Soul Food, or What are you bringing to the Potluck?

Dear Readers,

Everyone eats,and many people endow their eating with religious significance. Think how often food and food experiences are part of the church life. In practically all faiths, food plays a role in their religious life--from the ice cream social or chili cook-off, to communion, to the worship of the corn god.

Food cuts across these traditions much like it cuts and weaves through our physical and spiritual lives. It is material and ephemeral. We consume it and it is gone, transitory but essential to life. Prayer over a meal may be the only prayer in some people's lives, in what seems a peculiar mix of both physical and ideological substance.

We even have our food fights, evident in the debate between the theologian and the medical practitioner, regarding the common chalice or the individual communion cup; the common loaf or the individual wafer; wine or grape juice. There's the church cookbook, too. Churches range in their emphasis on food from "here are some recipes we'll share", to the move in the 1970's to fight world hunger.

If you were to ask a person attending a church potluck why they were there you could expect a number of answers. They might range from "because God wants us to be together", to "because this is where my friends are". Have we gotten so hung up on "fellowship" that we have forgotten the broader reasons we belong to a church and the mission of the church? Or is it that some people are looking for community, and when they come to church they find community and a place to fit in.

For some folks, (not just the kids), the highlight of their church experience each week may be coffee hour, or juice and snacks. We may look down on that as being not particularly Christian, but they may get from the coffee hour that "this is a place for me, this is home", and it may be something that will shape their Christian lives forever. Acting out community in this way may be more important for them than hearing a sermon on community.

I guess all this could be over-analyzing a bit. After all, sometimes a broccoli casserole is just a broccoli casserole.

One thing about potlucks--you'll always eat well. People bring their best stuff to potlucks. Keep your fork; the best is yet to come!

Your Friendly, Neighborhood Apatheist,

~Bill