Reclaim the Dinner Table
There is no community without communion
Every Saturday night, I have the privilege of joining a group of friends for a Sabbath dinner. We share prayer requests and recent highpoints, sometimes take communion, and have a Sabbath blessing. It is truly a highlight of my week, in part because the food our generous host prepares is always par excellence, but also because the rhythm of fellowship is nourishment for my soul.
Jesus spent a substantial part of his ministry seated at a table—hosting and being hosted. He had many things to say about how to approach the table, who to invite, and why it is important. The church began around a dinner table and the promised finale of our faith is a wedding supper. It is unsettling to think, considering the significance Jesus attributed to the table, what will become of a church that doesn’t have one.
Recently, there has been a slew of articles connecting the loneliness epidemic in America to the disappearance of the dinner table from the American home. The reasons for its disappearance are numerous but essentially, we have allowed our meals—and the processes necessary to provide for and prepare them—to be outsourced to the food industry (i.e. industrial farms, fast-food chains, grocery stores, etc.). As a consequence, the community that was once a natural byproduct of food’s various demands has been undermined. These days, not only are we bowling alone, increasingly, we are eating alone, too.
Consider the juxtaposition between what my grandmother’s dinnertime experience might have been like and what many would regard as an ordinary family dinner experience in the 21st century. My grandmother, Mary Alice, was born during the Great Depression, which means that her family did not enjoy the material abundance we know today. The provision, preparation, and enjoyment of meals, by virtue of necessity, was communal in all its stages. Each individual member could not choose what to eat or when to eat it; rather, these decisions were made for them by those preparing each meal because food was not so accessible. My Great Grandmother Florence, God bless her, had to feed all six of her children, her husband, plus guests because they often took boarders.
Today, conversely, every member in the family, especially if the children are old enough to drive, has the liberty to make their own decisions about food. We do not have to depend upon one another for the provision and preparation of our meals, we do not have to wait for it since it is always available, and often each one of us has our own preferences about what we should eat so why eat together at all? Is it any wonder that the dinner table is disappearing from our homes?
As much as I wish I could say that the church is an exception and has excelled at resisting these trends, by and large we have failed, just as we have failed to properly recognize the war our digital devices have waged against our bodies—settling instead for what is faster, cheaper, and often genetically engineered to addict us, to the detriment of our bodies. But it is not only our bodies that have suffered; our corporate body has similarly deteriorated because, as I have suggested, food usually functions as a social unifier.
I must confess that I do not envy my Great Grandmother Florence for her work. And occasionally I do enjoy a trip to Chick-fil-a. But, if we are truly concerned about the loneliness epidemic facing my generation (and, increasingly, the world), we need to seriously consider what it might take to reverse some of these troubling trends. It will involve surrendering some of our autonomy, slowing down our lives, and inconveniencing ourselves for the sake of others. And I believe the church is uniquely equipped for this task.
After all, one of our most important sacraments involves gathering around a dinner table to share a meal. The table might be one of the church’s greatest opportunities to witness in our day and age, where many people are taught to scorn the body, have developed unhealthy relationships with food, and suffer social isolation. It is therefore time the church began asking better questions about our tables — both our personal and corporate ones. If Christ were physically in our midst, would we be content to serve him what we ourselves are eating? If Christ were sitting with us, would we be so quick to move on to whatever comes next?
The Gospel of Luke says that Jesus “eagerly desired” to share the final supper with his disciples. In my experience, when the food is good and the company is better, people are compelled to come to the table and linger. Since Christ himself promised to nourish us and be present among us when we gather, how much more expectantly should we approach the table? There is no better feast than the one over which Christ himself presides.