It Is a Powerful Thing to Eat Together

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, “This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household. If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight. They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs. You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn with fire. This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the Passover of the Lord. I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from human to animal, and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.”

Exodus 12:1–14

Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; you shall not murder; you shall not steal; you shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

Romans 13:8–10

It is a powerful thing to eat together. Whether it’s a snack or a multi-course meal, to share it together is holy and sacred. And we don’t think anything about it, do we?

We eat, I hope, about three times a day or more — thanks be to God — and many of those meals are shared. If you live with someone, perhaps all your meals are shared. But even those like me who live on our own find ourselves eating with others more than we’d expect.

This week alone, I’ve gone out for coffee at local coffee shops with five other people. (I filmed it, and you’ll see that on our social media later this week.) Yes, even a coffee together is sacred. The coffee hour after church is incredibly sacred.

I can’t say why that is. I don’t know what it is about salivating together, chomping our jaws in unison, smacking our lips over greasy food, and the choir of slurping and swallowing — but something about that is holy.

For some of you, I just triggered your misophonia. That’s the condition where you’re grossed out by seeing or hearing other people eat. We don’t know what causes that, but there’s one interesting theory that it is a hyper-mirroring.¹ When we see someone eat, it triggers the impulse to mimic their behaviour. Like Pavlovian dogs, they swallow and we salivate. That could be a reason people are grossed out by chewing noises, but whether it’s the root cause or not, I think it highlights that there is something instinctually unifying about eating together.

If our bodies are automatically responding, I think our souls do too. We feel that emotionally. If we eat with someone, we feel safer with them. It’s bonding.

If you meet with me pastorally, you’ll notice that I either offer you coffee or tea, or I take you out to eat someplace. It is not just an act of hospitality, it is strategy. I shouldn’t be telling you all my tricks, not so early on, but there are studies to show that holding a hot cup of tea makes someone open up more.²

With warm hands, with the familiar scent of tea or coffee, with the slower pacing that hot drinks require, we become more relaxed, our shoulders and our defensiveness soften, and you can have a deeper heart-to-heart. It works best with hot drinks, though in a pinch, it could also work with a cold beer. In the end, it’s really the act of eating together that makes both our hearts more receptive to the other. It is powerful to share a meal together.

Do you realize the power you’re exercising when you invite someone out to eat? How you can change hearts through dinner rolls? How a donut and double-double can save lives? Oh yes. It’s that powerful.

Now some might object and say, “Well Mark, you’ve clearly not had Thanksgiving dinner with MY family. You’ve not had to sit through the inappropriate jokes from my uncle, or endured the subtle criticisms that jab from my mother.” For some of us, it’s true: eating with your family can be painful. But I think part of that pain comes from the fact that eating together is unifying; and part of the pain you’re feeling is that fact that you’re being pulled together with people you don’t want to be bonded with. Our family dinners become prickly, like you’re being pushed together with a cactus. So be careful if you’re eating together with people you don’t want to be bonded with.

I think all these reasons are part of why God instructed the Israelites to share a meal together. God called them around a table, called them to eat some lamb as a family (and to share it with a neighbour if the lamb is too big). Before bringing them out into the wilderness, before launching them on this massive road trip, they need to eat together. And specifically, it’s the Israelites who are to eat together. The Egyptians are not invited to this meal. God is about to make the nation of Israel distinct. God is setting them apart as a light to all nations, and they need to be bonded together.

One thing slavery does is to fracture those who are indentured. Slaves have always outnumbered the masters, and if they joined together, they could easily overthrow the empire. It’s why Pharaoh had the baby boys slaughtered — he was afraid of the power of the Israelites if they were unified. You have to divide them against each other. That’s still a tactic used today. We see it all the time in our politics and business world. On Labour Day, we celebrate one of those rare moments when labourers joined together and used their collective power to improve the living conditions for everyone.

Those who own the levers of power don’t like when the Israelites gather around the table to share a meal. Maybe that’s another reason they ate with shoes on and a staff in their hand. There’s a good chance they’d have to run or defend themselves when the meal is broken up by authorities. The Egyptians had worked for generations to divide the Israelites against each other, and now, in this sacred meal, God calls the Israelites to gather and eat. Of all the plagues that warned Pharaoh, I think this meal was the biggest threat. This is the meal that undid him.

Now, as an aside, I just want to say something about that angel of death that took all the firstborn males. As a firstborn male myself, I always thought that part was dreadful. What did the firstborns do? Why go after us? We might have some sympathy for the Egyptians, especially if, like them, we too have benefited from the power of the Empire.

But put yourself in the shoes of someone enslaved. Remember how this story started: with the slaughter of every baby boy born to the Hebrews. The Israelites had been subject to much greater violence for generations. From the Israelite perspective, the viewpoint of a slave, God was going easy on the slave-owners. God gave warnings, nine of them. They were all warnings that mirrored back the suffering that the Egyptians had placed on the Israelites. But when those warnings weren’t listened to — because those with power won’t relinquish it until they have to — then comes this last terrible plague, the angel of death.

Note that, unlike Pharaoh, the angel doesn’t kill all the boys; instead, it just takes the firstborn. This is not vengeance or retribution, but yet another warning: if Egypt won’t listen, then God will return to them all the same suffering they inflicted on others. This time, for now, Pharaoh listens. A meal powerful enough to overthrow empires.

Just as one meal isn’t enough to last a lifetime, the act of eating together needs to be repeated. God instructs Moses and the nation of Israel to repeat this meal every year, to retell their history and the power they experienced in God. And it continues to be powerful. Of all the traditions of all the religions, I would rank Passover as the most enduring. Especially as our own communion table is a re-telling of this same story.

As they gathered for the Passover, Jesus sat down with his disciples, one last meal to unify them. He broke bread and shared it with them. They ate that bread together as he promised that he would be with them always. They drank wine together, which would open their hearts the same way that a cup of tea or a glass of beer would open ours. And as they shared, they were bonded together — united at a time when they felt the threats of the religious and Roman authorities growing louder. This is a moment when some were scared, some excited; they knew something was coming. They might as well have had shoes on their feet and a staff in their hand because they knew this meal could be interrupted at any moment. And to give them strength, to unite and encourage them, Jesus shared one last meal.

The power of a meal. I think it only shows the powerfulness of this meal that Judas couldn’t stay for the whole thing. Had he stayed for that meal, I don’t know if he could have done what he did.

As God instructed the Israelites to repeat the Passover, Christ calls us to repeat his Supper. (We’ll be doing that next ourselves at Thanksgiving.) We need to repeat this act of eating together, not just because the meal is sacred but because sharing in it unites us — with each other and with Christ. It changes us, it strengthens us, it saves lives. It is more powerful than we realize.

But I want to point out that, when done with intention, all your meals can be just as sacred, just as powerful. Every meal you share has the potential to bring healing. Every time you cook for someone else and eat with them, you are creating a moment of love. Every time you sit down to a cup of coffee, you open your heart to the Spirit of God in someone else.

We invite you back for refreshments after worship because that too is part of worshipping. God’s Spirit follows us into the Newcombe Room, where the act of having a snack together is where the real connection is going to happen. If you’re a regular worshipper here at First, I hope you use that opportunity to connect with someone you don’t know. I hope you are bold and brave enough to introduce yourself to someone new and let this shared coffee or tea be the moment that God speaks to you.

At a meal, an enslaved people gathered together and realized that God has made them strong enough to overthrow an empire. At a meal, a group of friends ate together and realized that Christ has made them brave enough to transform the world. And at a meal, we realize that the Holy Spirit’s power still flows through us, at this table in the sanctuary and at the tables in the Newcombe Room.

So eat together. Invite someone over for coffee. Sit with someone you don’t know well. And let those simple meals become powerful moments when the Holy Spirit creates healing, belonging, and love.

Amen.

References

¹ “The Motor Basis for Misophonia,” Journal of Neuroscience: https://www.jneurosci.org/content/41/26/5762

² “Acute effects of tea consumption on attention and mood,” PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24172303/