Let's eat together
Commensality
In the ancient Greek textbook I teach from, one of the first mythological stories recounted to students is Odysseus and the Cyclops. It's at this point that I stop and discuss with students the concept of xenia, or guest-host reciprocal relationship. Xenia is a recurring theme throughout the Odyssey, and in this particular story it's on display, because Odysseus is a terrible guest (guests are not supposed to steal host's flocks), and the Cyclops is a terrible host (hosts are not supposed to eat guests). But xenia is a prevalent concept in traditional cultures, especially from a world and an age where, when you travelled, someone had to take you in and look after you, and in the very doing so this established a relationship, and reciprocal rights. Once you have established xenia in the ancient world, you and your descendants are bound in relationship with that other family.
In many cultures, especially eastern European, this custom and concept is tied to (and carried on) in the offering of bread and salt. As basic and fundamental to life goods, to extend bread and salt to someone is to welcome them, to extend hospitality, and the act of hospitality and eating together binds us in a relationship that forbids hostility. It's one thing to raid one's neighbours and kill one's enemies, it's far, far different to break the bond of hospitality. That's why in fictional contexts this motif appears. So, in the Count of Monte Cristo, Mercedes attempts to convince the Count to eat fruit, to bind him under hospitality obligations. It's why the Red Wedding in Game of Thrones is so disturbing, no less disturbing than the Black Dinner on which it was based, or the Massacre of Glencoe (when I meet Campbells, they regularly apologise for it or ask that I don't hold it against them).
Hospitality is bound by eating together, because the act of eating together, the sharing of the table1, is fundamental to human relationships, precisely because eating is so basic to human existence. We are creatures who require daily bread, and we've been eating together since the beginning. And both hospitality and commensality are themes woven through the Scriptures. So we get Genesis 18 - Abraham and Sarah hosting the mysterious three visitors, and chapter 19 - the failure of hospitality of Sodom in contrast to the hospitality of Lot. Truces are sealed with feasts. Joseph and his brothers take a step towards reconciliation through the eating of a meal together. The Passover meal binds the Israelites in a yearly meal of fellowship that reminds them of God's deliverance of them.
It's beyond me today to provide a biblical theology of meals together, or even of Jesus' meals with people. At the least, there's already a book on the latter topic.2 But Jesus' practice of eating with sinners tells us at least one thing very clearly - Jesus embraced fellowship with sinners because the purity he had was enough to purify them, far more than any defilement from them might make him impure.
For us, in western late-modernity, meals occupy far less significant ritual and symbolic roles. We attach far less weight to eating together. That, I suspect, is not an easily reversibly anthropological trend. And yet, I think that the act of eating together at its most fundamental remains a prime means and modality of intimacy. When we eat together we declare, implicitly, that we are in fellowship. It's why disunity turns the Corinthians' meal from the Lord's Supper into a Feast of Fools. You cannot sit down and eat with enmity, because you are violating the very principle of the table.
To sit down and eat together binds us, and bonds us, in a way that sitting down and talking without food does not. Without food, we are having a meeting, a discussion, a chat. But with food, we are transformed. We are sharing life. And if we are prepared to pattern our meals on Jesus' meals, we may extend the sharing of bread and salt to the poor, the outcast, the stranger. Even, I dare say, the enemy, because the sharing of the meal can provide the transformation from enmity to peace.
I actually think I could say a lot more on this topic, but I'm going to stop here (for today, at least!) and just end with my call - "Let's eat together!" For it is in eating together that we form and deepen the bonds between us, the depths of friendship and fellowship, the peace and joy of human relationship.
Commensality if you want a fancy Latinate word (co - together, mensa - table)
Craig L. Blomberg, Contagious Holiness: Jesus’ meals with sinners (IVP 2005)
This is very much in line with the piece I put out a day or two ago. And I love this line you have: "Without food, we are having a meeting, a discussion, a chat. But with food, we are transformed. We are sharing life." IOW, food so often provides the context for fellowship. Nicely done!