"The Fellowship of the Table"

Sorry to disappoint you if you were expecting a sequel to the Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings.  This is actually a section heading in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together published in 1954.

As I said in an earlier post, the idea behind the More-with-Less cookbook is to find ways to faithfully share our table and food, in the literal and metaphorical sense.  I've put together some quotes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian, and Longacre.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer

These quotes do not need me to expound upon them other than to say that as a Mennonite and someone who struggles with AN, I hope to find ways to faithfully eat my own daily bread, share my daily bread with others at my table, and remember that Jesus Christ is the Eternal daily bread for all.

Bonhoeffer, p. 67
"Every mealtime fills Christians with gratitude for the living, present Lord and God, Jesus Christ.  Not that they seek any morbid spiritualization of material gifts; on the contrary, Christians, in their wholehearted joy in the good gifts of this physical life, acknowledge their Lord as the true giver of all good gifts; and beyond this, as the true Gift; the true Bread of life itself; and finally, as the One who is calling them to the banquet of the Kingdom of God.  So in a singular way, the daily table fellowship binds the Christians to their Lord and one another."

Bonhoeffer, p. 68
"The table fellowship of Christians implies obligation.  It is our daily bread that we eat, not my own.  We share our bread.  Thus we are firmly bound to one another not only in the Spirit but in our whole physical being.  The one bread that is given to our fellowship links us together in a firm covenant.  Now none dares go hungry as long as another has bread, and he who breaks this fellowship of the physical life also breaks the fellowship of the Spirit."

 Longacre, p. 25
"As Christians dealing with human hurts, we have to remind ourselves again and again that we are not called to be successful, but to be faithful.  Our first directions come from the way Jesus told us to live, not from what we think will work...Wayne North, then a Mennonite pastor, made his point in an editorial entitled 'Can We Really Help Hunger?... For however they may have felt, the disciples responded in obedience.  They shared what was available.  Though it seemed totally inadequate, they brought the little lunch for distribution.  Their act of faith was to share and let God take responsibility for the rest."

 Bonhoeffer, p. 69
"So long as we eat our  bread together we shall have sufficient even with the least.  Not until one person desires to keep his own bread for himself does hunger ensue.  This is a strange divine law.  May not the story of the miraculous feeding of the five thousand with two fishes and five loaves, have, along with many others, this meaning also?
    The fellowship of the table teaches Christians that here they still eat the perishable bread of the earthly pilgrimage.  But if they share this bread with one another, they shall also one day receive the imperishable bread together in the Father's house."