6th July 2025
Ordinary Habits that Change the World:
They devoted themselves to... the breaking of bread...
Anecdotally, it would seem that the family meal is going out of fashion. The pressures of work and the attraction of technology might be drawing us away from the kitchen table and towards a more individualised pattern of trays on the lap as we work at our laptops, watch TV or continue our online gaming. In fact, however, a 2019 survey in the UK found that almost 90% of respondents thought that eating a meal together as a family was either important or very important, and only 3.5% thought it was not at all important.
Sharing food builds connection. In conversation around a meal, we often reveal aspects of ourselves we might not otherwise share, and learn things about others we might not otherwise find out. There's a reason why the heart of Living Well is the shared meal on Fridays - not only does it provide much needed hot food to people who might not otherwise get that, but, around the tables guests and volunteers can engage in conversation, build relationships, sustain each other in mind and spirit as well as in body.
Sharing food is also a learning experience. At family meals, we learn to put others' needs before our own. We learn to share, not snatch. We learn to pass around the chips, not to hoard them all for ourselves. We learn to wait for others before rushing on to the next thing we want to do. We learn the rituals of laying the table and of clearing the table. We learn to serve as well as consume.
The "breaking of bread", referred to twice in Acts 2:42-46, almost certainly refers less to an early form of liturgical Communion service and more to a simple family meal. As they broke bread together, the early disciples who came, we know, from very different backgrounds, must have built connections, shared stories, found things in common. And they learnt what made for a good meal and what made for a bad meal. Paul admonishes the Corinthian church (1 Corinthians 10) for exacerbating divisions among themselves by having different quality food for rich and poor at their shared meals.
And, in the midst of it all, every time they broke bread, the words of Jesus himself, spoken at the Last Supper, must have echoed in their hearts. "Do this in remembrance of me."
