Tables

When reading the New Testament, it strikes me that much of Jesus’ ministry happens around sharing meals. Think about the feeding of the 5,000, and later the feeding of the 4,000, then dinner with Zacheus and with other tax collectors and sinners. He tells parables about banquets. And of course, there is the last supper. This is followed by dinner in Emmaus and a final breakfast on the beach in the gospel of John.

When we stop and think about it, in many ways our lives revolve around this simple but sacred act of eating.

You can imagine the scenes…

On a Saturday night, you can imagine good friends sharing a meal and perhaps a bottle of wine… looking back over 25 years of friendship. You can almost hear the laughter and feel the warmth… Remember that time…?

You can picture another night, when the husband comes home after dinner is over and the children have been excused, sitting alone with his wife says, “I lost my job today…” The wife says, “We’ll figure it out…”

I think about the baby who is celebrating her first birthday, in her highchair, the family gathered around the table… cake smashed – everywhere…. When the cake is removed, there are tears. And I imagine that same family… 16 years later sitting at that same table, looking back at the pictures, wondering, “Where did the time go?”

And the Thanksgiving dinner, where granddad offers the family blessing for the last time, the words fall sacred and soft…

And I can imagine my own grandmother, Mamaw, later in life often sitting alone for dinner next to the chair where Popsi sat for all those years… hearing the voices that had gathered around that same time over the years – her four boys, later grandchildren and great-children. I think back about myself around that table. 

And I think about others who eat alone often – with the television on for company or the phone… And others who eat hurriedly at work or between jobs. And single moms struggling to get food on the table for their children… And people who have no tables, in refugee camps and on the run…

And I think about church tables… I think about Trump supporters and Biden supporters sitting side by side… Happens all the time! 

And I think about all the laughter and all the tears around tables and meals – over a lifetime… And I think about Jesus… meeting us here at our tables, gathering up our adversity and pain, the joy and the sorrows, the laughter and the tears… 

Let us pray: Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, in our homes and churches and around our tables. And open our eyes to your presence, even here, even now. Amen.