One night this week ENan and I ventured around the corner from our house for dinner. My former administrative assistant lives in our neighborhood and invited us over. Her son works at a university in China and is married to a native Chinese woman. We normally host them when they are visiting in the states, but the only appliance we have in our kitchen right now is a refrigerator. It's tough to cook a decent meal in a refrigerator.
Our neighbor's daughter-in-law wanted to prepare a traditional Chinese meal for us, so of course we accepted the invitation. She had been preparing food most of the afternoon. She deliberately left some dumplings unfinished so that we could learn how to make them. (My dumplings looked pretty sad next to hers.) You can see on the plate we had fried and boiled dumplings, curried vegetables, sauteed eggplant and stir-fry peppers and onions. You may also be able to identify corn-on-the-cob and cornbread-- contribution of the mother-in-law. It was all delicious!
We sat around the table for hours, sharing stories from our lives with butter dripping to our elbows. I thought about how special it is to share food with others, whether they be your family or brand new friends. The founder of Chick-Fil-A said, "Food is essential to life, therefore make it good." Maybe it is the essential nature of eating together that allows barriers to come down and bridges to be built.
A quick review of the life of Jesus reveals how many times Jesus shared a table with others. Jesus ate a meal at the home of Simon Peter after healing his mother-in-law. He ate at the home of Matthew, laughing it up with tax collectors and sinners. He ate at the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus, even refereeing a dispute with the sisters over who should do the dishes. He shared a meal with 5000+ folks who had come to hear him preach and stayed past lunch time. He saved his parting words with his closest followers for a mealtime conversation. And, when he first appeared to that same group following his resurrection from the dead, he had fish cooking over a campfire. (My mother would call that, "Suppa.")
When you share a meal with someone else, it may be best to eat without your shoes on. The room under a shared table is sacred space.
-Dr. Jim Baldwin
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