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Primitive religion is not believed, it is danced!

Arthur Darby Nock

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
And only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

Elizabeth Browning



Friday, April 12, 2024

The table is the point

If you are writing a play about [Holy Week}, the scenes would be table, trial (with its various locations), cross, tomb (burial), tomb (resurrection), and table. The table is the first setting, and it is the final setting of the story. Indeed, when the disciples want to meet Jesus again the next week, they return again to the upper room to meet him at the table.

 

They never return to the cross. Jesus never takes them back to the site of the execution. He never gathers his followers at Calvary, never points to the blood-stained hill, and never instructs them to meet him there. He never valorizes the events of Friday. He never mentions them. Yes, wounds remain, but how he got them isn’t mentioned. Instead, almost all the post-resurrection appearances — which are joyful and celebratory and conversational — take place at the upper room table or at other tables and meals.

 

Table - trial - cross - tomb - tomb - table.

 

What if the table is the point?

                     Diana Butler Bass

________________________________________

 

What if the table is the point?

What if community is the point?

 

What if Easter is, when all is said and done, about

People gathering

Laughing

Eating

 

People listening to each other

Supporting one other

Being together when it is easy, and when it is not

Being together in the rejoicing and in the lamenting

 

What if Easter is about Jesus stepping in

And saving us

Not from God’s wrath

But from the enmity of the Rulers of the World

 

From hate and violence

From those forces that would divide and destroy

 

On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples,

a banquet of aged wine, the best of meats, and the finest of wines.

On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples,

the sheet that covers all nations;

   he will swallow up death forever.

 

In the great story of love

We move from a table, where feet were washed

Bread was broken

And wine was drunk

 

Out into a dark and painful world

To a garden of anguish

To betrayal

And abuse

To injustice and death

 

To a tomb filled and a tomb emptied

And ends up back in an upper room, that same room, perhaps

And at a  table

Where once again bread is broken

And by the Sea of Galilee

 

Where once again bread is broken

And fish are served

 

Food for the stomach

Food for the heart

Food for the soul

 

Perhaps the point is that because of Jesus

We can be together

We can be stuffed with all good things

We can be love

 

The table reminds us we are family

That we are stuck with each other

And we might as well love each other

 

It reminds us that faith is about being fed

And feeding one another

 

Perhaps the table is the point.  As Rachel Held Evans once wrote:

“This is what God's kingdom is like a bunch of outcasts and oddballs gathered at a table, not because they are rich or worthy or good, but because they are hungry, because they said yes. And there's always room for more.”


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