My family is coming to town this weekend for my daughter’s graduation open house, and after 8 months of being apart, I am as excited as a little kid on Christmas morning!
We have a joke in our immediate and extended families that when we get together, we talk, eat, play games, and talk and eat some more. Actually, it’s not even really a joke, because that’s pretty much exactly what happens when we all gather!
My mom taught me well: whenever we visit her and Dad in St. Louis, she always asks ahead of time what we want to eat so she can plan the menu (among the staples are pork steaks, shepherd’s pie and apple pie). As I plan to have them here for almost a week, I pulled a peach cobbler recipe for Mom and a coffee cake recipe for Dad. (I could also just buy him his own pint of mint chocolate ice cream, and he would be a happy camper!) “Emotional eating” be damned, there is no doubt in my mind that food is a way to show love.
Is it any wonder then, that Jesus used food to remind us how much we are loved? When he broke the bread at the Last Supper, it was an expression of how his body would be broken for us. When he offered the wine, it was to drive home the fact that his blood would be poured out for us. When someone is willing to be broken for you, and to pour out everything they have for your sake, THAT IS LOVE.
The meals I have shared with the people I love over the years have become a microcosm of that offering of love that Jesus gave us at the Last Supper (also known as the Institution of the Eucharist). The food may be what gets us to sit down at the table, but what keeps us there is the conversation, laughter and palpable love that ensues. I am overcome by gratitude when dinner lingers and the next cup of coffee is poured. It makes perfect sense that Eucharist means “thanksgiving”.
Can you think of a time when a meal was an experience of Eucharist for you? Recall how it nourished you not only physically, but emotionally and spiritually as well. There are grand and obvious experiences like Thanksgiving dinner or the graduation pasta buffet we will be having this weekend, but for me, the meal that was most like Eucharist for me wasn’t technically a meal at all.
There was no soup, salad, entrée or dessert. It consisted instead, of a pot of coffee and a loaf of homemade bread made by my Grandma that we shared over a couple games of Scrabble. I grew up playing Scrabble with her, had always loved her homemade ANYTHING (bread, donuts, coffee cake, etc.), and had recently taken a liking to black coffee.
So my freshman year of college, I lived a mere 20 minutes from Grandma’s house: closer than I ever had in my entire lifetime, and we made the most of it. I spent many weekends there, and the talking, eating, playing games, repeat sequence happened every time!
Sharing Grandma’s homemade bread and finishing off a pot of coffee together was what drew me to her table, and then I stayed because the real gift was just being in her presence.
Grandma died unexpectedly of a heart attack three weeks after we shared that “meal”. I have the recipe for her homemade dough and make it into cinnamon rolls every Christmas morning, and dinner rolls for every Easter dinner.
When we sit around the tree, or at the table on those occasions and pass the rolls around, it is the closest thing to having her right there with us.
As we celebrate the graduation of her great granddaughter this week, I may have to break out that recipe and keep the “food is love” tradition going.
The next Holy Mess post will be coming up on Wednesday, June 16 so that I can enjoy every minute with my family while they are in town. Wishing you all many blessings!
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