Feasting: Megan Dickerson

As I’m writing this, our state has been officially under Stay at Home orders for a little over two weeks but we’ve been pretty isolated for a couple more than that. And I miss my people! I miss meeting friends at the park. I miss running into people on campus. But most of all I miss having friends in my home to share a meal. 

For most of my life, I’ve taken it for granted that I could go out to lunch with a friend or have a potluck with my church family. That changed when my oldest son was diagnosed with severe and varied food allergies almost 9 years ago. After his diagnosis, safe restaurants were hard to come by and potlucks were completely out of the question. Food became a battle for his safety.

Because of his food allergies, I felt separated. I began to learn how much of our culture is centered around food. There is candy at the doctor. You can’t get through church without being offered something to eat. We build friendships around meals. When you can’t eat what everyone else does, you feel the separation.

Over the years, we’ve learned how to manage. I bring our own food to potlucks. We can usually find a safe restaurant. It’s still hard, and I don’t always have a good attitude about it, but we can usually make things work. We’ve learned that eating together is SO important.

I’ve had a song about sharing meals stuck in my head. For a couple of months now, Andrew Peterson’s song Remember and Proclaim has been on repeat around our house. It’s a song about feasting! The first half of the song is about celebrating the Lord’s Supper with the church. In our local church communities, we gather around a table to remember Christ’s body broken and his blood shed and to proclaim that he will return.

The second part of the song is about gathering around our dining tables. Friends, I’ve never connected these tables. I’m sure I should have seen it sooner. When we look at the early church, we see them breaking bread together as they remember Christ. Eating meals was so important that they were even given instructions on how to share these meals.

In Peterson’s song, he sings, “this feast it is a battle that we wage against the night.” I cannot tell you how many times I have sung this to myself! Feasting is battling against the night. My tendency is to believe the lie that fasting is always more spiritual than feasting, but they both have a role to play in the Christian life.

As I’ve thought about what it means that a feast is a battle, it’s occurred to me that it’s a battle in two ways. First, there’s a battle to make the feast happen because feasting takes enormous effort. It is HARD to find the time to share a meal. I can’t tell you how many people we’ve invited over that tell us they are too busy. It is hard to prepare a meal to share! As a mom of four, there is always someone having a hard time while I’m trying to cook dinner. For some, it might be a battle to afford a feat. For others, it might be a battle to learn to cook a meal worth eating. I can relate to it all!

Second, the feast itself is a battle. With kids, it’s a battle through the whining about where they sit or what they have to eat. With adults, it’s a battle to find something to talk about, to work through the awkward getting-to-know-you phase. So is it worth it?

Peterson says, “This feast it is a battle that we wage against the night, this joy is just a shadow of the resurrection light.” When we share a meal together, our share in the battle spoils is the joy we find. When we fight through all of the obstacles and awkwardness of inviting people to our table, we find joy in serving one another, in finding that we have things in common, and building new friendships.

When we share a meal with other Christians, we share a special fellowship. Each believer in Christ is indwelt by the Holy Spirit and he unites us to Christ. Because we are each united to Christ, we are united to one another and feasting together demonstrates and grows this reality. This feast should remind us of the table where we celebrate the Lord’s Supper. We have joy.

Now, we’re stuck at home. We want to serve our community and keep the virus from spreading. We want to do our part. But we miss having friends over for dinner like I think we’re supposed to.