Greek-Style Leg of Lamb, the Agape Meal and the Art of Breaking Bread

Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook–I’m so glad you’re here!

With Easter fast approaching, I am wrapping up my Lenten series on foods of the Bible. This week, I’m focusing on the Agape Meal, which is a meal that commemorates those that Jesus would have shared with his disciples.

Agape meals frequently feature Mediterranean foods, such as hummus, stuffed grape leaves and the like–and many are meatless. It is common, however, to serve lamb as the meat if one is being served. The setting of the Agape meal emphasizes sharing of food and wine in a family-style, communal setting. The foods are simple, but delicious and satisfying.

The menu of lamb with orzo pasta and asparagus that I am featuring this week is not explicitly Mediterranean, but it is one that would still be right at home at an Agape meal–especially one that you might serve to friends and family for a Sunday get-together–and it would also be perfect for Easter dinner. It’s simple and rustic and makes enough for a crowd–but not to worry if you expect to have leftovers–I’ll be featuring recipes for leftovers next week!

The Agape meal is a lovely communal meal and one that I have organized for Maundy Thursday services several times for our home church. It’s a beautiful ceremony, lit by candlelight and it features simple, organic decorations. The service is one of warm friendship, in celebration of God’s love and grace.

In the broader sense, I think we celebrate the Agape meal every time we break bread with others. A dinner celebrating the company of friends and loved ones is what hospitality and being in community is all about.

I have a long history with food and with sharing food with friends, loved ones and strangers. It all started at home: My mom loves to cook; my Memaw (yes, I had a Memaw) loved to cook; and I have always loved to cook. Memaw was a nutritionist before it was cool to care about what you eat, and my mom taught me about hospitality.

My first introduction to Agape meals were at my childhood home. My dad taught at a large university for 40 years and my childhood is punctuated with memories of my dad calling my mom to ask if he could bring one of his graduate students home for dinner, furtively whispering “he looks really hungry, honey.” Somehow, mom always seemed to come up with another can of tomato sauce, vegetables or bread to stretch the meal for a couple of surprise guests, and students frequently crowded around our dining room table, sitting on the piano bench or other makeshift seats. The stray students were smart and interesting, funny, eclectic and grateful. We all became a community around the dining room table, sharing simple and satisfying meals, and sharing wisdom.

To this day, I love breaking bread with friends and strangers alike. Pre-pandemic, Mr. Stone Soup and I used to host large, unruly, diverse and truly delightful dinner parties in our home. At each party, I learned new things from this motley and wonderful assortment of people I call my “California family.” They are all dear to me and have expanded my knowledge, experience and love of people in so many ways. Post-pandemic, the dinner parties are smaller, but we still love to entertain and gather people at our dinner table as much as time and health concerns allow.

In addition to opening our home to our friends and family, we are always looking for new ways to break bread with new people and we frequently offer to share our table with others at a restaurant if seating is limited. These encounters can be awkward, but are frequently completely delightful.

In 2017, our pastor requested that I serve as the host for the Men’s Rotating Shelter at our church. I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about this task, but (somewhat reluctantly) agreed to do it, primarily because it involved feeding people. Our church was to provide food and shelter to about 10 homeless men for about 6 weeks. Each evening, it was my job to make sure these men had a hot meal and a comfortable, safe place to stay. To my great joy, what I expected to be a labor-intensive organizational project became a truly wonderful lesson in love and hospitality.

I started by asking parishioners to sign up to provide meals each night for the men who would be staying with us. Our church is very small and I envisioned myself having to carry most of the load by cooking meal after meal for the men so they’d wouldn’t go to bed hungry. But, remembering all those hungry graduate students, I was committed to making sure these strangers were always taken care of. What I received was an overwhelming outpouring of contributions of food and companionship from parishioners at our church to people they’d never met. I did provide meals for the men on four nights, but because I wanted to–not because I had to. And those men were grateful–and humble. And instead of being strangers, they became people with lives who mattered to us.

I was there almost every night, just to check in and make sure everyone was comfortable and well-fed. On the second or third night, I greeted one of the guests and asked if he needed anything to make his stay more comfortable and he looked at me with tired eyes and said “you’re sweet to be so kind to us Keri, but we’re homeless; you don’t have to care so much about us.”

At that moment, I made it my mission to make sure that the men experienced an Agape meal every night with satisfying meals–turkey, dressing, Cornish game hens, fresh asparagus, pecan pie, braised short ribs, to name a few. And with the abundant help and generosity of a host of dedicated parishioners, they did. Mr. Stone Soup and I frequently stayed to eat with the men. We listened to their stories and prayed with them and for them. They were people who needed some help at a vulnerable time. They were hungry–for food, for companionship, for kindness, for shelter and for community. And dining room tables in our parish hall brought us all together to make that happen.

We all eat. It is one of the most basic of human needs. We must eat to survive, but it is the bonding that happens when we share a meal that makes the world a better place: it is the relationships built by sharing that simple, joyous and ancient ritual of coming together to break bread that provides the spice of life.

And with that, I hope you enjoy this Greek-style lamb and orzo pasta: