Lunch!
“He said to me, ‘This is the place where the priests are to cook the guilt offering and the sin offering and bake the grain offering, to avoid bringing them into the outer court and consecrating the people.’ ... He said to me, ‘These are the kitchens where those who minister at the temple are to cook the sacrifices of the people.’”
Today’s Text: Ezekiel 46:16-24 (Living Life Daily Devotional)
It’s so interesting how food can bring people together, but food can also separate people.
As more and more Koreans started immigrating into the US, the number of Korean churches grew, as well. And quite often, those early churches (and even churches today) were incubated in Anglo churches. And I have heard stories of how those Anglo churches had to make such a “huge sacrifice” because of the smell that the Korean congregations would generate with all their cooking and all their food.
A few years back, our church hosted our local Baptist association’s annual Empower Conference. Our church offered to provide kimbap for all the attendees. The reaction from the conference organizers was deep concern that the attendees would find our Korean “sushi” too exotic for their palates. In the end, everyone loved it.
I remember talking to an African American sister who used to attend our church. She is a dear sister, and we were openly talking about the racial divide that we find in most churches. And she said frankly that the first thing she noticed when she first walked into our church was the smell coming from the kitchen. And the aroma did not sit in her nose well at all. But in the end, she got used to it.
Generally, we find that even if food is not served on Sundays at any given church, food is still an integral part of the fellowship of that church. And we see that the fellowship around food was an integral part of temple worship too.
But because our taste in food is culturally driven, the fellowship around food can also segregate believers of different ethnicities. In fact, the food restrictions in Judaism did that very thing, violating the spirit of one the main reasons that Jesus went to the cross for the sins of the world:
There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
— Galatians 3:28
So while food is an integral part of our fellowship and worship, it must never be more important than the principles around why food is such an integral part of a faith community—that is, to bring people together in the joyful thanksgiving and praise of God.
We should do our best to incorporate food into our faith community in a way that brings people together, not keep them apart.
Father, You are good. Let us see Your goodness. Let us taste it even through the fellowship of our community. But give us wisdom so that we don’t idolize our tastes and use food to excluded and separate. Use us to draw others into Your goodness. In Jesus’s name. Amen.
