‘Table fellowship’ …what image or memory comes to mind. I see a table, patina’d with age and laughter, in a run down college condo in San Diego. I discovered who I was at that table… and I was not alone. Meals were shared. Stories were told. Songs were written, art was created, wrongs confessed and loves professed. We remembered who we were, we dreamed of who we might become. At that table, we experienced the nearness of God…
Whatever image came to mind when you thought of ‘table fellowship’… to sit at ‘that’ table is to occupy sacred space. Around ‘that’ table is where you most often feel fully alive. Table fellowship unifies our human experience across time and culture and remains one of our most important spaces for human connection. Indeed, for many, the table has become an icon of God’s grace and goodness.
N.T. Wright captured something of the tables’ significance when he wrote, “When Jesus himself wanted to explain to his disciples what his forthcoming death was all about, he didn’t give them a theory, he gave them a meal.”
“While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, ‘Take and eat; this is my body’”. This same pattern of language—blessing, breaking, and giving— shows up again and again throughout the gospel narratives. Eugene Peterson rightly insists that this same pattern lies at the very heart of the Christian story – “This is the shape of Communion. This is the shape of the Gospel. This is the shape of the Christian life.” Blessing, breaking, giving.
We are a people who are blessed, broken and given in order to participate with God in His mission to rescue and renew his beautiful and broken creation. I am convinced that our tables, both individually and collectively, have the potential to be the most “missional” places in all of our lives. Perhaps before we invite people to Jesus… or invite them to church… we should invite them to dinner.
Sharing tables, with friends and strangers alike, was one of the most distinctive aspects of Jesus’ ministry. For Jesus, table fellowship was a brief albeit beautiful demonstration of heaven on earth. At the table we get a glimpse of the kingdom banquet to come, a beautiful foretaste of God’s future peace, when “all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe – people and things, animals and atoms – get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies.”
Join us, there is always room for one more at the Table.