"You have to eat!"  I've scolded my study-crazed friends with this refrain often.  Stressed about readings, papers, exams, and a thesis, my friend Katie would often find herself alone in the library or at the coffee shop for hours on end, oblivious to anything other than the paper she was immersed in.  She would forget to eat meals and neglect her friends for days on end until the assignment was completed.  In her isolation, she deprived herself of friends, food, and sanity.  In an effort to restore some balance to her life, I would lure Katie out of the library with the prospect of a meal at her favorite sandwich shop.  I hoped she would get both some sustenance and some human contact -- and thus some perspective, focus, and sanity.

"You have to eat!"  It's true.  We do, in fact, have to eat in order to survive.  But we mean something more when we use this phrase.  Our purpose is not only to convince the friend to eat, but to eat with us.  "Take a break," we're saying.  "Take a break and sit down with me!"  Somehow, when we eat with others, we receive much more than physical sustenance.  Our relationships are strengthened; the bonds of friendship are reinforced.  Sharing food is crucial for sharing our lives.

Christians recognize the power that eating together holds.  For Christians, sharing food is crucial because in the sharing of food, we are actually shaping our communities.  Perhaps the most universal and sacred ritual of our faith is communion.  The name itself implies uniting, coming together, oneness.  The unity of communion is so important to us that we have built this version of eating together right into our liturgies and our worship services.  The early church practiced the Love Feast or Agape meal, and my denomination, the Church of the Brethren, is among several modern denominations, continuing this practice today.

But Christians eat together in other, less ritualized ways as well.  In congregational fellowship meals, small group dinners or a weekly potluck dinner with neighbors, the practice of eating together pervades the life of our communities.  These informal times are certainly important to our shared faith.  Relationships flourish and communities are strengthened just as much, if not more, during these ad hoc, spontaneous meals as during the liturgical ones.  The Love Feast and the potluck dinner, both expressions of the practice of eating together, take on very different forms.  Most significantly, they rely on very different structures of authority.  And so they pose this question:   What kind of authority is necessary for a practice to remain cohesive and coherent?  What sort of authority is required to ensure that eating together meets our needs of sustenance and community?

In the Church of the Brethren, the twice-annual Love Feast consists of three parts: the footwashing, the fellowship meal, and the bread and cup.  Each part offers a way in which to strengthen the community that is the church.  The footwashing offers an example of service, the meal a time of fellowship, and the bread and cup a sign of spiritual communion.  In gathering to eat together, the church defines the boundaries of its community and strengthens the bonds within.

The Brethren practice of Love Feast is modeled on the practice of the early church, and originated as a result of strict adherence to scriptural teaching.   Viewing scripture as the authority for every aspect of life, the early Brethren zealously attempted to follow every one of Jesus' commands in the gospels.  Brethren trace The Love Feast back to the Gospel of John, and organize it around these commands from Jesus, the ultimate authority of the Christian tradition.  But the scriptural authority stopped short of specifying every element of the procedure.  In execution, the practice has taken on a life of its own, guided every step of the way by the human authorities who have assumed regulatory power.

Details of the service have varied from congregation to congregation throughout the years.  Questions of method and participation of non-members and women have been hotly contested.  The first debates centered on the proper procedure for footwashing.  Authoritative but not detail-oriented, Jesus said only "you ought to wash one another's feet," leaving the details to be hammered out later.  Should deacons wash everyone else's feet?  Or should each participant wash the feet of those next to him?  Later on, issues of participation sparked debate as well. Was it possible for someone who was not a member of the congregation to participate in the shared meal of the Love Feast?  Could women serve the communion to themselves, or was it necessary for a male deacon to serve them?
Brethren quickly realized that the instruction of scripture was not all-encompassing, and the congregations sought another form of authority to govern their practice of the Love Feast.  Queries were brought to the Annual Meeting, comprised of delegates from each congregation.  Here, a human body assumed the authority of governing the practice, taking over where Jesus and the Scriptures left off.

Participants felt that these issues were crucial to the practice; continuity and uniformity must be ensured.  Clarification of policy and procedure would have to come from a hierarchy of human authority in order to do this.  Unfortunately, this large body at Annual Meeting was unable to make decisions quickly, so the questions were not answered until long after they had been posed.  The footwashing question took several years of research and debate to answer, and the issue of women's participation was tabled for at least ten years.  The slowness of this process was not simply sluggishness, but an effort to find guidance from the spirit in the midst of the debates.  The authority of scripture was certainly important, but Jesus' commands weren't detailed enough to curtail all controversy.  Human authorities would have to do the best they could.

These human authorities have been fairly effective, though.  In more recent times, questions about the practice of Love Feast have been few, especially on the congregational level.  Older members of the church, long-time practitioners of Love Feast, know the details for the ordinance inside and out.  My grandmother tells the story of one older man in our congregation who, intent upon making the preparations as perfect and uniform as possible, would use a ruler to measure the distance between dishes set out on the tables for the meal.  Distances had to be exactly the same each time the community ate the meal, to insure the continuity of the practice.  The experience of these older, more knowledgeable church members gives them quite a bit of authority in governing the practice.  Decisions about change in procedure or content of the service are usually deferred to these members of the community, whose wisdom is the product of years of immersion in the Love Feast.

This strong, authoritative tradition makes the ordinance of Love Feast a distinctive marker for Brethren communities.  Generally, the practice remains somewhat uniform across congregations, thanks to the resolutions of the Annual Meeting and the efforts of the older generation.  The confusion about participation of women and outsiders has mellowed over the years, and while women are certainly allowed to serve their own communion now, the service of Love Feast is for the most part only attended by baptized members of the congregation.  This unique practice of eating together has a strong effect on the shaping of the community that is the Church of the Brethren.

The practice of eating together happens not only within authoritative traditions, but also in less ritualized and more informal communities as well.  For many Christians, fellowship and relationship-building happen during that staple of church life:  the potluck dinner.  In an effort to foster this kind of fellowship and build community in a new setting, a group of first-year Candler students decided to share one potluck meal each week.  Though we come from different backgrounds, denominations, states, and customs, the potluck meal is a time when ten or twelve of us can come, eat together, and share our lives with one another.  It is a place where we can begin to build a community in the midst of new surroundings and fresh friendships.

Unlike the age-old tradition of the Love Feast, this community potluck is a very new tradition for this particular group of people.  There are no ground rules to rely on, no authoritative body to appeal to, and no grandmothers to tell us how it really should be done.  The practice seems to define itself as it is carried out.  Every stage of the definition process is a struggle, however.  Even the question of what to call the meal prompted an extended discussion.  Was "potluck" the proper term, or was it a "covered dish" meal, or even a "carry-in?"  The group had no clear authority -- no definitive interpreter of the potluck tradition, no master of the covered-dish guild -- to whom we could make appeal.  We had to decide on our own that the term "potluck" was sufficient.

Other questions about method and procedure popped up as well, directed at no one in particular, but to everyone in general.  How would we divide the labor?  Who would host each week?  Would someone volunteer or would we designate someone to provide the main course?  In the end, two women who had instigated the idea of sharing a meal answered most of these questions.  Participants continued to raise questions, but now directed them at the two organizers.  These women had no more experience with potluck dinners than other participants, but somehow the authority fell to them.

Like the participants in the Love Feast, potluck participants also had questions about who could be included in the meal.  While we wanted to include as many people as possible, we knew that boundaries would have to be imposed.  Unlike the Love Feast participants, though, the diverse group of seminary students had no Annual Meeting to resolve our issues.  The tension between being inclusive and adjusting to logistic limits was always noticeable, but who had the authority to say who could be invited and who could not?    In the end, we found that the group worked best with ten or twelve people because of the restraints of food preparation, apartment space, and conversation viability.  As the practice became more deeply ingrained, the group became more static, with the same people coming each week, and the number of new people tapering off.  Because we wanted to provide an intimate setting where people could get to know one another in depth, the group decided to sacrifice inclusiveness and diversity.

The sacrifice of diversity had a distinct impact on the community.  While we had made a sort of casual, unspoken agreement about the size of the group, the effects of the decision were easily recognizable.  The cohesiveness of the group was solidified on a recent potluck night when the conversation turned to another segment of the Candler population not represented within our potluck community.  We used language delineating "us" from "them" frequently, defining the boundaries of the community by naming those who were excluded.  We also talked openly about our lack of effort to accommodate diversity even within the group, acknowledging that although there were several vegetarians in our community, the main dish was never altered to exclude meat.

These conversations about inclusiveness and diversity have led the group to a greater awareness of our shortcomings, as well as to efforts to offer alternative choices for our vegetarian friends.  Even though the decisions about boundaries and procedures were made informally and without a designated authority, participants in the potluck were able to discuss the effects of the decisions on the practice, and made several helpful adjustments.

Despite the lack of tradition on which to rely, this group of students has found in the sharing of the meal a real sense of community.  There are no bylaws, governing bodies, or formal authorities, but we have been able to engage in this Christian practice of eating together.  Our participation in the potluck meal is a commitment to taking time out from our busy schedules of class, work, and reading that necessarily separate us from one another.  In this custom of eating together, we have found a real way to connect with each other, and to shape our own community.

In our search to shape and define the communities of which we are a part, eating together provides a means of nourishing both our bodies and the bonds of relationship.  As a Christian practice, eating together also reminds us of the importance of communing with one another in the Spirit.  In some of its expressions, this eating together is ritualized, relying heavily on authority to define the procedures and extent of the practice.  Community is defined on the basis of long-standing tradition and the decisions of governing bodies.  Those with the most experience are the most revered, and the practice continues because of the strong history of precedent.  In other expressions, eating together works to shape and define communities in a much more informal way.  New friends can come together and participate in practice and ritual even without guidelines or formal authority.  However the practice is governed, sharing food with one another enables us to share our lives and to shape our communities.

Ironically, my study-crazed friend Katie is quite the cook, and loves to share her delicious meals when she does take time to do it.  But without her friends' reminders of the necessity of eating, without the community and whatever form of authority it takes on, Katie's needs might remain unmet, her talents gone to waste.  Eating together, engaging in the practice communally, makes all the difference.  Whether traditional or contemporary, ancient or modern, regulated or ad hoc, the practice of eating together offers a place where we can come together, satisfy our basic needs, and begin to shape and define the communities in which we find ourselves.