Commensality and Radical Hospitality: Axis of the Table

[from an Easter address]

I find Jesus’s life, as demythologized and revivified by thoughtful scholar/theologians, compelling. For example, I’ve long had my eyes open to the phenomenon of food and eating, but Jesus scholars have made me particularly aware of the significance of the phenomenon of with whom we eat.

Our culture is obsessed with food and eating. I believe it’s a matter of mass marketing and consumerism, including branding and conspicuous consumption; of an agricultural policy that feeds the phenomenon of super-sized soft drinks and other corn sweetener laced foods; of our general desire to be entertained, hence a food channel and a plethora of cooking shows; of body image, including a fear of growing old and basic insecurities of self; and of a cultural lack of meaning, resulting in an existential emptiness wanting to be filled.  We are the land of the morbidly obese and of the morbidly thin.

In my naturally analytical way, I’m continually monitoring my world to understand food and eating, as well as to examine my own ways.  I’ve become particularly aware of what is known as commensality:  “fellowship at table; the act or practice of eating at the same table.”
 
Contemporary Jesus scholars have highlighted Jesus’s radical hospitality. He invited the outcast or second-class persons of his day, women, tax-collectors, sinners, Samatarians, and such, to eat with him.  Scholars argue that this was how Jesus demonstrated as well as implemented his notion of the Kingdom of God—that it was egalitarian most of all, with the implicit notion that all were worthy of being provided for.

I always associate commensality, fellowship at the table, with companion, a word that literally means with bread.  Our companions are those with whom we frequently share food.  At a table where relationships are central, food might not be such a toxic obsession for so many.  And you will not so much become the food you eat, as you become the people with whom you eat.

I recommend that you consider commensality and companionship in your own life—what your table signifies.

 Today, many of you will have a foursquare  Easter dinner—a formal sit down with traditional foods and a circle of family or friends.  Savor your companions even more than you savor your food.

Think about how you might build on the fellowship of the table in your most intimate life to create, sustain, and deepen your relationships.  Much has been made regarding the decline of the family dinner hour.  Is there any more apt situation for connecting to spouse, children, and friends?

And when you are more detached—in a philosophial mood—consider those in our society who do not have a place at your personal table and at our common table.  Hold in your mind the multitude who are also literally hungry in a land of excess calories. 

Jesus’s example is clear.  He enjoyed his food and drink, to such an extent that his detractors called him a glutton and drunkard.  He provided, as in the stories of the loaves and fishes and the wedding feast when he changed water to wine.  He hosted and even served at the dinner table.  Most of all, he did not discriminate, but invited everyone, especially the marginalized and outcast, to eat with him.

The Kingdom he proclaimed had its axis at the dinner table.  That place, which is many tables, yet also one table, is the beginning and the end of society.