Bring Back the Buffalo (VII): Sharing the Table

Galatians 2:11-21 is one of those obscure passages in the New Testament that does not get nearly as much attention in popular-level, evangelical Christianity as it probably deserves. I doubt, for instance, that anyone has ever made “When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face” their life verse, but even so, in Paul’s vivid recounting of the dust-up he and Peter (Cephas) had over the issue of shared table fellowship in the Antiochian church may be one of the most poignant depictions of the Gospel—how it was understood and how it functioned in the life of the early church—as any we might come across in the early church.

The issue at stake in this passage is the question of whether Jewish believers can, or should, share table with Gentile believers. Can circumcised and uncircumcised Christians eat together? Initially, Peter and Paul both answered this question with an unequivocal “yes.” One of the most fundamental implications of the Gospel—they believed—was that because all are saved equally through faith and Jesus, and because we are emphatically not saved through our adherence to the Mosaic law, *because,* in other words, it’s by grace we are saved through faith, and this not of works, lest anyone should boast, both Jews and Gentiles are free to eat together at the same table. Not only can they, they actually signal the Gospel in its purest, most fundamental form, every time they sit down together and break bread together.

This is why, Paul goes on to explain, when some “Judaizers” from Jerusalem came and started criticizing the Jews for eating with the uncircumcised in Antioch, and Peter bowed to the peer pressure and withdrew from their shared table—when Peter declined to eat together with the Gentiles, to appease the Judaizing element in the church—Paul “confronted him to his face.” His refusal to share table with the Gentiles, after all, was a betrayal of the Gospel at its deepest level.

From a biblical scholarship perspective, this passage is vital to our understanding of the origins and early life of the Christian church, because it shows us the first Christians, wrestling with the implications of their message, in real time.

From a ministry perspective more generally, this passage is crucial to our understanding of Christian community, and what reconciliation in the Gospel really looks like, because here we see two distinct groups in the church—the circumcised Jews and the uncircumcised Gentiles—two groups who historically were alienated from each other and at enmity with each other. And yet, they had all come to believe in the same Jesus for salvation, and had all received the same baptism as the mark of their belonging in the same family of God. How do they bury the spiritual hatchet, and come together, and live together as followers of the One Way? How do they signal they have done so, and how do they keep the hatchet buried, even when the wear and tear of community life threatens to resurface it from time to time.

For Paul the answer was simple: the shared meal.

A deep dive into the cultural context of the ancient world would point out how the shared meal functioned culturally as a profound symbol of one’s identification and unity with those at the table; it’s why the early Church was so scandalized in Acts 11:3, to learn that Peter had eaten at the house of Cornelius, the Roman (i.e. Gentile) Centurion. A deep dive into the theological background would point out how, throughout the New Testament, we see the “shared meal” functioning as a spiritual sign of Jesus’s open welcome to receive his grace and enter the Kingdom of God; it’s why Jesus was notoriously known as the man who “eats with sinners,” why he gave us the communion meal as our primary act of worship, and why the early church continually “broke bread together” in one another’s homes. A deep dive into the psychological significance might point out that there is, it seems, a profound psychological bond that forms when we actively and intentionally eat together with others; it’s why studies show that the kids of families that share a daily family meal are more thrive socially, have better grades, stay out of trouble, and have higher self-esteem.

I have been thinking a lot about the spiritual significance and the theological meaning of the shared meal, from a Christian perspective, since returning from a trip our church took out to Pelican Lake First Nations Reserve in Saskatchewan this summer. We went there both to witness and to celebrate the establishment of a self-sustaining herd of buffalo as a gesture of friendship and reconciliation, through the work of Loko Koa, a non-profit organization that supports Indigenous communities and establishes connections across Canada. Our church had been one of the donors for this project, and we were invited to visit the community in June, as part of a cross-cultural encounter.

I’ve shared a variety of thoughts on this trip, looking at it from a number of theological angles, but today, I want to wrap this series up by reflecting on the role that the shared meal plays in genuine reconciliation. Our church’s delegation at the home of chief Peter Bill, the chief of the Pelican Lake band, where he and his family hosted us graciously and generously. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, we were invited to participate in a number of cultural experiences—the water ceremony, the sweat lodge, the healing circle—each of which opened our hearts and minds to our hosts in powerful ways.

As powerful as these things were, however, it was during the times we ate together that we formed the kind of understanding that is necessary, I think, for reconciliation to happen. When our defenses were down and conversation was given full space to breathe, because we had nowhere else to be and no other agenda than simply to attend to our basic biological needs for food and drink and safety—this is when we really began to think about our hosts, not just in terms of a culture to understand, but in terms of friends to honor.

Perhaps this is why eating together—such a common-place activity that probably does not get nearly the spiritual attention it deserves—why it played such a central role in the life of the early Church, why it holds such a crucial place in the biblical narrative, why it is so vital to the life of a church community. Because when strangers sit down and attend to their creaturely needs together, something deeply spiritual happens, they cease, at some point, to be simply hosts and guests, and become, in some intangible but very real way: reconciled friends.

At least, if we share our tables with a full sense of the Gospel, in all its significance: that when we were turned away from God and living as strangers in the world, God graciously invited us to his table, a table set with his own broken body and poured out blood. Consummate host that he is, he welcomed us to the feast and feed us with his very life, and now he asks us to extend the same hospitality to others as we have tasted in him.

What better way to show that we truly understand this message, I wonder? What better way to signal our willingness to live out the Gospel? What better way, actually, to enact our desire for reconciliation, than to share table with those we long to be reconciled to?

Whatever else truth and reconciliation with Canada’s Indigenous people will look like, I think it will take many more genuine moments like the ones we experienced in Pelican Lake, of strangers sitting down together around the table, and getting up a few hours later, closer together because of the time they took to break bread together and come to a common understanding.

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