Every Wednesday night at 6:15, seventeen rowdy, ravenous teenagers raid my kitchen. It's perhaps the best hour of my week.
Let me be clear. For most of my fifty-four years I have declared to anyone who would listen: "I don't like teenagers." They can be sarcastic and self-involved. But then again…so can I. But it's more than that: They make me nervous. They give blank stares. They cut with silence. In groups, they laugh a laugh that says, "We're in…you're not." (If this is starting to sound like baggage from my own adolescence, it is no doubt because it is.)
So how did I end up chief cook and bottle washer for this gang?
In a word…GOD! When my own child turned 14, he started attending a Bible study led by a college student in a dorm room 50 minutes away. The drive was awful.
"Tell you what," I told the study leader. "Meet at our house, and I'll make brownies…Huge fudgy brownies." And so the group moved here. They met at six o'clock. The kids arrived tired and hungry from practicing whatever sport they played, and somehow, just like that, brownies became spaghetti. There were only four of them. I figured I'd rather cook pasta than drive two hours any day.
Feed my lambs.
In what is potentially one of the most puzzling conversations in the Bible, Jesus makes the same statement to Peter three times:
Feed my lambs.
It took me more than three times to get the message.
Yes, yes…I understand we are to feed the lambs, young Christians, the milk of the Word of God, but I think we're also called to fill some bellies. The New Testament makes much of caring for one another's basic human needs, and failure to offer hospitality takes its place in a list of pretty grievous sins.
My first word from God on this venture was "Do a group." The directive was as clear as any sign post on the highway. I had a dream. I was seated in my living room with a mob of teenagers. We were laughing and praising God. I woke up.
Do a group.
The leader of my son's Bible study had graduated from college. Not even my spaghetti could keep him here. He moved away. Two boys in the group had graduated from high school. We were down to two kids and no leader.
My son John, by now 15 and seasoned in the Word, said he would lead the Bible study. I said I would cook. Two nights before our first meeting, John informed me he had suddenly realized he wasn't ready. Fine, I said, "Three kids…I'll do it."
And the rest is history. It is also mercy, abundant blessing, and miraculous, God-given grace.
Each week I cooked and prayed. God gave me stunning, funny exercises I used as teaching tools. Every week a new face or two would appear. I got to know the kids. "This is good," John said. "It is going to be a very big group," I said. I was right! At that point we were five, and four weeks later we were nine, and then four new boys came one night. We went from thirteen to seventeen in three weeks and there we've held for the past two years.
The kids who come are warm and funny, but also needy and sad. They're athletic, beautiful, and confident, but they are confused, depressed, and hungry. They cannot be fed too much.
"Skip the dinner," friends say. "Just do the Bible study."
"This is the one home-cooked meal I get all week," I overhear one boy say.
"Yeah, it's the only time I can count on to sit down for a meal and enjoy it."
I eye the empty lasagna pan.
Feed my lambs.
"Make it potluck." Another friend advises.
"I wonder all week what she's going to make for us. I love that Jell-O soup we had," I overhear.
"If it were potluck, I would not be feeding them," I say.
Let the record show, that not only did I start this venture with a serious anti-teen bent, but I'm not much of a cook. In the three years of running this group, no parent has ever called to ask me, "can I cook?" One year a mother sent a salad, the next year a loaf of bread, this year a birthday cake when one member turned sixteen. The devil would no doubt be delighted if I would do a bit of the fairy-tale, beleaguered Little Red Hen routine, but this is not the parents' group. And it is not mine. God made it, out of two boys and a lot of rice. And this is a group I trust God for every inch along the way.
I think of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. Less often is he remembered as the servant…the waiter on widows…the cook and bottle-washer of the early church…The scullery slave God gifted with miracles and wonders to whom heaven opened to his physical sight to show him Jesus seated at the right hand of God… the saint of earth-shattering proportions whose story shows us something about what God must think of servants who make it their business to see other people fed.
Christ raised a little girl from the dead and He said, "Now give this child something to eat". He healed Peter's mother and the first thing she did was make him some supper. Christ, the Bread of Life, the Bread of Heaven, who finished preaching and looked around to his disciples and said, "Feed these people". Then, He made the food…Out of thin air. (Or at least out of thin loaves and fishes.)
He's doing the same today. I feed 17 kids dinner, with drinks, seconds, and dessert, for $5. Total. The first thing in my favor is that if you catch a 200-pound athlete after a two-hour practice, he'll eat anything. But what I offer them is good. It is flavorful. I take care and imagination with the preparing. My second helper is a local super market that gives, BUY ONE GET TWO FREE with meat and potatoes on their list. I have gotten most creative. It is fun to take the challenge of a meal for seventeen for the price of a slick magazine. Even at straight tariff ticket price, a bag of barley goes for 50 cents, a bag of lentils is the same. Done up in chicken broth and garlic and onions and spices and the kids lick the pan. Add cornbread, chocolate fudge brownies, a lettuce of the week salad and pitchers of iced tea, and we're in business…God's business. The business of creating a welcoming, nourishing environment where kids can weekly bring their longing and their questions, their hunger and their need for nurture in the Word of God.
This teaches everything about God's bounty and his calling us to paths we would never have chosen. It has been three years now. My son leaves for college in the fall. How nice God is leaving me a dozen or so sons and daughters to love and teach and feed after he is gone. And, to be loved by, instructed by, and fed by in return.
