The Meal that Makes Us Family and Friends

This morning before leaving the house, I set out bread and wine, trying to get our table ready for our small group to gather after worship. Against my inner prodding, I didn't take the time to reset the table with placemats and cloth napkins. I felt alright about it at the time. It's early, and I wanted to have some time to pray in silence this morning before going to a meeting with my leadership and finalizing some things for this morning's class. After reading this quote from Nouwen, I think I made the wrong decision.

We all need to eat and drink to stay alive. But having a meal is more than eating and drinking. It is celebrating the gifts of life we share. A meal together is one of the most intimate and sacred human events. Around the table we become vulnerable, filling one another's plates and cups and encouraging one another to eat and drink. Much more happens at a meal than satisfying hunger and quenching thirst. Around the table we become family, friends, community, yes, a body.

That is why it is so important to "set" the table. Flowers, candles, colorful napkins all help us to say to one another, "This is a very special time for us, let's enjoy it!"

I'm also thinking about the Eucharistic table, the table of the Lord. In a little while I will gather with a group of people for worship, which, against our Protestant focus on the sermon, is centered and grounded at Table. This morning, as every Sunday, we will be welcomed to the Table of the Lord, to come and feast from the overflowing abundance of God's creative goodness and life-giving hospitality.

Yet, the table that sits front and center in our midst is cold and sterile. The focus is not bread and wine, but metal trays that conceal the sacred, rather than drawing us into the welcome of God. The small, lifeless crackers and the plastic, individual shots of juice seem to turn us inward, disconnecting us from one another more than drawing us more fully into a shared life, a body. In many ways, our table changes Nouwen's final line to something a bit different. The stacked trays do remind us that this is a special time, but I'm not sure that they invite us to "enjoy it!"

So, I'm struck this morning by the messages that are at times latent and others explicit in our our worship. As we gather at the table of the Lord this morning, are we becoming friends of God? Around the table are we becoming family, friends, community, a body with one another? How is our experience shaping our life together with the Triune God and with one another?

Hospitality is a lively, courageous, and convivial way of living that challenges our compulsion either to turn away or to turn inward and disconnect ourselves from others. Hospitality is not optional to a well-balanced and health life. It meets the most basic need of the human being to be known and to know others (Homan and Pratt, Radical Hospitality, 9).