By Gary M. Long, Jr.

Lately we’ve been covering Food to Faith, a shared effort between Fresh Expressions and Impact Missions, and it’s led me to reflect on my own meal prep. Cooking is more than a chore or even a hobby for me—it’s spiritual. It is the real, embodied, bread-and-wine way that my faith so often speaks and my love is shared.

If I’m alone, I usually eat a hurried bite over the kitchen sink, but if friends or family are sitting down to eat, the whole thing changes. As a child I learned to give and receive love around the table, and growing and cooking food for others became wonderfully sacred in a way that sneaks up on me still today.

When Jesus wanted to reveal himself after the resurrection, he didn’t call a meeting. He broke bread. When the early church gathered, they didn’t start with strategy—they ate. Over and over again, the scriptures show us that meals are not distractions from spiritual life; they are spiritual life.

I bet you’ve seen how food gathers people in ways sermons sometimes can’t. There is gospel in gumbo, communion in cornbread, and healing grace in a well-timed casserole delivered after a funeral. It’s no accident that Jesus gave us a meal to remember him by.

To this southern kid, summer meals are a season of divine excess. Come this time of year, gardens overflow with abundance, making summer cooking feel nothing like duty and more like a dance with God’s work in the natural world. The food practically sings in technicolor.

Nothing tastes more like grace than a ‘mater sandwich. Author Sean Dietrich suggests that if your kitchen sink doesn’t look like murder was committed there, then you’re not making the sandwich as God intended it. I tend to agree.

Duke’s mayo. A lot. Merita bread. Salt and black pepper to excess. A couple slabs of tomato and then more mayo. That’s no longer lunch; that’s liturgy, and it should require no less than two napkins in polite company. There is no better way to get to know someone than over a meal – especially when tomato juice might be dripping down your arm while you eat!

So as you cook and go to the table, know that God is inviting you into rhythms that mirror creation itself. We take the raw stuff of the world—ingredients, time, care—and shape them into something nourishing that feels a little kinder than the rest of the world seems to be right now. We practice patience, pay attention, and extend provision. We offer the work of our hands to meet the needs of others. If that’s not ministry, I don’t know what is.

Want to share the correct way to make the ‘mater sandwich? Email me at gary.long@bgav.org

Gary Long is BGAV's Chief Marketing Officer.