THE LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY AT PHILADELPHIA
THE MISSIONAL MEAL: MAKING SPACE TO SHARE FOOD AND THE GOSPEL
SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OFINTERSEMINARY SEMINAR
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What is a missional meal? How might the meals of Christian
communities become a missional tool? In his article, “Hosts and
guests: hospitality as an emerging paradigm in mission,” Tobias
Brandner defines mission as “most simply speaking, the movement
of the gospel – of God’s grace and love – beyond walls of
separation and exclusion, whether ethnic, linguistic, national,
political, social, cultural, religious, or even ecclesial in
nature.”1 When speaking about meals, Sidney Mintz, anthropology
professor at Johns Hopkins University, says, “Interaction over
food is the single most important feature of socializing. The
food becomes the carriage that conveys feelings back and forth.”2
If meals play such an important role in human socialization, in
what ways could the eating and feeding of the Church be a social
and religious practice that share the gospel across the walls
that divide us? In this paper, I propose to view the way in which
biblical hospitality, especially as it is conveyed in the table
fellowship of Jesus and the early believers within Luke-Acts, and
1 T. Brandner, “Hosts and guests: hospitality as an emerging paradigm in mission,” International Review Of Mission, April 1, 2013; 102(396): 99. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed September 26, 2014).2 L. Shannon Jung, Sharing Food: Christian Practices for Enjoyment, (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2006), 40.
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the sacrament of Eucharist can inform our practices of eating and
feeding in the Church. I will then describe three meal ministries
of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of American (ELCA) and explore
their missional character.
In the context of American culture, hospitality is often
understood as “the careful art of hosting,” which is extended
mostly to family, relatives, and colleagues on special
circumstances and with some formality.3 In the Bible, hospitality
is framed within the narrative of God’s people as strangers in a
foreign land. While in the wilderness, God commands Moses to
instruct Israel to “love the alien as yourself, for you were
aliens in the land of Egypt” (Lv 19:34).4 Hospitality is offered
to the stranger and is a response to God’s hospitable treatment
of God’s people. Without the hospitality of local people, a
stranger could not survive in the harsh environment in which
God’s people lived. In the Hebrew Bible, hospitality is not an
art but rather a necessity.
3 Robert J. Suderman, "Reflections on hospitality and the missional church," Vision (Winnipeg, Man.) 3, no. 1 (March 1, 2002): 45. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed September 26, 2014).4 Biblical Citations contained in this paper will be coming from the New RevisedStandard Version, see The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1989).
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In the time that Jesus lived in the first century, rules of
hospitality were influenced by the infrastructure and patron-
client culture of the Roman Empire. With more safe and reliable
travel routes, new categories of hospitality came into being.
Hospitality was offered to public servants of the empire,
commercial traders, temple worshippers on pilgrimage, guests of
heroic or divine status, and friends and acquaintances. In Jesus’
time, the compulsion to provide hospitality was reframed by the
increase of travel and safe roads and a host might not
necessarily take in any wandering stranger who came to his or her
door.5
The process of hospitality was also informed by the honor
system of patron-client culture in the Roman Empire. In this
system, the maintenance and gain of honor was the ultimate goal.
An individual’s honor is one’s self-worth as well as the
affirmation of that worth by his or her group, and one person can
gain honor only at another person’s expense. The desire to
preserve one’s honor affected the machinations of providing
hospitality. A host would first evaluate the potential threat the
5 Martin William Mittelstadt, "Eat, drink, and be merry: a theology of hospitality in Luke-Acts," Word & World 34, no. 2 (March 1, 2014): 132-133. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed September 26, 2014).
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stranger posed to group security or purity before extending an
invitation. And only after making this evaluation, would the host
extend hospitality to the guest and make known commonly
understood obligations. Upon the guest’s departure, both parties
would understand that their interaction served to solidify future
relations. In Luke 14 (vv. 12-14), Jesus’ table talk with the
Pharisees illuminates some of these parameters: hosts are
naturally inclined to receive guests with equivalent or greater
honor, since they will benefit from the interaction. Overall,
hospitality was influenced by a culture of social advancement in
which one distances oneself from any person who poses a threat to
one’s honor, which in the Jewish culture would include those who
are ritually unclean, and embraces anyone who would add to one’s
honor.6
Within the Luke-Acts narrative, Jesus’ mission to break down
the barriers preventing all from receiving God’s grace and love
is carried out through table fellowship and kingdom eating at
meal events. Each meal not only provides space for teaching
moments but the meal itself is an expression of the gospel
6 J. Lyle Story, "One banquet with many courses (Luke 14:1-24)," Journal Of BiblicalAnd Pneumatological Research 4, (September 1, 2012): 82. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed September 26, 2014).
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message. These meal events exhibit features of a Hellenistic
banquet symposium in which the host, usually someone of wealth
and status, receives a chief guest and often others will
“intrude” upon the banquet and the conversation of host and
guest. A banquet symposium follows an expected sequence of events
in which an invitation is given to the chief guest, an incident
arises during the banquet to spark dispute, and the chief guest
offers wisdom in response to this incident. In many of the meals
in Luke-Acts, Jesus plays the role of chief guest and outcasts:
sinners, toll-collectors, and the religiously unclean, are often
intruders.7
The meals of Jesus with his opponents and followers build
upon eschatological hopes in Isaiah 25:6-8 in which a feast is a
prominent symbol: “On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make
for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines,
of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained
clear” (v. 6). The meal ministry of Jesus and his followers
anticipates and inaugurates this future feast by breaking down
7 John Paul Heil, The Meal Scenes in Luke-Acts: An Audience-Oriented Approach, (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 1999), 31.
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boundaries: engaging opponents and welcoming outcasts, so as to
make space for everyone at the table.8
In a series of three meals where Jesus is hosted by the
Pharisees, Jesus illustrates the nature of God’s kingdom by
forgiving and healing sinful and unclean intruders and by calling
his hosts to repentance. During Jesus’ first meal with a Pharisee
named Simon (Lk 7:36-50), a woman intrudes and Jesus praises her
hospitality as even more lavish than Simon’s and bestows
forgiveness on her in spite of her status as sinner. In Jesus’
second meal with Pharisees
(Lk 11:37-54), Jesus fails to engage in ritual washing and
responds to the Pharisees’ surprise by teaching them that
almsgiving is the new law of purity.9
In the final meal (Lk 14:1-24), Jesus tells three different
parables. The first is in response to the Pharisees’ surprise
when Jesus heals an intruder with dropsy in spite of the fact
that it is the Sabbath. The parable poses the question of one’s
response if a child or oxen were to fall into a well on Sabbath.
The second parable is in response to the Pharisees fighting for 8 Mittelstadt, “Eat, drink,” 138.9 Robert J. Karris, Eating Your Way Through Luke’s Gospel, (Collegeville, MN:
Liturgical Press, 2006), 44-48.
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honorable seats and illustrates that the best way is for guests
to take the least honorable seat at a banquet so that the master
may promote the guest to a more honorable seat. In the final
parable, a master hosts a banquet and when the people on his
first guest list offer absurd and insulting excuses,10 the master
responds with a call to invite all those who would not normally
receive an invitation: “the poor, the crippled, the blind, and
the lame” (v. 21). When the banquet hall is still not full, the
master compels the servant to bring in even more guests. Lyle
Story argues that each of these passages in this final meal with
the Pharisees illustrate the relationship of Jesus’ present meal
ministry to a future eschatological meal: “the eschatological
banquet is not simply a future apocalyptic event (Lk 14:15), but
is a meal with Jesus that has already begun—a meal that shatters
all previous boundaries.”11 In these series of meals, Jesus
breaks down social and religious boundaries by showing God’s love
for the sinful and unclean, who “break in” to the meals hosted by
the religious leaders of the community just as God’s kingdom
“breaks in” through Jesus’ forgiveness and healing of these
10 Story, "One banquet," 89. 11 Ibid., 91.
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intruders. At the same time, the meal itself becomes a symbol for
God’s desire to feed everyone – making a place for those who have
previously been banned from the table through radical
forgiveness.
In his meal ministry, Jesus prepares his disciples to be
leaders in receiving and giving hospitality at the table,
demonstrating the importance of the reciprocal nature of
hospitality. In Luke 9, Jesus sends the Twelve with the mission
“to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal” (v. 2). He also
charges them to “take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor
bag, nor bread, nor money – not even an extra tunic” (v. 3). This
instruction stresses not only the urgency of the mission but also
the need for radical dependence on God that the needs of the
disciples will be provided through the hospitality of those who
receive them.12 Later in the same chapter, Jesus withdraws
privately with the Twelve, and they are interrupted by a crowd
who follows Jesus
(v. 11). At the end of the day after speaking with the crowd
about the kingdom and curing them of their diseases, the
disciples urge Jesus to send the crowd to eat, but Jesus 12 Heil, The Meal Scenes, 56.
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responds, “You give them something to eat” (v. 13). In his book,
The Meal Scenes in Luke-Acts, John Paul Heil draws a connection between
the hospitality that the disciples have recently received from
the people of the surrounding countryside while carrying out
their mission and the hospitality that Jesus now urges the
disciples to show the gathered crowd: the hospitality offered is
a response to hospitality previously received.13
With Jesus’ direction, the disciples direct the crowd to
recline in groups of fifty for intimate meal fellowship and then
pass out the few loaves and fishes, which Jesus has blessed and
broken. Miraculously, there is enough for everyone. Afterwards,
there are twelve leftover baskets, which have symbolic
significance:
This suggests to the audience that Jesus has empowered his twelve apostles to feed not only this particular crowd of people of Israel but future crowds as well. Indeed, Jesus has provided his twelve apostles with twelve baskets of abundant food, enough to feed the renewed twelve tribes of the people of Israel in the messianic kingdom of God, which Jesus and his twelve apostles are bringing about by teaching, healing, and hospitably feeding the people (9:1-2,6, 11).14
13 Ibid., 61.14 Ibid., 62-63.
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The messianic feast is already being inaugurated in this feeding
of the crowd and at the same time anticipates a greater feast. We
also see how hospitality for Jesus is reciprocal in nature.
During the missional meal, one practices both roles: as guest
vulnerable to the hospitality of one’s host and as host open to
the needs of one’s guest.
In Acts, the practices of accepting and receiving
hospitality continue in activities of the early leaders of the
Jesus movement. Acts 10 introduces the character Cornelius, who
while a Gentile is also “a devout man who feared God with all his
household; he gave alms generously to the people and prayed
constantly to God” (v. 2). In a vision, Cornelius sees an angel
of God, who acknowledges Cornelius’ prayers and tells him to
“send men to Joppa for a certain Simon who is called Peter” (v.
5). While Cornelius’ men approach Joppa, Peter goes to pray,
becomes hungry, and then falls into a trance while his food is
being prepared. Peter has a vision in which a voice insists that
he kill and eat animals that are considered profane or unclean by
Jewish dietary law. As the story continues, Cornelius’ men arrive
and deliver their master’s invitation. In response, Peter offers
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them hospitality and then travels with them, joined by other
Jewish believers. Upon arrival at Cornelius’ home, Cornelius
relates the message of his vision, and Peter responds with a
witness of the gospel story. When the Holy Spirit falls “upon all
who heard the word” (v. 44), Peter is compelled to baptize
Cornelius and his household and accept Cornelius’ hospitality.
The entire exchange cements the radical principles
established by Jesus during his meal ministry in Luke. Just as
Jesus challenged traditional religious boundaries by eating with
sinners and the unclean, Peter challenges traditional religious
boundaries by eating food traditionally considered profane or
unclean so as to break down boundaries between the Jewish and
Gentile communities. Peter’s hospitality interactions with
Cornelius and his household are a sign of transformation in
Peter’s relationship with them and facilitate his ability to
share the gospel with them: “Just as [Peter] does not distinguish
between clean and unclean animals, so Peter does not distinguish
himself as a Jew to be separate and superior to this Gentile.”15
In her book, Eat with Joy: Redeeming God’s Gift of Food, Rachel Marie Stone
15 Ibid., 252.
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underlines the shocking nature of Peter’s decision to follow the
call of the voice in his vision:
It’s about as shocking as it would be to see a vegan chef sitting down to eat chili dogs with Paula Deen, or, as Philip Yancey says, as radical as an alcohol-stocked bar descending into a gathering of Southern Baptists, with a voice from heaven saying, ‘Drink!’16
The shock value of Peter’s decision is apparent by the reaction
of the other Jerusalem believers, who ask “Why did you go to
uncircumcised men and eat with them?” (Acts 11:2-3). The rebuke
of the other believers recalls for the reader the rebuke of the
Pharisees, who accused Jesus for eating with tax-collectors and
sinners (cf. Lk 5:30).17 Practicing hospitality is not easy, but
its effects are transformative. The food purity laws that had
separated Peter and Cornelius are gone, and the collapse of this
boundary makes way for the proclamation of the gospel, the
reception of the Holy Spirit, and acceptance of the Gentiles into
the Jesus movement. All of this is made possible by Peter being
willing to host a group of strange Gentile men and hear their
message, and then receive the hospitality of Cornelius, another
16 Rachel Marie Stone, Eat with Joy: Redeeming God’s Gift of Food, (Downer’s Grove, IL: Inner Varsity Press, 2013) Kindle, Ch 3 Par 14.17 Heil, The Meal Scenes,
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Gentile, and eat food traditionally considered “unacceptable” by
the religious standards of his community.
How can the radical meal hospitality offered by Jesus and
his followers in Luke-Acts inform our current context? In an
increasingly global world, welcoming the stranger – even someone
whom we might consider to be our enemy or opponent, is completely
relevant.18 The meal ministry portrayed in Luke-Acts facilitates
the breaking down of boundaries that would otherwise prevent free
movement of the gospel: “Luke demonstrates that the table creates
space for openness and vulnerability and postures us to be
recipients and agents of God’s renovation.”19
This orientation towards the other is a dynamic that also
plays itself out in the sacrament of Eucharist. If we are to
engage in missional meal ministry like Jesus and the early
leaders of the Church, the Eucharist should inform our practice.
Two frameworks are helpful. In the first framework, Eucharist is
understood as a master practice, which can inform ancillary
practices. Larry Rasmussen explains this concept whereby a master
practice such as baptism may inform ancillary practices such as
18 Brandner, “Hosts and guests,” 100.19 Mittelstadt, “Eat, drink,” 139.
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producing water bottles inscribed with a religious group’s
mission or logo.20 Here, the understanding of the life-giving
waters of baptism informs the understanding of the life-giving
water drunk from the water bottles. For a missional meal, the
understanding of the master practice of Eucharist as a meal where
Jesus is present and transforms participants through grace can
inform the understanding of an ancillary meal ministry.
Another way to understand how Eucharist can shape other
meals is by seeing Eucharist as centripetal and centrifugal. As
centripetal, “meal events linked to our congregational mission
are drawn toward the Eucharist for their fuller meaning and
power.”21 In his book, Soul Banquets: How Meals Become Mission in the Local
Congregation, John Koenig describes as an example a meal ministry
at St. Paul’s Chapel in New York City after the attack on the
Twin Towers on 9/11 in which the church offered meals to those at
Ground Zero and, after time, began to celebrate Eucharist during
the lunch hour.22 Likewise, the Eucharist is centrifugal as “a
transformative force that moves outward, beyond its usual
20 Jung, Sharing Food, 4. 21 John Koenig, Soul Banquets: How Meals Become Mission in the Local Congregation, (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 2007), Kindle, Ch 5, “Imagining an Active Eucharist,” Paragraph 6. 22 Ibid., Ch 1, Paragraphs 5-6.
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location in a Sunday morning service, to change things—
specifically other meals.”23 Thus, the sacrament of Eucharist
informs other missional meals as a master practice informs
ancillary practices and as a centripetal and centrifugal force,
paradoxically drawing practices in to be informed by the
transformative grace present at the table and also sending out
the energy of transformative grace present at the table to inform
other meal practices.
How might “Eucharistic” eating and feeding contrast from
typical eating and feeding in today’s context? In his analysis of
“Eating Jesus,” in Food and Faith: a Theology of Eating, Norman Wirzba
focuses on Jesus’ speech in the Gospel of John when Jesus
identifies as “living bread” and tells the disciples, “Those who
eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them” (Jn
6:56).24 Unlike most food and drink, which is broken down by our
eating and drinking it, the flesh and blood of Jesus abides in us
and allows for a transformation: “The other, that is, Jesus
continues to live on in me not as de-formed matter but as food
23 Ibid., Ch 5, “Imagining an Active Eucharist,” Paragraph 7.24 Norman Wirzba, Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating, (Cambridge: University Press, 2011), 154-155.
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that in-forms and re-forms life from the inside.”25 In other
words, eucharistic eating is other-oriented. In this eating, we
are “dislocated and relocated outside of ourselves, called to a
more attentive, sympathetic, and caring embrace of the world.”26
Much like the eating that occurred in Jesus’ meal ministry in
Luke-Acts in which Jesus as guest sought to transform his hosts
through a call for repentance and Jesus as host sought to
transform his guests through overabundant forgiveness, healing,
and feeding, Eucharistic eating transforms participants by
calling them to accept the other within and embrace the other
without.
Wirzba contrasts Eucharistic eating with the consumeristic
eating that is prevalent in the culture of the United States.
Consumeristic eating is “dedicated to the consumer’s comfort,
convenience, and control,”27 whereas Eucharistic eating brings
the consumer outside of his or her comfort zone, challenges the
consumer to accept the other, and disrupts the consumer’s
illusions of his or her power. Eucharistic eating invites the
25 Ibid., 157.26 Ibid., 158.27 Ibid., 159.
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consumer to be empowered by receiving grace in communion with God
and in community with others.
I would now like to explore three different ministries of
the ELCA that model certain characteristics of a missional meal
ministry. The first two ministries, First Slice Pie Café, run by
Chef Mary Ellen Diaz, and Table Grace Café, headed by Chef Matt
Weber, are ministries that grew out of affiliations with and
flourish with the support of particular congregations. The final
ministry, St. Lydia’s Dinner Church, is in and of itself a
congregation whose worship is centered in a particular experience
of the Eucharist as a full meal. In my analysis, I will seek to
draw connections between each of these ministries and the theory
that I have established thus far. I will touch on how each of
these ministries displays the nature of the hospitable meals in
Luke-Acts whereby leaders and outcasts are welcome and invited to
be transformed and whereby Jesus and his believers reciprocate,
practicing roles of both guest and host. I will also seek to
highlight how each of these ministries is influenced by the
Eucharist as a master practice, as a sacrament with centripetal
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and centrifugal influence, and as grounded in other-oriented
eating and feeding.
The first meal ministry is First Slice Pie Café located in
Chicago, Illinois and headed by chef Mary Ellen Diaz. Diaz’s
inspiration for this particular ministry comes from several
sources. One part of her inspiration for a meal ministry was her
background as a chef, trained in France and with experience in
multi-starred restaurants and entertainment franchises. While
working in these settings, Diaz recalls that she was “always
giving away the last slice” but “didn’t think first about feeding
the poor.”28 One transformative step in her journey was serving
at a soup kitchen and seeing the reaction of those whom she
served: “It only took one night of making meals amazing for
people in need and seeing the smiles that made me realize I could
do something here.”29 Another part of her inspiration was
Ebenezer Luther Church, Chicago. Her initial connection with
Ebenezer was as a chef, cooking for gala events, but, over time,
28 Kathleen Kastilahn, “Serving the First Slice: Community Kitchen Finds New Way to Feed the Poor,” The Lutheran15, no. 10 (November 2011): 35.29 Judy Hevrdejs, “Remarkable Woman: Mary Ellen Diaz: First Slice founder turns Spanish cooking background and French culinary training into a way to help feed Chicago's hungry.” Chicago Tribune, July 15, 2012. Accessed October 1,2014. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-07-15/features/ct-tribu-remarkable-diaz-20120715_1_family-meals-arts-culinaires-first-slice.
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she began worshiping at the community and building
relationships.30 Her pastor, Paul Koch, was inspired by her
vision of a “community-sponsored kitchen,” in which subscribers
pay for three meals with three servings a week and their payments
help provide funds for a family in need to get the same meals
free, and he helped her recruit the first subscription and
scholarship members.31 Diaz’s involvement at Ebenezer – first at
the business level and then at the worship level – clearly
informed and provided impetus for her ministry.
First Slice Pie Café practices transformative and reciprocal
hospitality and engages in other-oriented, Eucharistic eating in
several ways. One way First Slice is oriented towards the other
is the attention that Diaz gave to the dynamics of her community.
The Café is located in an area where people of multiple
backgrounds and social classes coexist, providing potential
ground for a meal ministry to break down boundaries and create
connections through food.32 First Slice also practices reciprocal
hospitality by connecting subscribing and scholarship members not
only in the business dynamics but in the physical preparation of
30 Kastilahn, “Serving the First Slice,” 35. 31 Ibid.32 Ibid.
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the food. In the kitchen, community and church members,
subscribers and scholarship members work side by side to prepare
the food for the week. For Diaz, this is one of the most
important aspects of First Slice: that people work together and
“cook with their hearts.”33 While food donations are occasionally
received, Diaz says that the mission of the organization is best
fulfilled when volunteers cook the food: “We feel much more
driven if our mission is based on us sort of rolling up our
sleeves and cooking for every dollar.”34 More recently, Diaz has
also added a small job training program in which the cooking
experience provides volunteers with work skills.35 Like Jesus
with the disciples in the feeding of the crowd, she empowers
those who have received her hospitality to offer hospitality to
others. The eating itself is also a chance to feel connected to
the other: “You can come in and have good food, and other people
can have good food too.”36 When Sharon Koch, subscriber and
volunteer at First slice, saw a young mother and child in the
neighborhood with a First Slice tote, it was a symbol for her of
33 Ibid.34 Hevrdejs, “Remarkable Woman.”35 Ibid.36 Ibid.
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boundaries being broken: “I felt connected, the tote is the
signal. We know First Slice connects church members and the
community.”37 In all of these ways, First Slice Pie Café is an
embodiment of a missional meal ministry.
Another meal ministry is Table Grace Café in Omaha Nebraska
founded by Matt and Simone Weber. Both Matt and Simone are active
in the Nebraska’s Evangelical Lutheran Church Community: Matt
worked at Carol Joy Holling Camp in Ashland, Nebraska, which is
part of Nebraska Lutheran Outdoor Ministries, and Simone works as
the director of music ministry at First Lutheran Church, Omaha.38
Like Diaz, the inspiration for Table Grace started in the church
setting. Initially, the Webers started by “offering personal chef
services for single parents in their church”39 but were
dissatisfied with the sustainability of the model from a business
perspective. After deciding to further the ministry by starting a
registered 501 © (3) nonprofit organization, Matt Weber paid
particular attention to the neighborhood in which it was to be
located, deciding on a spot downtown close to a bus stop transfer37 Kastilahn, “Serving the First Slice,” 35.38 Emily Brocker, “Cultivators: Table Grace Café,” Edible Omaha (May 16, 2012),Accessed October 3, 2014. http://edibleomaha.com/online-magazine/spring-2012/cultivators-table-grace-cafe/.39 Ibid.
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station, the homeless population, and a number of businesses.
Table Grace operates without a register and relies on patrons
with financial means to donate as much or more than the worth of
their meal so that others with less financial means can receive a
free meal. In 2012, the business was serving forty people a day
and in need of more paying customers, so that Table Grace could
serve 60 people a day.40
The organization practices reciprocal and transformative
hospitality and other-oriented Eucharistic eating in a number of
ways. One way the organization practices reciprocal hospitality
is in the diverse body of volunteer workers who help to manage
the restaurant. People from varying backgrounds work side by
side: those who pay for their meals and those who receive free
meals. Hank Shiffbauer, 75, a retiree helps to deliver the
produce and meat donated by a grocery store and feels that the
ministry gives him purpose: “I thank God that I can still walk
around and do things like this.”41 Shiffbauer works side by side
with a Sean Blake, who used to be homeless and now plays in the
40 Ibid.41 Tim Palleson, “Table Grace: In Omaha, a Lutheran-run restaurant feeds the soul.” The Lutheran 24, no. 10 (October 2011): 37.
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band at First Lutheran Church.42 This relationship shows not the
breaking down of boundaries but Blake’s playing in the First’s
band shows the centripetal and centrifugal forces of Eucharist at
play: just as the Webers’ experience at First sent them out to
start this ministry, the experience of the ministry has drawn
people like Blake into First.
A two week restaurant internship program is one way that
this meal ministry practices reciprocal and transformative
hospitality allowing volunteers to develop job skills and receive
guidance from Matt Weber in writing their resume and job hunting.
Weber hopes to develop good relationships with other Omaha
organizations that will provide stable jobs for interns.43 In
this way, like Diaz, Weber empowers recipients of his hospitality
to be hospitable to others. Those who have participated in an
internship also feel that the experience has transformed them.
Teena Herrod, who is recovering from alcoholism and was homeless,
was able to successfully get a job as a hotel caterer after
working at Table Grace.44 After suffering significant loss as a
result of her alcoholism, the experience at Table Grace
42 Ibid.43 Brocker, “Cultivators.”44 Palleson, “Table Grace,” 37.
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represented a new beginning: “Matt helped me with my self-
esteem.”45 Reflecting on this aspect of Table Grace, Weber says,
“I’m not just feeding people with food. I’m feeding them in other
ways.”46 Eating and feeding others at Table Grace enables people
to be transformed by their experience of Weber’s meal hospitality
and his encouragement of others to practice meal hospitality.
A final meal ministry is St. Lydia’s in New York City led by
Pastor Emily Scott. This meal ministry is slightly different from
the others in that St. Lydia’s is an actual congregation and the
meal that it holds is a celebration of the Eucharist. When
describing the inspiration for St. Lydia’s, Scott recalls
realizing that many young New Yorkers, despite having a desire to
be connected with a church, were having difficulty making the
connection: “I started to think, ‘There’s a hunger; there’s a
need that’s not being met. What would a church for these people
look like?’”47 Scott credits the idea of St. Lydia’s to the Holy
Spirit: “The idea of a church that was centered around the early
church practice of having a meal together as Eucharist just kind 45 Ibid.46 Ibid.47 Ansley Roan, “Dinner – and the Gospel – is served at St. Lydia’s.” Faith and Leadership. October 9, 2012. Accessed September 26, 2014. http://www.faithandleadership.com/features/articles/dinner-and-the-gospel-served-st-lydias.
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of fell out of the sky.”48 The name, St. Lydia’s, reflects the
mission of the church, since St. Lydia is known in Acts for
providing hospitality in a city known for inhospitality (16:14-
15). Culturally, New York City is known for being a city in which
people rarely interact face to face over a meal, so the meal at
St. Lydia’s provides time and space for people to engage in a
countercultural and missional practice. The mission of the church
itself is grounded in principles of connection and community:
“Telling Our Story. Sharing the Meal. Working Together.”49
The transformation that takes place in the St. Lydia’s meal
is a transformation of feeling connected and engaged in a culture
of isolation. Rachel Pollack, the part-time community
coordinator, explains her role in the church’s mission, “I have a
kind of ‘mother hen’ personality at church, because sometimes
people need to be pushed and prodded to break free of inhibitions
and habits of isolation that keep us from connecting.”50 A
worshipper, Mabel Bermejo, who is Catholic, also highlights how
St. Lydia’s encourages participants to engage with each other:
“It’s not passive; it’s very active. It’s not like you’re sitting
48 Ibid.49 Ibid.50 Ibid.
Steinly 27
on a back pew. Everyone has a place at the table.”51 The
Eucharist meal at St. Lydia’s provides space for people to
connect with each other and with God.
Like the disciples who formed the crowd into intimate groups
of fifty while feeding the crowd in Luke, Scott hopes to grow the
ministry in a way that preserves the intimacy of the present
congregation, keeping worship numbers to thirty-five to forty
people and offering multiple worship times during the week as the
congregation grows. She also has a vision that would fulfill the
concept of the centrifugal forces of Eucharist – extending the
transformative hospitality of the meal outwards into the
community – by starting an intentional community for homeless
youth and providing space for New York City artists. Overall,
Scott feels that what takes place at St. Lydia’s embodies the
story of the travelers on their way to Emmaus, who recognized
Jesus in the breaking of the bread: “God’s always going to be
bigger than what we write down, but just keep coming back to the
table. That’s going to keep forming you.”52
51 Ibid.52 Ibid.
Steinly 28
In conclusion, I hope that this paper has shown the
potential of the meal experience being a missional opportunity. I
have illustrated how the table fellowship of Jesus can be a
model, inspiring us to make transformative space for opponents
and outcasts and to practice reciprocal hospitality that empowers
all to be both host and guest in the meal. I have also emphasized
the importance of the Eucharist as being a master practice and as
having centripetal and centrifugal influences on other Christian
meals and as providing a model for a transformative meal that
orients the consumer towards the other. I then offered three
illustrations of potentially missional meals from the ministries
of the ELCA: First Slice Pie Café, Grace Table Café, and St.
Lydia’s Dinner Church. I hope that these theories and practices
here illustrated in this paper will inspire others to practice
missional eating and feeding as way of breaking down boundaries
and making space for the transformational message of God’s love
and grace in Jesus Christ.
Steinly 29
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