The Table Set Before Us

The Table Set Before Us--August 31, 2018

"When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted in a loud voice, 'Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.' The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them outside and said, 'Sirs, what must I do to be saved?' They answered, 'Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.' They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God." [Acts 16:27-34]

There is a wonderful, difficult line from within the familiar words of the Twenty-Third Psalm.  Most everybody I know can recite the opening words by heart: "The Lord is my Shepherd... I shall not want."  But a little ways down before the poet rounds the home stretch, he prays this beautiful, disarming verse: "You set a table before me in the presence of my enemies... my cup overflows."

I used to skip past that line because I never really understood it.  Now... I picture this story from the early life of the church, a powerful story about how the table of the enemy becomes the table of Jesus.  This is what it looks like when the followers of Jesus are set loose on the world: the enemy becomes a brother, and the enemy's dinner table becomes a place of reconciliation.  And to be quite honest, there is nothing about this story that doesn't hold me spellbound with wonder at the gracious power of God.

The backstory of this scene is a miracle.  In fact, it's probably the miracle that most people know.  Paul and Silas are in jail (because, of course they are--Jesus and his troublemaking go merrily on, as Andrew Greeley says), and there in prison, after having been tortured and flogged by their captors, they are singing hymns when an earthquake rocks the foundations of the prison, and the doors are all opened.  

Now, that's where most of my flannelboard memories of this story ended.  The gist of the story as I recall it from Sunday School lessons was something like, "If they put you in jail for being loyal to God, God will spring you," almost like God was a mob boss arranging a prison break or bribing the governor for a pardon to get his henchmen out of doing hard time.  My childhood recollection of this story basically boiled down to, "If you are loyal to God, God will keep you from really bad consequences and will bust you out of jail if they catch you." That reading, of course, forgot two important things: for one, others like John the Baptizer, never got an earthquake to spring them out of the big house, and for another, Paul and Silas don't leave the prison even when the earthquake makes it a cakewalk to escape.  

To just about any of us, that would seem like a waste of a miracle, wouldn't it?  You get a divinely-sent earthquake that breaks open your locks and chains... and you don't use it to escape? Maybe that's why the Sunday School versions of this story I heard and saw re-enacted with two-dimensional felt figurines on an easel ended before this part: it seemed preposterous that Paul and Silas wouldn't immediately run out of the jail if God had gone to the trouble of miraculously setting them loose.

But this, to me, is really where the story actually gets going.  Even though our own self-centered mindsets would likely advise us to get while the getting's good in this scene, Paul and Silas do not leave.  In fact, none of them walk out.  Paul and Silas had the chance to run away, and to leave their jailer (who had overseen their torture, mind you) to kill himself for the escape... and they don't do it.  Right off the bat, this story is messing with our gut impulses for revenge and self-preservation, isn't it?

There is no other explanation for what happens there--this second miracle, as it were--other than to say that the first followers of Jesus actually dared to believe their rabbi and Lord about loving their enemies.  There is no rational reason for the sake of self-preservation, no way of holding this alongside our seemingly innate human hunger for revenge, other than to say that Paul and Silas--and the rest of the early church--actually dared to take Jesus seriously when he instructed his followers to do good to those who harmed them, to pray for their persecutors, and to reflect God's love by loving their enemies.  There is no other reason for Paul and Silas to stay in jail, or to prevent the jailer from committing suicide.  But--wonder of wonders!--love wins, and so they not only stay in jail, but they go on to tell the jailer the Good News about Jesus, and he comes to faith in Christ, too.  

Just think about that scene for a moment: Paul and Silas not only refuse to hold a grudge against the man responsible for overseeing their torture, but they offer back to him in response a gift they are convinced is of infinite value--the gift of life in Christ.  They don't refuse to share their faith with him out of some bitter wish for him to go to hell.  They don't twist their gospel message into some way of manipulating the jailer to force him to be kind to them.  None of that.  They are simply able to love--to do unrequited good to--this jailer who had inflicted so much brutal pain and violence on them.

And then, in a final sketch of details that blows my mind every time I read it, the jailer not only comes to faith and has his whole household baptized, but he also washes Paul and Silas's wounds (and, equally marvelous to me, they allow it!), and then this jailer spreads out a table for them.  This is the verse from the psalm that defied my comprehension, that I could not picture for so long!  Here in real lives, in real history, not merely in the poetic language of an ancient psalm, here is the love that makes it possible for a table to be spread in the presence of enemies... and for it to be somehow safe and good.  Here in this moment, Paul and Silas do not walk away with their arms crossed and hate boiling over in their hearts, but with the ability to do good to their torturer.  And maybe hardest of all for them--and even hardest for me to imagine--they then allow this torturer of theirs to do good to them in return.  They allow him to wash their wounds--wounds for which he was responsible!--and they allow him to spread a table before them... and then can all share a meal together.  This is possible only because Jesus creates a community in which we love our enemies, we practice mercy on those who would harm us, and in which we are pulled out of our own self-centered thinking.

And I have to tell you--this is what I want to be a part of.  I want to be a part of a community, a way of life, a movement in history, in which enemy-love is the order of the day.  I want to be caught up in a way of life where we find creative ways to reconcile with those who have wronged us, and whom we have wronged.  I want to be moved by the same Spirit that made it possible for Paul and Silas to break bread with someone who had broken their bodies... and I want to be freed from the bitter need for revenge and the tired old impulse for self-preservation. Because, I'll tell you what--it feels so often like I am drowning in this world's old me-and-my-group-first mindset.  It feels like we are surrounded on all sides by the attitude that says you have to hold grudges and launch mean personal attacks back at people you don't like, or feel slighted by.  It feels like we are practically being encouraged by those voices to attack the people we don't like, and to nurse a hatred for the people we label "enemies."  And over against all of those bitter (but popular and powerful) voices, there is the staggering witness of Paul and Silas, sitting at a table with the man who had whipped them to within an inch of their lives and breaking bread with his family... all because the love of Jesus has made such a preposterous thing possible. 

This is the love that has captivated us--and at the same time, has set us free.  This is the beautiful assurance that the psalmist felt when he described a table set "in the presence of my enemies" where he could yet feel at peace.  This is the table to which we are invited every day, because every day there is the possibility that we can embody Jesus' kind of love for those the world would tell us to hate.

This is the table spread out before us today. Dare we sit down and break bread at it?

Lord Jesus, where you lead us to share a table with our enemies, grant us the courage and love to give and receive grace, even from those we most want to hate.