The ministry of eating together

One of my favourite recent television shows was a series called Travel Man, which featured the UK comedian Richard Ayoade.

The premise was to watch two comedians (Richard and a special guest), experience the culture of a city somewhere in the world for 48 hours. Recognising the rising popularity of city breaks, they aimed to avoid tourist traps, give practical advice and soak in something of the local culture. They would take in some sights, sample some food and try out some more outlandish things before heading home. Somehow they edited all that fun down into 24 minutes.

The most enjoyable bit was always around food. One week, Kathy Burke would be relishing sheep's head, another Noel Fielding would be sniffing fermented herring and on yet another, Richard would be visibly apprehensive about the potentially lethal delicacy of pufferfish.

It made for hilarious television. Apart from the obviously exaggerated nature of it all, the foods of each city gave a window into different cultural worlds.

Thinking about food is one approach to building cultural bridges. Food connects us all. It connects us to our past, our present, and the global community we find ourselves part of. All image bearers need to eat (Genesis 1.29-30). And yet all image bearers have a different story to tell about what they eat and why. There are stories around what we ate growing up, what our community traditions were and how people or places have changed our tastes.

'What would you recommend?'

It's also an approach that we can apply even when we feel time poor. A common dilemma is how to make time to connect with people when time for anything seems so stretched. After all, we're already trying to read our Bibles, resist siren voices and share our faith. How on earth do we find time to grow relationships with people who are different from us? Answer: it only takes a moment, in the mundaneness of the everyday, to ask someone 'what would you recommend to eat around here?' The answer might just open up the story of a lifetime.

Food also slows us down. The fleeting exchange by the office kettle becomes a fascinating education over a sandwich. Eating lunch together creates space for attention and acceptance. It can be sacred ground. Our focus here though hasn't been about eating, so much as finding out about eating. But the principle of slowing down applies to questions around food as well as eating it. While we can ask a question about food quickly, we might not be able to listen lovingly to the answer in the same way. We might need to slow down to listen to a longer answer.

The need to slow down brings us to a final and crucial point. Really seeing people requires sacrifice. And finding out about our attitude to food is a way of seeing. It means slowing down - to pray, reflect, to question and to listen. At this point we might throw our hands in the air in frustration. How does this help, in a world that keeps us so busy? Of course, we need to remember that we are a body with different roles and we are people who go through different seasons. But sometimes loving our neighbour in this way will cost. We might be late. We might have less time for something that we love.

Yet we follow in the footsteps of Christ, who slowed down to eat with us, so that we might have strength to slow down and eat with others.