There was once a man called Epicurus who bought a house for his friends to eat at and recommended that no one ever eat alone. He said, “Before you eat or drink anything, consider carefully who you eat or drink with rather than what you eat or drink.”
While buying a house for the sake of extravagant dinner parties sounds tempting (and also unlikely), Epicurus wasn’t trying to get us to buy a neat pad to pop our bottles of patritti in. He was trying to tap us into the art of eating together.
The tradition has weaved itself throughout hundreds and thousands of years of history. We’re the only creatures in God’s creation who share our food with members of our own species to whom we are not related.
But what is it about food that brings people together? How do things like soup and birthday cake help us keep a hold on relationships that, if we’re honest, mightn’t exist without them?
It’s more than the typical Brady Bunch scene where meatloaf and mashed potato are passed from one person to the next in the lead up of an argument between siblings. If we go back far enough, hunter-gatherers ate around the fire to establish social relationships that allowed them to survive. Go back even further and we find this guy called Jesus who changed lives around the table.
In the book of Luke alone there are ten stories of Jesus dining with people—from crooks to kings, from frauds to friendly fishermen. Jesus invited Himself over to people’s homes for meals, He ate with thousands at a time, He had difficult conversations over dinner, and He broke bread with the disciples right before He died and right after He rose. He did it because he cared about spending time with people and because coming together to eat makes us human in a way very few things have the power to do.
The ritual of eating together is one of the most natural and convenient ways we can still connect. We don’t have to sacrifice much. Most of us already eat three meals a day. The time we need for sharing our thoughts, our experiences, our emotions, slots right in with the time we need to nourish our bodies.
Now here’s the science of dining in a nutshell: when we take part in preparing a meal; when we pass plates around the table; when we sit across from one another and make eye contact; when we pause to listen and absorb what someone is saying as we chew our food; when we take time to sit with people — all these acts release opiate chemicals called endorphins. Endorphins are part of our brains pain management system and they benefit our mind-body connection in ways we don’t even realize.
Professor Robin Dunbar says, “Endorphins give you an opiate high. That’s what you get when you do all this social stuff.”
Dunbar goes on to say that social media doesn’t come close to cutting it. A face-to-face connection is pivotal to our well-being. While in theory, we live in a society where we’re more connected than we’ve ever been, we’re also more emotionally disconnected than we’ve ever been.
But it’s not just our lack of time that’s getting in the way. Our individualized diets have also hindered us from spending time together. These days if you sit ten people down at a table, every one of them has a specific eating agenda. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for health. Eat clean, organic and fresh as much as you can. But what if I told you that the benefits of eating in company outweigh the negatives of what you eat? According to a study done at Oxford University, countries that prioritize eating together rank lower in obesity and health problems. Those who eat with others are far more likely to feel better about themselves and to be satisfied with their lives.
Churches and museums often have alfresco paintings of Jesus and his followers breaking bread around a long table. Jesus shared meals with people because he knew the visceral nature of eating together created a place that gave people a sense of belonging and community. The table was a place where everyone was equal. When people sat there, their superiorities were removed. The highest place was on the same level as the lowest.
Alice Julier, the author of Eating Together, says ‘dining together shifts our perspectives towards each other’. Our perceptions of people aren’t as nasty and we tend to see people on equal levels.
There’s this old film you’ve probably never heard of called Babette’s Feast. Where Lord of the Ring’s is three hours of walking through a field, Babette’s Feast is three hours of sitting around a table. The film depicts the beauty of shared mealtime between people of all different cultures, with a range of different values. It shows how eating together is an everyday choice versus something done for special occasions and how when we partake in that, relationships are transformed.
Every day we get this small frame of time to eat. In our busy lives, mealtimes are one of the few occasions left to connect, joke, question, share insights and talk about the banal things in life.
We see the heart of God at the dinner table. Food is just the gateway to where stories are told and connections are made. Jesus’ example of eating with others provides an opportunity to invite friends, outcasts and even enemies to come closer to knowing and experiencing the story of love and salvation.
The idea of putting on a banquet is no doubt overwhelming. But there’s nothing wrong with a picnic bench, a couple of strangers and a box of cereal. After all, it’s not so much the food but the company that counts.
AUTHOR: Zanita Fletcher, attends The Vine (Tweed Heads).