gives us a specific time to review our day”[1] together.

In our next post we will start to “dig in” to what this kind of family life can look like.

[1] Miriam Weinstein, The Surprising Power of Family Meals: How Eating Together Makes us Smarter, Stronger, Healthier, and Happier (Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press, 2005), p.74. Weinstein’s treatment of the challenges facing the regular family meal is excellent.

39. What if WE ate like this?

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A Summary of the Shared Meal in ACTS

Eating together, sharing food, inviting any who would come, and using those meals to testify to the life, death, resurrection, and saving grace of Jesus was a common theme throughout the earliest days of the nascent church. What would it look like if we “did” meals the same way?

Most importantly, our tables would no longer be empty, instead reclaiming a rightful place as the central gathering place in our homes, and standing as a visible testament to the importance of shared meals in the life of believers. In our homes, we would not only participate in regular family meals, we would create a new habit- a practice if you will- of intentionally inviting others to join us- people from church, our neighbors, our work colleagues, our children’s friends and their families, visiting missionaries and scholars, and even the stranger we just happen to meet on any given day. Food could be simple fare like bread, soup, cheese and a piece of fruit- anything that would stretch to serve a tableful of guests and family, and be easy to prepare. And every table would always be capable of accommodating “just one more” hungry person.

Such a meal would begin with praise and thanksgiving. Today, we might call this “saying grace”. After the meal proper, invited guests would be asked to bring a word, a letter from a missionary might be shared, and Scripture read. A hymn would be sung. There would be prayer. And these types of meals would happen over and over again throughout the year.

At church, we would gather frequently to share meals and we would be intentional about inviting anyone in the neighborhood to join in. And, just like our home-based meals, the shared meal at church would contain specific components of praise, thanksgiving, breaking of bread, testimony, Word, and prayer, a model we’ll consider later in this book.

As a reminder, these posts are numbered in a specific sequence because they each contain pieces of the chapters of a book on shared meals and Christians.  So, they are meant to be read IN ORDER.  If you have comments or questions, send them via the LEAVE a REPLY box provided.  I am more than happy to discuss the topic with you!

~Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

38. Lamenting a Lost Practice

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Every Sabbath morning at the start of worship, my pastor invites us to the meeting. He makes it clear that our presence for fellowship and worship and praise is the intersection where we, the gathered, meet with one another, God the Father, and Jesus the risen Christ in the counsel and care of the Holy Spirit. As a result, I have come to embrace the notion that the congregation of believers- those who congregate for an encounter with God and for his glory- does, truly comprise a meeting.

Likewise, I think the earliest believers, despite all their ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity, viewed their shared meals together as a meeting, (i.e., as worship) and I like to imagine that they looked forward to these regular meals with great anticipation and joy. This is why I also think of their gatherings as meal-meetings, or what I also like to call fellowship meals, because I also believe the common shared meals and the meetings of the early Church were inextricably connected, not necessarily to the extent of actually being Greco-Roman meal-symposiums, but of at least having evolved out of that prototype.

Of course our worship today, particularly on the Sabbath, is much different, crafted around centuries-old liturgies, creeds and doctrines, not to mention overt cultural-sensitivity to people’s lack of time for multiple meetings in a week. Thus, compared to those first Christians, our worship is much more formal, and our meeting together for shared meals far, far less common. And, it is this general loss of the shared meal- in families and church families alike- that I believe is something to lament because the places at our dining tables are so consistently and symbolically empty.

Our tables are empty because we no longer view a shared meal as a fundamental way to also share the gospel, and because we are unwilling to share our lives in such intimate, selfless, and demanding ways as hosts, who take, thank, break, and give bread to others. But most of all, we should grieve because we are so distracted, and always, always in such a hurry to be doing something else. As I wrote at the start of this chapter, regularly breaking and eating bread together is a practice meant to make us think of Jesus, to recognize his presence at our meal fellowship, and to remember his incomprehensibly great love for us. Our determined failure to practice shared meals on a regular basis should make us stop and think about why we no longer eat together and what we’ve lost in the process.

~ Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

Please make comments in the LEAVE A REPLY box, and contact me if you need further information about using this text for a small group or Sunday School study, or as the theme for a weekend retreat.

37. Radical Hospitality is RISKY

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Recall that a special hallmark of the Greco-Roman banquet was that invitations were sent ahead of time to request a guest’s presence. The early Christian meal-meetings, on the other hand, took place in believer’s homes, and appear to have been open to any who had been baptized as believers as well as those who claimed to believe. Moreover, following Jesus’ teachings, the meals would have been evangelistic in nature in that they would also have been open to the maligned and risky fringes of society.

So, now we not only have Jew and Gentile together at a fellowship meal, but men and women, slave and free, educated and illiterate, the economically advantaged side by side with the poorest of the poor. The heterogeneity of the people at this kind of meal, or gathering, would have been a radical occurrence in that day. Actually, if you think about it, it would be a radical occurrence in our time too.

Radical hospitality is risky. It involves the kind of love that sent Jesus from heaven as a fully human being and set his face toward the cross. It’s the kind of love that denies the fear of the rhetorical ‘what ifs’ with sincere determination that Jesus’ love for ‘the least of these’ is the life to which all believers are called. In the end, radical love accepts the likelihood that others will take advantage of the generosity and servant-heart of those willing to empty themselves of pride, fear, and security.

Apparently, this was no different in the early church, because the writings of both Peter and Jude address a form of Gnosticism evident in the lives and actions of some who claimed to be believers (2 Pet 2:13 and Jude 12). Both authors mention the immoral behavior of some at the “love feasts”, or agape meals of the early Christian communities.   Gnostics believed that the sinfulness of their behavior, particularly their sexual proclivities, was “covered” by their salvation through Christ. In other words, they used their salvation as a kind of ‘get out of jail free’ card to justify their ongoing lustful immorality.

Try to imagine, if you will, the meal-meetings of the early believers. Given the heterogeneity of the participants, it is not hard to envision that some of those present were, in their ‘former’ lives, accustomed to attending meals followed by an evening of drinking, entertainment, and revelry, including sexual escapades. Others, still Jews by self-description, would hold to a habit of meals in which ceremonial purity rituals were still adhered to. Still others could be in attendance even though they were not believers at all, perhaps joining in for a free meal, or to find out what The Way was really all about. “In such a socially porous environment it would not be hard for false teachers claiming to be Christians to slip in and freeload, and cause trouble… Christianity was an evangelistic religion, and so this meant risk for the Christian community because they were open to having guests and strangers attend their meetings.”[1]

These are ingredients for a very interesting, even disastrous meal indeed, and the warnings from Peter and Jude would have us understand that the revelers may have gained an upper hand as false teachers. Still, the premise of the fellowship meals was to share the love and fellowship of Christ in ways that were edifying and promoted the virtues of a Christian life. There was, and always will be inherent tension and risk involved here. While we are called to “expel the immoral brother” from our fellowship (1 Cor 5:13), and “with such a man do not even eat,” (1 Cor 5:11), we are also to be open and inviting even to the worst of sinners. The distinction revolves around one’s claims to be a believer, baptized and filled with the Holy Spirit. If such a one continues in sin despite loving confrontation and counsel from believers, that one is to be excluded from the fellowship to the point that we not even eat together. It should not, however, ever prevent us from inviting the unbeliever to our fellowship or our meals.

In Post 38, we will look at the hard truth: our tables are too often empty.

~Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

[1] Ben Witherington III, Making a Meal of It (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2007), p.89.

36. For Heaven’s Sake!

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To the Romans, Paul wrote,

“One man’s faith allows him to eat everything, but another man whose faith is weak eats only vegetables. The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, For God has accepted him (Rom 14:2-3). “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men. Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a man to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble (Rom. 14:17-21).”

Paul here addresses the schisms that arise when any one believer or group of believers makes demands of the entire congregation based on personal preference or historic tradition. For the Jewish Christian, it was anathema to eat meat sacrificed to foreign gods, meat often sold for public consumption in the city and town markets. To them, this meat was unclean. The Gentile Christians didn’t really care, to them meat was meat, and the origin of the meat they purchased did not concern them. Here we have one group, so obsessed with where the meat comes from (again related to their misguided notions regarding ritual purity) that they resort to eating no meat at all, whereas another faction just digs right in and eats it all.

Under these circumstances, the early Christians eating a meal prior to a meeting for praise, worship, testimony and prayer would find the meal itself so upsetting that they’d literally enter the post-meal fellowship with the gall of their disagreements stuck in their craw. And so we have Paul begging them to try harder to put the food nonsense behind them once and for all. We may scoff at the rigidity of some of the early believers, and the “whatever” attitude of others, but we encounter the same attitudes in church today when, for example, we disdain vegetarianism or the need for a gluten-free Eucharist without trying to understand the issues (to name just two). Paul is clear: we are commanded to put aside our personal preferences for the joy and mutual edification of the entire congregation of believers, and reconcile our differences because breaking bread in peace creates an atmosphere in which we can praise, worship, learn, and be sent in peace.

In Post 37, we tackle another hard topic: the risk of being open to any who would come.

~Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

A reminder: these posts are meant to be read in order, as together they make up an entire book on the shared meal.  Send comments using the LEAVE A COMMENT box provided.  This topic is an excellent one for adult Sunday School classes or weekend retreats.  Please let me know if you’d like me to help you.

35. Food Fight!

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Paul was a major player in confronting early Christians about their need to set aside personal and heated differences over their food practices of the past to enjoy fellowship meals of mutual edification and submissive accord. A careful read of Paul’s letters to the Romans, Corinthians and Galatians clearly shows that some of the biggest divisions among early believers were sparked by radically different food customs and practices at the meals of the gathered community. Try to imagine the consternation of the Jewish Christian eating with a Gentile Christian. The Jew would be upset by the so-called unclean practices of the Gentile. The Gentile, not caring to adopt the ball and chain of the Jewish purity rituals would also be made to feel inferior for eating certain foods, in particular the meat from animals sacrificed to idols. Paul worked tirelessly to get all believers on the same page where sharing food was concerned; his letters, most certainly circulated and read at the shared meals of the early Christians, are filled with admonitions that they stop their petty bickering over food and the separatist notions these disputes fostered.

In his letter to the Galatians Paul wrote, “When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group” (Gal 2:11-12). Apparently, Peter’s conviviality with Gentiles was met by separatist Christian Judaizers with such disapproval that he had begun to withdraw from meals at which Gentile Christians were present. Paul insists that it is not the Gentile Christians who must act more “Jewish” but the Jewish Christians who must live like Gentiles, and he publicly calls Peter to account for his legalistic behavior. Accusing Peter and the Galatians of being brainwashed, Paul instructs them to justify their actions solely on Christ, and resume their shared meals together, because “the table was a prime and powerful image in Paul’s world for boundary marking and community inclusion.”[1] Paul scolds Peter for succumbing to the pressures of some Jewish Christians who were still following the Jewish requirements for ritual purity. Imagine the irony if you can. This is the same Paul who once bragged of his righteous keeping of the law, and the same Peter who was with Jesus when he condemned the Pharisees for the blind way they assumed ritual purity was counted to them as righteousness. It is no wonder Paul confronts Peter to his face.

In post 36, we will continue this discussion!

~Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

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[1] Dennis E. Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist, p. 186.