Passing the Potatoes--August 15, 2018
"Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the good will of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved." [Acts 2:43-47]
It really is a gift to be able to sit down with your family and share a meal together. For all the additional work it takes to coordinate schedules, to get the food cooked, to get young hands to help set the table, and to pause the distractions and busyness of the day for even a half an hour of synchronized eating, it truly is worth all the work that goes into making it happen.
It is a gift of grace to share a table for an ordinary Wednesday dinner, regardless of what is on the menu, because it is in that shared meal that we share our lives. Make no mistake about it: it is a holy and blessed thing to take the time--and to get to take the time--whether it's over fish sticks or filet mignon, to share a table with the family.
When we eat together, we talk to each other. You find out what the best part of someone else's day was. You hear what is on the mind and on the heart of the other people around the table. You build the common experiences, the memories, the household traditions, of certain foods and certain times. You share. You pass the mashed potatoes and you split the last serving of meatloaf. And in the passing of the platters, the family practices its own kind of economics, without talking about who "earned" the food, but only the joyful concern to make sure everyone gets to have enough on their plate. And those meals, whether with just a nuclear family or five generations and their bonus friends who got the invite, those meals become the threads that bind our lives together.
You and I know as much from having eaten at tables like that before. We know what it is like to be the one included even if you don't share a bit of biology with anybody else, but simply on the basis of the principle of "The more, the merrier." We know what it is like to find comfort from each other even when our hearts were heavy, and then to find that sharing a meal together lifted us back up again. We know what it is like to teach children the importance of taking care of one another by modeling the passing of the rolls, the waiting on seconds until everyone has gotten a first helping, and the value of waiting for everyone to be at the table before we eat. We know what it is like to see the common meal flow almost seamlessly into the common labor of clearing the table and washing the dishes. And that is why we keep gathering around tables, even though there are times when it is tough, or when personalities clash, or when we are already so hangry (that is, "hungry-angry") that we get on each other's nerves before the drinks are already poured, or when we are each so busy that it can feel like trying to align the planets to make the gatherings happen. But we keep at it, we and our various families, because in a very real sense, those meals bring us to life and sustain us for the times when we aren't all around the table.
Now, if we know the value of that kind of shared experience at a dinner table with our families, it won't surprise us that the first followers of Jesus saw the same power among them as well. They were not biologically related--and yet they made the effort to share tables and break bread with one another. They didn't "have to" all share meals together, at least not in the sense of some kind of religious law or requirement of their piety--but the practice of sharing meals together was so life-giving and so essential from the beginning that the first Christians did it without anybody "making" them. They had not yet invented all of the layers of liturgical sediment or shiny gold accessories as the later church would get saddled with like great-grandmother's china that nobody knows what to do with--and yet they held the common meal as of great importance. The first followers of Jesus knew that sharing tables with one another was part of how they learned to love each other. You learn to love the people you pass the mashed potatoes to. You get in the habit of asking about their day or their dreams. You become accustomed to sharing the common work before and after the meal. And all of that is really what it looks like to love each other. Nobody has to enforce it as a rule, but the common table and the common life become so obviously important that it is worth it to make the effort to set up the chairs and put out the serving dishes.
That's the way I think we have to hear these verses from the beginning of Acts. And really, as much as it seems obvious to anybody who has had a family dinner in their lives, it's important for us to say this out loud. And that's because we can be so afraid of making this shared meal and shared resource thing into a "rule" that we ignore passages like this from Acts altogether. I can't tell you how many times in my life I have heard people, upon reading these verses from Acts, blurt out like an alibi, "But this isn't a requirement! Not all early Christians lived communally like this, and we don't have any proof they ever did it outside of the city of Jerusalem here in the first few chapters of Acts!" And while it is of course technically true that Jesus issued no commands that his followers "had to" eat together every so often, that seems almost willfully to miss the point.
Can you technically be a family and still never eat together? Sure. But either you have to make the effort of finding other ways and times to share each other's lives, or you just slowly succumb to drifting apart. You'll still be a family, at least in name or DNA, but you will have missed something beautiful, something blessed, something essential. Well, it's the same with us as the family called church: the more we share our lives with one another, including breaking bread "with glad and generous hearts," the more we find our lives strengthened and enriched. It's not a matter of "have to" or "you can't make me"--it's a matter of what love does. And love shares food, passes the mashed potatoes, and then shares the labor after dinner--that's just what it does.
In the day and time in which we live, is SO easy to insist that nobody can "make" us share our abundance with someone else, or that nobody can "compel" us to give up our stuff so that someone else can have enough. It is so easy to become resentful when someone else gets a break that you didn't get. It is so easy to become bitter and possessive, and to start digging in our heels about how someone else is getting something they didn't earn while I feel like I'm getting passed over. That is exactly how the culture in which we live teaches us to see the world.... but it is not how it works in a family. And even though there is no requirement for salvation to share X-percent of our resources, or to give up Y-number of possessions, or to share so many church dinners together, we know that sharing our tables and our stuff is part of how family works... and we are a found family together, we followers of Jesus.
Today, then, instead of the knee-jerk impulse to say, "Nobody can MAKE me share--not a table, and not my treasures!" what if we were the people who saw in the example of the Acts 2 Church a picture of a more joyful life together? What if, instead of scrambling for excuses of why we don't "HAVE to" take the time or make the effort to share our tables and share one another's troubles, we chose to say, "It's not a matter of whether we have to or not, but we are missing out on something good and beautiful if we don't keep gathering at table and sharing our abundance." Glad and generous hearts--that sounds like what I want to be. Why would we not make the effort and keep the commitment to share our tables, to share our resources, and to share the time doing the dishes afterward, too?
Come to the table. And if there isn't one already set up to come to, then you be the one who sets up a table and invites others around to join you.
Lord Jesus, give us the fullness of life that unfolds from breaking bread and passing the peas, as well as sharing our abundance with one another because we have discovered we are family together.
It really is a gift to be able to sit down with your family and share a meal together. For all the additional work it takes to coordinate schedules, to get the food cooked, to get young hands to help set the table, and to pause the distractions and busyness of the day for even a half an hour of synchronized eating, it truly is worth all the work that goes into making it happen.
It is a gift of grace to share a table for an ordinary Wednesday dinner, regardless of what is on the menu, because it is in that shared meal that we share our lives. Make no mistake about it: it is a holy and blessed thing to take the time--and to get to take the time--whether it's over fish sticks or filet mignon, to share a table with the family.
When we eat together, we talk to each other. You find out what the best part of someone else's day was. You hear what is on the mind and on the heart of the other people around the table. You build the common experiences, the memories, the household traditions, of certain foods and certain times. You share. You pass the mashed potatoes and you split the last serving of meatloaf. And in the passing of the platters, the family practices its own kind of economics, without talking about who "earned" the food, but only the joyful concern to make sure everyone gets to have enough on their plate. And those meals, whether with just a nuclear family or five generations and their bonus friends who got the invite, those meals become the threads that bind our lives together.
You and I know as much from having eaten at tables like that before. We know what it is like to be the one included even if you don't share a bit of biology with anybody else, but simply on the basis of the principle of "The more, the merrier." We know what it is like to find comfort from each other even when our hearts were heavy, and then to find that sharing a meal together lifted us back up again. We know what it is like to teach children the importance of taking care of one another by modeling the passing of the rolls, the waiting on seconds until everyone has gotten a first helping, and the value of waiting for everyone to be at the table before we eat. We know what it is like to see the common meal flow almost seamlessly into the common labor of clearing the table and washing the dishes. And that is why we keep gathering around tables, even though there are times when it is tough, or when personalities clash, or when we are already so hangry (that is, "hungry-angry") that we get on each other's nerves before the drinks are already poured, or when we are each so busy that it can feel like trying to align the planets to make the gatherings happen. But we keep at it, we and our various families, because in a very real sense, those meals bring us to life and sustain us for the times when we aren't all around the table.
Now, if we know the value of that kind of shared experience at a dinner table with our families, it won't surprise us that the first followers of Jesus saw the same power among them as well. They were not biologically related--and yet they made the effort to share tables and break bread with one another. They didn't "have to" all share meals together, at least not in the sense of some kind of religious law or requirement of their piety--but the practice of sharing meals together was so life-giving and so essential from the beginning that the first Christians did it without anybody "making" them. They had not yet invented all of the layers of liturgical sediment or shiny gold accessories as the later church would get saddled with like great-grandmother's china that nobody knows what to do with--and yet they held the common meal as of great importance. The first followers of Jesus knew that sharing tables with one another was part of how they learned to love each other. You learn to love the people you pass the mashed potatoes to. You get in the habit of asking about their day or their dreams. You become accustomed to sharing the common work before and after the meal. And all of that is really what it looks like to love each other. Nobody has to enforce it as a rule, but the common table and the common life become so obviously important that it is worth it to make the effort to set up the chairs and put out the serving dishes.
That's the way I think we have to hear these verses from the beginning of Acts. And really, as much as it seems obvious to anybody who has had a family dinner in their lives, it's important for us to say this out loud. And that's because we can be so afraid of making this shared meal and shared resource thing into a "rule" that we ignore passages like this from Acts altogether. I can't tell you how many times in my life I have heard people, upon reading these verses from Acts, blurt out like an alibi, "But this isn't a requirement! Not all early Christians lived communally like this, and we don't have any proof they ever did it outside of the city of Jerusalem here in the first few chapters of Acts!" And while it is of course technically true that Jesus issued no commands that his followers "had to" eat together every so often, that seems almost willfully to miss the point.
Can you technically be a family and still never eat together? Sure. But either you have to make the effort of finding other ways and times to share each other's lives, or you just slowly succumb to drifting apart. You'll still be a family, at least in name or DNA, but you will have missed something beautiful, something blessed, something essential. Well, it's the same with us as the family called church: the more we share our lives with one another, including breaking bread "with glad and generous hearts," the more we find our lives strengthened and enriched. It's not a matter of "have to" or "you can't make me"--it's a matter of what love does. And love shares food, passes the mashed potatoes, and then shares the labor after dinner--that's just what it does.
In the day and time in which we live, is SO easy to insist that nobody can "make" us share our abundance with someone else, or that nobody can "compel" us to give up our stuff so that someone else can have enough. It is so easy to become resentful when someone else gets a break that you didn't get. It is so easy to become bitter and possessive, and to start digging in our heels about how someone else is getting something they didn't earn while I feel like I'm getting passed over. That is exactly how the culture in which we live teaches us to see the world.... but it is not how it works in a family. And even though there is no requirement for salvation to share X-percent of our resources, or to give up Y-number of possessions, or to share so many church dinners together, we know that sharing our tables and our stuff is part of how family works... and we are a found family together, we followers of Jesus.
Today, then, instead of the knee-jerk impulse to say, "Nobody can MAKE me share--not a table, and not my treasures!" what if we were the people who saw in the example of the Acts 2 Church a picture of a more joyful life together? What if, instead of scrambling for excuses of why we don't "HAVE to" take the time or make the effort to share our tables and share one another's troubles, we chose to say, "It's not a matter of whether we have to or not, but we are missing out on something good and beautiful if we don't keep gathering at table and sharing our abundance." Glad and generous hearts--that sounds like what I want to be. Why would we not make the effort and keep the commitment to share our tables, to share our resources, and to share the time doing the dishes afterward, too?
Come to the table. And if there isn't one already set up to come to, then you be the one who sets up a table and invites others around to join you.
Lord Jesus, give us the fullness of life that unfolds from breaking bread and passing the peas, as well as sharing our abundance with one another because we have discovered we are family together.
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