Feeding a crowd

My wife turned into a great cook. She has plugged away at recipe books left to her by her mother, aunts and grandmothers as well as defining her own style. And where we once would regularly entertain friends, we find ourselves welcoming our children for Sunday night dinner. It’s a new tradition, perhaps two years old. A great part of the day is spent cooking (while someone else is kept busy scanning the world news) and the result is a lavish feast. Cooks enjoy sharing their successes and are keen for feedback. The recent cook-off on Master Chef saw a recording-breaking number of viewers take their seats in front of the box! Cooking is indeed a skill well worth possessing and growing, but without hospitality great food is just food, another meal.

Once our visitors arrive there are drinks to offer, appetizers and welcoming conversation about the events that have moulded our week’s story. There is companionship, affability, homeliness and the return of adult love and respect shared around a common table and experience. These are moments to value.

One of the keys to Jesus’ ministry is hospitality, to his disciples and to strangers. This is no more clearly evident than in his feeding of the 5000 with no less than 5 barley loaves and two fish (John 6:1 – 15). It is Jesus’ intention from the beginning that he provides for them all, indeed there were twelve hampers full when they were finished. There are, naturally, many layers to this story – it is Eucharistic, it is a precursor to the heavenly banquet that awaits the faithful, it also reveals the growing awareness of Jesus’ messiahship and his reluctance to be the kind of messiah that the crowd was seeking.

John’s Gospel delights in its rich images of bread and wine, and these become metaphors for Jesus himself, and in the context of the Eucharist itself, the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ. The interplay is tantalising and fascinating. And the link is Jesus’ desire to offer God’s hospitality to all – we are all welcome to his table, each of our stories is waiting to be heard, a banquet has been prepared, our cups overflow and the rich conversation brings pleasure and joy.

We don’t need to put on a feast to be hospitable. A cup of tea will do when we’re caught short. Extending hospitality is something we learn, like the way we cook. We model it on our families and it is a case of ‘doing to others as you would have others do to you’. It truly is a Gospel value. While meals may be memorable, the companionship of our friends and family around the table is the stuff of life.

Writes Kevin Bates SM:
Come to my table, taste of my Word
Bring me the life that you’ve lived.
Bring in the dancing. Bring in the pain.
Bring me the whole of your journey.