My Potluck Ministy

Years ago, long before I ever dreamed I’d be a “church lady”, when I rarely darkened the door of a church, and Sunday mornings were for sleeping and recovering from Saturday nights, I knew there was something special about sharing a meal with someone.

The first time you sat down to a table and ate with someone, something new grew up in your relationship. Maybe it’s just because you sat and looked at and talked to that person for the time it took to eat a meal. But I thought then and I think now that there’s more to it than that.

Since I’ve become a part of Grace Lutheran, and spent more and more time reading and talking and thinking about God, I’ve learned that eating with people was one of Jesus’ favorite things to do. He was always eating with someone, whether it was his disciples, or the Pharisees, or prostitutes, or taxpayers, or huge crowds of people who had no idea where the food was coming from.

My very favorite story in the bible is at the end of John, after Jesus has been killed, when some of the disciples have decided to go fishing and have fished all night, and they look up and see Jesus on the shore. When they get to shore they find that he has cooked a meal for them. They eat breakfast together there on the lakeshore at dawn. That is when Jesus tells Peter to feed his sheep.

Before that, during the last meal that they shared together before Jesus’ death, he told them the secret, the reason sharing a meal is such a mystical, divine experience that brings people closer, builds and strengthens the bonds between them. It’s because when we eat and drink bread and wine, or tortillas and tequila, or casserole and coffee, we are eating and drinking God, and sharing God with each other. God brings us closer together and becomes the bond between us.

This is what happens when we have potlucks at Grace. This is why we always have such a good time together at potlucks, and Lunch Bunch, and Spaghetti Suppers, and our dinners with the Montrose Grace Place youth. Because God is present with us when we eat together, in the very food and drink that we share with each other.

The reason that I help out setting up and cleaning up potlucks is that it helps bring about that divine, bonding experience. And someone’s got to do it!

-Barbara C