The Spoons in Hell

“The Spoons in Hell”—September 17, 2018

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.  Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. [Philippians 2:3-4]

It has everything to do with a change of direction in your spoon.

You have probably heard the old story.  A man has a dream, a vision, and in it, an angel takes him on a tour of hell, and it is subtly cruel.  In hell, all the damned are seated at a great banquet table, laid out with the finest linens, gleaming silver candelabras, and elegant place settings.  And fastened permanently at each person’s place is a bowl of delicious, steaming hot soup, whose rich, intense aroma makes their mouths water.  And beside each soup bowl is a metal spoon… that is six feet long—far too long for anyone to grip properly and be able to hold in hand at the end and still get the soup into their mouths. They cannot lift the bowls from the table, and they cannot get a spoon full of the soup (I like to imagine it is a lobster and tomato bisque) into their own mouths.  So all the people in hell are famished, dying of hunger with the most delicious food right in front of them, while the spoons are longer than their arms.  It seems the design of a terrible genius.

Well, then the angel leads the man to another dining hall and says, “Welcome to heaven!”  But as they peer into the room from a distance, this second banquet table appears almost identical at first.  There are the same elegant place settings, the same bowls of delicious soup, and they are still bolted to the table in front of each guest’s place.  And to top it all off, there are the same outlandish spoons—the man can see that even from a distance.  But there is no wailing and moaning from hunger.  There are no anguished looks on the faces of the guests.  In fact, the man hears… can it be, laughter?  And he sees expressions of delight and satisfaction on their faces.  The people are eating the soup somehow—but their bowls are just as fixed to the table and their spoons are just as long.  And yet, these people are satisfied and enjoying the gourmet food in ecstasy.

“How can this be?”  asks the man of his angelic tour-guide.  “What is the difference between this wonderful feast and the torments at the table in hell?”

The angel replies, “Can’t you see? The guests here at the heavenly banquet have learned to feed each other.”

There just might be the difference between the glorious joy of heaven and the sad, isolated self-centered suffering of hell.  It has everything to do with the direction of the spoon. 

Try to feed yourself and you will fail at it every time, spilling the soup out or smacking someone nearby with the end of your spoon and provoking them to hit you back.  Ah, but take your spoon and use it to ladle soup for the person across the table from you—while someone else at the table does the same for you—and now you have a feast.  Everybody gets to eat at the Kingdom table.  And yet nobody feeds him or herself.  You empty your bowl so that someone else can eat and enjoy, while they do the same for you.  And all of a sudden, it doesn’t matter how long the spoons are. 

That isn’t a bad way to describe what heaven is like.  As I recently heard a colleague put it, that story may not be true, but it isn’t false.  The difference between heavenly glory and a damned shame is the direction of your spoon.  When we get to glory, to the heavenly banquet, we will no longer be so focused on ourselves that we starve with a six-foot spoon in hand.  There will be abundance… and it will be shared, as each person puts the one across the table ahead of him or herself.

But now here is the really amazing thing:  Paul tells us that we can live that way… right now.  We get to be people who feed each other soup and who get fed by others at the table, in an ongoing, never-ending circle of care, one for another.  If I decide to break from that loop and look out only for myself, it will turn out that I am the one who goes hungry.  But the moment I turn my spoon around to feed someone else, to give from my abundance for their need, I find that there is space for someone else to feed me with theirs.  As I put the others around the circle before myself, they are doing the same for me, and everybody gets to eat.  Everybody is filled in fact, by the very act of giving their food away.  Everybody at that table finds their own empty places refilled as someone else at the banquet fills them with what was theirs.  

This is what it looks like to live with the values of Jesus--where each of us values the interests of the other before our own, and where another person in the circle does the same for us. That kind of sharing and feeding is only possible if we dare to trust that the living God really does provide enough for all, and that I can risk that giving you the soup that's in my spoon will not mean that I don't get any.  It means trusting the God we have come to know in Christ really does provide enough for all.

Today, you and I have the opportunity to practice that kind of life together.  In the Christian community, we learn—maybe over a lifetime—how to trust that we will not go hungry as we feed someone else, as they feed us in turn.  You can spend your energy looking out only for yourself and still be starving, still feel empty, at the end of the day.  Or you can embrace the wonderfully upside-down, surprising logic of the Kingdom.  It all begins today as we dare to turn our spoons around.

Lord Jesus, give us the fullness of life that comes from giving ourselves away and putting the person across the table first today.