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Encouraging Camaraderie
Food often plays a major role in human interactions. We celebrate life events with food, we share meals with family during the holidays and we prepare fancy dishes when friends come to visit. Even in countries with much less material wealth than the United States, food is central to times of celebration.

Sharing food in community is also an important part of our lives as Christians. It's illustrative that the symbol of our interconnectedness as Christians is a meal: Christ's open, welcoming Communion table. In the Presbyterian tradition, the community of Christ is invited to the table to be reconciled to one another and to God. As Christ broke and shared bread with his disciples, so do we in communion with one another.

In the Middle East, at the time of Christ, meals were symbols of welcoming and belonging. In ancient times, a person would never sit down to eat with an enemy, in part because to share a meal meant you were no longer enemies. Breaking bread together also broke down walls between those who sat together to eat. Christ's last supper with the disciples was more than simply a meal among friends. It was an invitation to reconciliation and relationship.

Here's What One PW is Doing
Every year for the past 10 years, Presbyterian Women at First Presbyterian Church in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, have held a soup and salad luncheon to benefit PATH-Pocono Area Transitional Housing-an organization that helps homeless families get back on their feet.

Everything they serve is homemade and all-you-can-eat. With less than 10 active members in their PW, organizers welcome help from the congregation, whom they ask to cook and help run the luncheon. Local businesses are solicited for donations of paper products and various ingredients for the meal. Since their first luncheon they have raised more than $10,000.

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