How Can Our Table Be Big Enough for All?: The Feast of Christ’s People and the Church Potluck
by Patty Christiena Willis
I remember sitting with a vegetarian friend at a Japanese restaurant. When she ate a bit of shrimp that had been fried in batter, she spit it out, right there, and said, “I haven’t let anything but vegetables through my mouth for two years and now this!” That bit of shrimp ruined our expensive meal because my friend never quite recovered from the fear of what might inadvertently pass through her lips. I wonder about the small scenes such as this that occurred when the Kosher Jewish Christians were asked over to a Gentile Christian’s house for dinner. Did they do as my parents did with the friendly neighbor who always served bloody chicken: refusing her invitation until they could no longer and then bearing the burden of a table filled with food that was either against their convictions or turned their stomachs. I can imagine my mother choosing the smallest piece of chicken and then working through it a little at a time, washing it down with whatever was at hand. My parents taught their children to eat what they were served.
My father, a field geologist, loved to tell us his food adventures when he returned from field trips mapping the deserts of Qatar and Iran. “The Bedouins,” he told us, “invited me in for dinner. I was served the best part of the sheep.” He paused for emphasis. “The eyes…A little squishy but not bad at all.” When he took me with him to festivals at the palace of Sheikh Ben Isa al Kaliph of the island of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, our home for four and a half years, we received and drank the tiny cups of coffee. And smiled. This was against the dietary laws of our religion, but all that changed when something was offered. This law of receiving from the Stranger superseded all other laws. The definition of the Stranger was even extended to distant relatives in Scotland who offered us tea. This was my inherited perspective when I entered that fraught world of the church potluck.
If the other attendees of the potluck had only been taught by my parents, each attendee would have filled a plate with each kind of food, not giving preference to one kind over another. There would be none of that heaping up of one’s favorite food that often happens in the first five minutes by the congregants who have slyly positioned themselves by the table, even beginning to reach for the serving utensils during the “Amen” of the blessing of the food. There would be none of that. Each attendee would exercise restraint and smile politely through each offering. One would eat as if the person who made the lime Jello filled with cocktail fruit iced in Miracle Whip with bright green sugar sprinkles may be seated in the next chair. In seminary, in the class about self-care, the same class where I read the book about Clergy Killers, I learned that my parents had prepared me well to be a minister. Eat everything, we were told, no matter what. And smile.
After six years of ministry, I have felt the sharp edges of the limitations of my family’s teaching that we should pretend that we share a food culture in common. In the progression of building community, this is a first step. This is the level of tolerating the differences of others, and it is better than despising the difference of others! In this progression, how could we move to the level of inclusion and then stretch ourselves into belonging? How would we need to transform our hearts to encounter that table spread before us?
First, we must stop pretending. We are who we are, God’s children, each of us different in our likes and dislikes. Churches have been struggling over inclusion of differences in sexuality, gender, and race or ethnicity. Inside of that, out of sight, we have also struggled with class, and we encounter class in all sorts of ways on that table: the dishes, the ingredients, the very way that people eat that has grown beyond food into “lifestyle.” Many diets that people espouse are out of reach financially for others. Instead of wondering about whether meat was Kosher as they did in the time of the early church, we wonder if it was grass-fed. Many in our congregations have stopped eating meat and dairy entirely because of the environmental cost of the meat and dairy industry. Many only eat organic vegetables. What to do when our paleo eaters meet vegans head on? How do we invite the diversity we hope for in our congregations to our meals together and not have it end up as stiff politeness or a food fight? How can our table be big enough for all?
To reach to the “inclusion” level, just as we do when searching to be multi-cultural, it is important for people who think of themselves as the dominant culture and others as “the diversity” to learn their differences. A friend of mine in Salt Lake City, Pastor Vinnetta Golphin Wilkerson, does this brilliantly in her multi-cultural congregation with many South Islanders. They have a feast each year to which congregants bring a dish from their family’s country of origin. Scottish dishes sit by Italian, Peruvian, Tongan and Samoan dishes. The focus gets catapulted out of class and into diversity. The feast becomes an adventure in diversity, including the diversity of people who may not have considered their backgrounds as diverse. To help people with allergies, and as an affirmation that everyone cannot eat everything, congregants could provide a list of ingredients.
Today, as I was thinking about this article, my wife and I went out to eat at a little Japanese restaurant we had wanted to try. The man at the next table, perhaps referring to people with very different political beliefs, said, “You can’t remain enemies with people you break bread with.” This made me think about one problem I have seen with potlucks: People line up, fill their plates and then sit down and, although they are around tables together, they don’t really need to interact in the small ways one does when one “breaks bread.” I suggest that the condiments and rolls — with gluten and not — be situated on the tables where people are eating so that they have to ask each other to pass dishes to them. I also suggest that a question or two are prepared for people to discuss like: Do you know anything about your family’s country of origin? What are two aspects of the food that make it Tongan? or Scottish? or Italian? What do feasts look like in that country? Do you keep any of these customs in this country? This kind of gathering can move people into an appreciation of the diversity of everyone, not just the recently immigrated. Done repeatedly, this is a good step towards inclusion that is not lop-sided, with the group that feels a part of this church or country including those who are perceived as “the others.”
But how do we bring “belonging?” When I belong, I feel that I am wholly accepted. I do not doubt that Jesus truly healed the blind and the lepers, and yet I think that his wholehearted acceptance, his reaching out and touching the untouchable was what brought wholeness and belonging. One way to deepen acceptance is through sharing stories. Ask congregants to bring their favorite dishes in all their paleo, vegan, Pritikin, sugar-high, carb-filled or carb-free splendor. Consider asking the question, “If you could take only one dish to a desert island, what would you bring?” People would write all the ingredients so that people know what is being offered. And then ask people to talk about why that would be the food they would take to the desert island. Ask a couple of storytellers to start things off that gets people into a spirit of fun. If the group is small enough, encourage a circle or congregated tables around which all become silent before forks are raised for a blessing prayer:
Dear God, we are here today, our hearts full and our stomachs empty, glad of the prospect of breaking bread together, gluten-free, whole wheat and some stuffed with olives and cheese. We give thanks for the diversity of this table, for the food that shows not how we are the same but how we are different. May we respect these differences in food as we respect our differences in ways of being in this world. We affirm your love for us—your delight in the variety of your creation. Bless the hands that have prepared with mixes and cans and frozen packages and those that have had the time to chop and sauté and sprinkle with spice. May we see all offerings as bearing witness to the abundant love that is among us. Let us respect our unseen differences that may become known: our allergies and even our dislikes and likes. We ask for a blessing on the farmers and give thanks for the sunshine and rain that nourished this food. May we not waste these resources and treat them and each other with care.
In your many names we pray. Amen.
