Love at a Distance. Feast From Afar.

Oct 27, 2020 | By Daniel Chabeda ES ‘22

I ordered myself food through UberEats for the first time on Monday, October 19, 2020, six years after the service launched, two years after moving to college, and 18 months after I downloaded the app. I thought about why it took me so long to utilize the convenient and popular food delivery service. The app is thoroughly-vetted, the deals are great, and I am generally a homebody who enjoys keeping cozy in my room: UberEats should have been my jam! I rarely eat out (homebody) and spend money infrequently, but despite these sensible explanations, I ultimately realized that it was not a dispositional or financial quality that held me back. My reticence was based in a deep-rooted social and spiritual conception that meals exist for community. 

Growing up, food always involved multiples: entrees, utensils, persons, families, etc. My mother is Nigerian and my dad is from Kenya, and as a foundation of our culture, the experience of food was always one of sharing in shared spaces. When I was eleven years old, my dad shared with me a tradition from the Maasai people, a nomadic tribe of Kenya, conveying this ethic of communal sharing. Before induction into the Moran phase, a warrior status gained upon the completion of rites and circumcision, a generation of Maasai boys would be sent to hunt grasshoppers with a small stick. In this context, a deep sense of brotherhood is inculcated and selfishness condemned. “If the brothers catch only one grasshopper,” my dad said, bent hands furrowing rows of air to convey the importance of it, “they will split the legs and share that grasshopper.” This outlook encouraged a communal eating practice in our family and became moralized to an extent that sometimes, I would even feel guilty eating alone in my room. Maybe you can relate. It wasn’t until a global pandemic emptied out those shared spaces and estranged me further than even my smartphone could that I finally dialed in my order.

My family’s high-valuation of communal eating is not unique. Pretty much every culture around the world engages in community gathering around food.[1] This form is even explicitly commanded by God to His people in the Bible. In the Old Testament, God desired His people to come together, and He instructed them to do so over food. Three times a year, all men of Israel are commanded to gather for feasts, food offerings, and harvest celebrations.[2] For Passover, a particularly central gathering to commemorate God’s salvation of Israel, God commanded each Jewish household to eat an entire lamb in one night. 

Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household. And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons...And you shall let none of it remain until the morning. - Exodus 12:3-4,10

In addition to its deep spiritual and symbolic relevance, the law of Passover is practically a commandment to grab all your neighbors and have a lamb meat feast! 

The demonstration of God’s concern for communal gathering around food crosses into the New Testament. Jesus shared His last moments together with the twelve disciples over a Passover meal,[3] and He met Peter, James, and John by the sea of Galilee after His resurrection with bread and fish that He himself had prepared.[4] Food shows up all across God's interactions with humanity, serving as a [meating] point for the communities and God. 

But in the “frictionless economy” created by services like UberEats, there is no room for shared space. Food couriers have practically no interaction with their clients. New York Times reporter Andy Newman became a food deliverer–UberEats, Doordash, and Postmates–for a day and shared his experience biking to fancy new apartment buildings inhabited by young professionals. He had to deliver the food through doors cracked barely wide enough for the recipient to slip their arm through.[5] I wonder how many arms retreat into those cracked doors to eat their meals hurriedly over mountains of work, one hand plopping cherry tomatoes while the other assembles emails. How could we let this become our food culture? 

With both Biblical history and contemporary culture in mind, I struggled to envision circumstances where eating in isolation could be positive. This is partly due to my own history and struggles with eating. Because my parents encouraged a culture of sharing in our household, even as a 10-year-old, I knew I should share food with my siblings and wait for them to eat together. But as we grew older, the influence of American suburban life sent our lives onto independent trajectories, and in this context, my home values were often incompatible. As a middle schooler, suddenly I faced a new dilemma: I’m home alone after soccer practice, and I’m hungry! Rationally, I understood my body’s need to replenish calories. At the same time, I felt a niggling shame at eating alone due to an imbalanced internalization of the cultural emphasis on communal eating. While my feelings of guilt for eating were invalid (right and wrong is not a matter of eating [6]), my repression of conscience was also detrimental, leading to a deeper spiritual deafness. By high school, I couldn’t hear that voice of warning at all when pilfering food from the fridge, hoarding snacks from my siblings, or eating alone merely for personal convenience. My oversensitivity to out-of-context acculturation swung to an opposite extreme of undersensitivity to my family whom I desired to cherish. 

It was Christ who helped me recalibrate my conscience. God in the flesh pronounced that I had no shame. Reading His word grounded my sense of right and wrong and softened my heart to desire obedience. Jesus invited me to eat of Him[7] and then He came in to eat with me.[8] Once I came to experience this closeness with God, I never had to eat alone again. I was freed from both oversensitivity and undersensitivity to the relationality of eating. This freedom has even allowed me to see all the incredible and unique ways that UberEats closes the gap of isolation between us. We can now send meals to show love to distant family members, or even UberEats for a gathering of friends. In the constant grind of our contemporary, virtual culture, ordering a meal to a tranquil home can even be a necessary escape from congested highways, unending to-do lists, and Zoom-stuffed schedules.

Before we reach the conclusion, I want to invite you: if you relate to my story, please feel free to contact me with any thoughts or questions. My story is not fully contained here, and it doesn’t end here! In fact, if we consider the story arc of God, we know that Jesus came to earth to invite all people to a future meal. At the end, when the trumpet sounds and all knees bow down, those who accept His invitation into relationship will be welcomed to a wedding feast: the marriage supper of the lamb.[9] Like the lamb eaten at Passover, we will feast together in community and celebrate our salvation. There will be no sickness, no loss, and no estrangement between brother and sister in Christ. But until that day, we can send food to friends far away in the midst of a pandemic, enjoy a quiet meal alone with Jesus in our rooms, and cherish the many other expressions of love made uniquely possible by distance.

Send any inquiries to: daniel.chabeda@yale.edu

[1] Hamburg, M. E., Finkenauer, C., & Schuengel, C. (2014, January 31). Food for love: The role of food offering in empathic emotion regulation. Frontiers in Psychology, 5. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00032

[2] Exodus 23:14-17

[3] Luke 22:7-23

[4] John 21:1-13

[5]https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/21/nyregion/doordash-ubereats-food-app-delivery-bike.html?auth=login-google1tap&login=google1tap

[6] Romans 14:13-19

[7] John 6:22-58

[8]Revelation 3:20

[9] Matthew 22:1-14; Revelation 19:6-9

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