I like to cook, and years ago I hosted some friends for a dinner. I was serving my friends at the table, and one of the women made a comment to the other women. “Notice this,” she said to the other women, “A man is serving us.” It wasn’t a big deal to me, but for them it was, that they were the ones seated at the table while it was a man who was doing the serving. I guess it’s a leftover from a past age when men were the laborers and women were the housekeepers, but I still see the division lived out even though society has changed. If you’ve been to a church supper you know how it works. The women are the ones preparing food or washing the dishes and the men are standing around talking.

Benedict’s Rule is full of mundane instructions on how the community is to operate, but if we listen closely to Benedict we see he’s teaching us through the simple rules of community life. Chapter 35 focuses on kitchen serving. This is not a job where the lesser serves the greater. Benedict teaches an equality among the community, and he says, “The brothers should serve one another.” Consequently, everyone gets a turn at kitchen duty, and “no one will be excused” from it unless he or she is sick or somehow engaged in a significant duty that draws him or her away from the work. Otherwise, everyone does their part in feeding the community.

Jesus washed his disciples feet as an example for us to serve one another, but we forget that lesson quickly. Benedict, though, won’t let us forget that we are to serve each other through the simple lesson of everyone taking a turn in the kitchen. When all of us have a chance at putting food in front of another or carrying away the dirty dishes of another we remember that no one is greater or lesser, but we are all equals in the light of God’s love. Maybe Benedict’s Rule might be lived in homes and churches where all serve one another and all make the practice of cooking or cleaning up. Benedict realizes from time to time someone might be drawn away from kitchen work by something pressing, but otherwise we live by this truth: “Let all the rest serve one another in love.”