Borrowed Tables--August 29, 2024

Borrowed Tables--August 29, 2024

"As they came near the village toward which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged [Jesus] strongly, saying, 'Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.' So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, 'Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?' That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, 'The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!' Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread." [Luke 24:28-35]

Jesus has a way of making himself at home in other people's space, doesn't he? Thank God for that.

No, seriously, I was struck today, rereading these words from the tail-end of Luke's Gospel, after the resurrection of Jesus, at how Jesus just sort of makes himself the host of this impromptu late-night meal at Cleopas' (and his wife's?) house. Usually, when you are a guest in someone's home, especially if you are a guest at someone else's table, you wait to be served. You wait to be offered food. You wait to have a napkin set at your place. And you don't impose. The polite Midwesterner in me wants, just a little bit, to take Jesus aside and teach him proper etiquette for being a guest at someone else's table--even if it is a table that reveals the risen Lord to two of his close friends. I kind of want to tell Jesus, "Don't you know you aren't supposed to manhandle the bread and start tearing off pieces to others when you are the guest? Don't you know that you are supposed to just politely offer what is put before you? Didn't your mother raise you right?" But of course, I'm getting way too big for my britches there.

It is a bit odd maybe, that Jesus just up and casts himself in the role of host at this table... except that Jesus always had that way, didn't he? Jesus borrows tables wherever he can and sets up these amazing meals of life... these amazing moments of welcome... these amazing memories and snapshots of the Reign of God come among us on earth as it is in heaven.

Again and again in the Gospels, Jesus shows us the Beloved Community at table after table, but the builder's son from Nazareth didn't own a single one of those tables. It's the table at Matthew's house where all the not-good-enough found welcome and acceptance, despite the grumbling of the Respectable Religious Crowd. It's the table at Zacchaeus' house that Jesus has to invite himself over to because poor little Zach is sure as heaven never going to work up the courage to ask Jesus to come first. It's the table in an otherwise anonymous upper room where Jesus celebrates Passover for the last time and tells his friends that he's about to give his life away like broken matzoh. And now it's here at another borrowed table on the night after the resurrection, where the same Jesus, now with nail scars, brings life and hope to two friends who were at the edge of despair. At every one of those borrowed tables, Jesus sets up his movable feast and brings the presence of the Reign of God, the Yahweh Administration, right in the face of ordinary people living their lives, as if to remind them that the power of God for life, and the grace of God for all, can erupt anywhere, right under their noses.

Now think about that for a moment: Jesus only ever uses borrowed tables. As much as we church folk make out our sanctuary furnishings to be somehow holier than the card table you can buy from Wal-mart, or the beaten-up folding tables of the AA group that meets in the church fellowship hall, there is no such thing as "the ONE right and proper Table of Jesus." We Christians don't have a single Temple or a city you have to go to if you want to be a good disciple. There is no one spot, one table, or one set of furnishings that makes the Eucharist "count" or makes the bread and cup into holy things. There is no rule in the Bible that you can only celebrate Communion at some oak-hewn altarpiece adorned with crosses and Greek lettering. Jesus doesn't own a single table on earth, come to think of it--he just borrows whatever is handy and brings the gracious presence of the living God right there, right under our despondent noses, Rome's arrogant nose, and all the Respectable Religious Crowd's hypocritical noses, and starts breaking the bread there.

That should tell us a couple of things right now, then. For one, it should maybe help to keep us from making idols of our worship spaces. Whether they are Gothic cathedrals, folksy American white painted buildings with pillars out front, or modern structures with liturgical-consultant-approved and acoustic-technician-certified furnishings, the building and the furniture is not all that terribly important to Jesus. He is just as happy borrowing the bedside table in the ICU, the book-strewn coffee table in the living room of a man on hospice, the jury-rigged arrangement of craft tables in the mental hospital worship-and-craft-room, or the kitchen table of Cleopas and company at midnight on one spring Sunday. And he does. Jesus only and always borrows our tables--and it is his presence, in the midst of our common, worn, cluttered, and inelegant tables and lives, that makes the meal holy.

And that means the second realization of the day is this: we can't do anything to make one square inch of God's creation any holier than it is already, not even by carving a cross in it, dousing it with incense, or bathing it in the light from a stained-glass window. But Jesus can take a hospital tray table and make it an honest-to-God revealing of the promised divine dinner party at which tears are wiped away and everybody is there (see Isaiah 25:6-9). Jesus just has that habit of commandeering our kitchen counters and making himself at home in our space. So maybe we can fuss a little bit less about the relative fortunes we blow on fancy religious accessories and spend our time and resources inviting the broken-hearted, mentally ill, substance-addicted, homeless, foreigner, outcast, shady-looking, dropped-out, and beloved children of God to come to whatever table we have.

Wherever you go today, any horizontal surface will do. Jesus can borrow laminate countertops, beaten up wood, and even institutional plastic to set up his movable feast. And when he does, our eyes are opened, and we realize we have been standing in the presence of Love himself all along.

The world is awash with borrowable tables where the living Christ is holding appearances and playing the host. The only question for you and me today is whether we will see these ordinary looking places and let him open our eyes when the bread is broken.

Lord Jesus, let your movable feast happen right here in our midst, right here and now, as you invite yourself into our space and our lives and our hearts and bring the presence of God there.