How does the sense of taste fit into the context of the Church? A few months ago I wrote about Holy Communion which certainly does involve tasting, but it is more of a symbolic re-enactment of the Last Supper. (You can read an excerpt from that article at the end of this one.)
The Last Supper is just one of many examples of people coming together to share a meal. We all know the stories of Jesus eating with Levi, the tax collector, and with Martha and Mary, and feeding 5,000 with seven loaves of bread and a few fish.
People come together around the table. A sense of community is established. There are traditions around food. Religious traditions of feasting and fasting, of sacrifice and sacrament. Food is a weapon when it is withheld from people, but providing food to the hungry (or providing the means of growing food) helps peace and love to to grow. Many churches operate soup kitchens or food banks. Read Take this bread: a radical conversion by Sara Miles (277.3 MIL) and Uncle Willie and the soup kitchen by DyAnne DiSalvo (E DIS).
Fellowship in churches centers around food: coffee hour, church socials, pot lucks. How many churches do you know of that have gathered favorite recipes into a church cookbook? I have an old one from St John's Danish Lutheran Church (Seattle) from 1926 and another from 1941 with recipes for coffee cake, herring salads, "Soup from the Head of a Hog", and "American Chop Suey". Plymouth Church Library has Happy times: Habitat cook book by the Plymouth Church Habitat Action Group (641.5 HAP).
We have some really great food books in the library. I found The Meaning of Food (349.1 HAR) to be fascinating. There are some recipes, but the book focuses on the place of food in life. Feasting with God: Adventures in Table Spirituality (641.5 WHI) is more about rituals and conversation than it is about recipes, but they are there, too. Here are some more titles on food:
Potluck / Shelby, Anne. E SHE
Stone soup : an old tale / Brown, Marcia. E BRO
Rich Christians in an age of hunger : moving from affluence to generosity / Sider, Ronald J. 261.8 SID
Food and faith: justice, joy and daily bread /Schut, Michael, ed. 261.832 SCH
Holy Communion, also known as The Eucharist or the Lord's Supper is considered a sacrament in most Christian churches. It is one of only two sacraments performed in the United Church of Christ - baptism is the other one. During the Last Supper, Jesus gave his disciples bread and wine during the Passover meal, commanding them to "do this in memory of me" while referring to the bread as "my body" and the cup of wine as "the new covenant in my blood".
Some Christian religions believe that the bread and wine (or grape juice) actually become the body and blood of Christ. This is called transubstantiation. Family lore has it that my great-uncle refused to attend the Lutheran church with his family after learning about what seemed to him to be a cannibalistic custom. Other religions practice Communion as a symbolic reenactment of the Last Supper, doing it in memory of Jesus.
According to the United Church of Christ website, "Communion is:
a joyous act of thanksgiving for all God has done, is doing, and will do for the redeeming of creation;
a sacred memorial of the crucified and risen Christ, a living and effective sign of Christ’s sacrifice in which Christ is truly and rightly present to those who eat and drink;
an earnest prayer for the presence of the Holy Spirit to unite those who partake with the Risen Christ and with each other, and to restore creation, making all things new;
an intimate experience of fellowship in which the whole church in every time and place is present and divisions are overcome;
a hopeful sign of the promised Realm of God marked by justice, love and peace."