Table Fellowship

Reverend Sue
Aug 27
5 min read

Much of what Jesus taught, by word and action, was summed up by who he ate with. Or as we have come to refer to it as table fellowship. (Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost. Proper 17 (22) Luke 14:1, 7-14.) We know Jesus frequently ate with dubious people – tax collectors, prostitutes and lepers – the unacceptable and unimportant in his society in his time. Sometimes he ate, as this week, with those who were important. And when Jesus was preparing to leave his disciples, he left them a meal to eat together – bread and wine, flesh and blood.

You may like to read what I wrote three years ago on this text.

“The first thing that the world knew about Christians was that they ate together. At the beginning of each week they gathered – rich and poor, slaves and free, Jews and Gentiles, women and men – to celebrate the day the whole world changed, to toast to resurrection. While each community worshipped a bit differently, it appears most practiced communion by enjoying a full meal together, with special prayers of thanksgiving, or eucharisteo, for the bread and wind. They remembered Jesus with food, stories, laughter, tears, debate, discussion and cleanup. They thanked God not only for the Bread that came from the earth, but also for the Bread that came from heaven to nourish the whole world.” (Rachel Held-Evans)

Jesus began his radical table fellowship well before his last supper. He ate with those who would engage. And he ate with those most others of note would not. On this occasion Jesus was going to the table of a leader of the Pharisees. As so often, Jesus turned this meal into a teachable moment. He continues the theme we touched on last week, of healing on the Sabbath with an emphasis on the responsibility to take care of family no matter what day it is. Inferring of course that the poor and sick are family to God. Radical in itself.

Jesus also teaches the religious - the Pharisee and his disciples - that true hospitality is in inviting those who cannot reciprocate. Now reciprocity was and is the nature of normal social behaviour – investing in those who are our equal or better in the expectation of equal returns, both material and emotionally. Who among us does not relish the good company of like-minded souls? Who among us does not enjoy a good dinner party with intelligent, witty, warm-hearted folk who also are fantastic cooks? Who among us does not take into consideration when we are writing the invite list, who has recently fed us and who we would like to get to know better?

Jesus teaches that true hospitality is to invest in relationships with those who may not be able to, or want to, reciprocate. And then he adds the delightful other layer of the teaching that of course we cannot actually tell who is our equal, our better and therefore we would do well to be humble and to take the lower seat. In other words, those we might assume to be our lesser by worldly standards may, in the eyes of God, be our betters.

Hebrews expresses the same sentiment in a slightly different manner, encouraging the faithful to continue in hospitality with the encouragement that they just might find themselves entertaining angels. This is a reference to Abraham and Sarah providing the required hospitality to strangers only to find them messengers of God with the news that Sarah would find herself with child before the year was over. In other words, we are to invite those who cannot repay us and we may just receive a truly surprising gift.

This has implications for us in our time and in this place. As the body of Christ, a fellowship of believers, we are reminded to keep on inviting others into our midst, including those who may not seem likely to accept. And then having invited others we are to welcome them and to make room for them at the table so to speak, room in a good position, for they may just be our betters! We need to welcome people not only in the front door but into the hearth and heart of the community.

As a church we exist not only for those who belong but very much for those who do not yet belong. And this must impact on how we think, feel and act. It means that we cannot simply organise our way of doing things based on how we, who are already inside, like it! Challenging. Jesus’ teaching this week also has implications for our overseas and local mission – we are to keep on going to and giving to the least and the lost, the unlikely, and the vulnerable.

As a general community we need to keep on meeting, eating with and making room for the new in town and those who are different to us out of hospitality and confidence in what we have to share, and in the humble hope that we may just be entertaining angels. And as a nation we are called upon to keep on welcoming the outcast and the refugee and making room in our country, our community, and our homes for those who are different. History shows that some who have come to us as refugees have indeed been angels and giants of intellect and heart.

In my last five years as a social worker, before becoming a priest, I worked for an organisation dedicated to helping refugees who were survivors of state-based torture and war trauma. In many ways it was heart breaking work and I shall never be the same, never be so naive again about what systematic evil, what awe inspiring resilience, and what capacity for forgiveness of the unforgivable, can be contained within the human nature. It was also strangely joyful work. Largely because so much of the counselling was done in people’s new homes – often because they found leaving the house and travelling across town terrifyingly difficult – and so much of our meeting was connected with eating. The generosity of those who had so little left in the world was always overwhelming. In part it was many people’s custom to share. But it was not a grudging hospitality, it came from a deep desire to give and to be engaged with. It is blessed to give and sometimes it is also a form of blessing to receive what others want to give you, to make yourself available and vulnerable to the gift of the other.

In Jesus we are called into a larger and more inclusive table fellowship where he is host and meal. In the meal we take part of as church community, we consume crumb by crumb of bread, drop by drop of wine, the meal that consumes us. In which the divine hides in ordinary matter, in which the one who was despised and rejected is declared holy, and by which we are both sustained and changed. Even so, come Lord Jesus Christ.