What Happens at the Table

There is something about sharing a meal with other people that feeds more than just our bodies. I can remember meals in my life that were as nourishing to my soul as they were to my belly – can’t you? Gravy and biscuits with extended family at my grandmother’s house on Christmas Eve morning, every year. We got to experience that amazing combination of utter fulfillment and absolute anticipation at the same time. We were fulfilled because the food was so plentiful and so good, but we were also just revved up at the excitement and anticipation of what was coming next. Which was the exchange of presents, but first: our choice of our choice of dessert. Even though it was breakfast, and we had just had gravy and biscuits. We got to pick Granna’s homemade banana pudding or Granna’s homemade Lane cake, or we could even have a little of I never doubted my grandmother’s love – she baked it right in all those goodies. And I never doubted my place in the fabric of my family – because the stories and the laughter and the sharing of the food stitched us together.

Don’t you have memories around tables with other people, that shaped who you are, and fed your soul? Maybe it wasn’t the family of your childhood, but family made with friends. Can you remember evenings at tables with friends, where you sat there long after we’d finished eating, because the conversation was just so good, and the companionship was just so good, and the connection you all felt just seemed to light up the table even as it got darker and darker outside. And can you remember meals when someone listened when you most needed to be heard, or someone said what you most needed to hear, or someone just sat with you in silence, because you just needed a friend. Some of the most powerful moments in my life have happened at a table shared with others, how about you?

Of course, some of the most painful memories in my life have happened at mealtime, too. How about you? That day in middle school when you walked over to the table where you usually sat with friends, only to see that they’d given your seat away to someone else. Or the dinner with family that was ruined because your uncle decided to bring up politics. Or that time when you ended up alone in a room full of people who were eating and drinking and having fun, and you weren’t sure which part was worse – feeling left out, or feeling embarrassed because they could see that you were left out.

The dinner table is a place where connections are made and community is created. Anthropologist Gillian Crowther notes that sharing a meal with someone is one of the most important manifestations of social connection in all cultures, throughout all times. Eating together creates and strengthens a sense of belonging.[1]

Which is why some of the most painful experiences of exclusion and alienation we know also happen around the issue of eating. Who is invited? Is there room enough at the table for everyone who wants to be there? Who sits where? Who serves whom? What is proper table etiquette, and what do people think of those who breach it? What do people talk about and what subjects do they avoid? Questions like these make it clear that what happens at the table – and who is there when it happens – communicates acceptance or rejection, respect or contempt. Sometimes, when rejection and contempt happen for far too long, the table can even become a place of revolution. That’s what happened in 1960, when four black students in North Carolina walked into a Woolworth five-and-dime and sat down at the whites-only lunch counter.

Years later, one of those four men, Franklin McCain, spoke about how exhilarating it was to launch that lunch counter protest. “I had a feeling of liberation,” he said, “restored manhood. I had a natural high. And I truly felt almost invincible…. It’s a feeling that I don’t think that I’ll ever be able to have again. It’s the kind of thing that people pray for … and wish for all their lives and never experience it.”[2]  The next day, those four men came back with 15 more students. On the third day, 60 more joined in. On the fourth day, more than 300 people showed up. And within a week, sit-ins were happening at lunch counters all over the country. They became a highly successful aspect of the civil rights movement, and in many towns, they succeeded in forcing the desegregation of lunch counters and other public places.

Sometimes, when people sit down at a table together, they end up changing the world.

On the last night of his life, Jesus shared a meal with his friends. He knew that they were going to let him down, but even so, he ate with them, open-hearted, sharing wine, breaking bread. “Whenever you do this,” he said to them, “remember me.”

And his first followers took him very seriously. The Book of Acts tell us that they devoted themselves to the teachings of the apostles, to fellowship with each other, to sharing meals with each other, to prayer, and to taking care of the poor. They were transformed from a collection of individuals into a community of kin, the church. They gathered as equals, which, as New Testament scholar Scot McKnight notes, was scandalous. Social boundaries were exceptionally important in first century Israel – almost sacred – and meals were how those boundaries were displayed. To eat with each other, in each other’s homes, with no regard for race, gender, status, or wealth,[3] was radically offensive to the cultural sensibilities of the people around them.

Jesus, of course, famously broke social boundaries. “The Son of Man has come eating and drinking,” he told the Pharisees, “and you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’” Jesus’ meals demonstrated a new social order, one where the usual social categories had no power. The things people thought of as sacred were shown to be mere trappings, actual obstacles to the truly sacred power of authentic human community. And it shook the religious establishment. Some people say this is even the reason he was killed – he wouldn’t stop eating with the wrong people.[4]

On the last night of his life, he told his friends around the table, “Whenever you do this, remember me,” and they took him seriously. They shared their meals in each other’s homes, they shared their food with those in need. They remembered him in how they lived, in how they ate, and in who they ate with. Their eating wasn’t just about a symbolic worship ceremony; it was their life, it was their new life. They knew the boundary-breaking, revolutionary power of a shared meal. They knew the table could be a place of healing, and a place of forgiveness, and a place of liberation. A place to be heard and to be taught, to be fed and to be filled, to be restored, and to be made family. The first Christians began their life together around a table, a physical reminder of a spiritual truth – that connection to other people feeds us, and nurtures us, and sustains us. And that is God feeding us and nurturing us and sustaining us. We need the community as much as we need the food. And the world needs it, too. The world needs people like us, willing to live the scandalous truth of equality, of liberation, of absolute acceptance, of total belonging.

That first day that Franklin McCain sat at that Woolworth lunch counter, an older white woman sat a few stools down from him. McCain later said, “If you think Greensboro, N.C., 1960, a little old white lady who eyes you with that suspicious look … she’s not having very good thoughts about you nor what you’re doing.” When the woman finished her doughnut and coffee, she walked behind McCain and his friend Joseph McNeil, and she put her hands on their shoulders, and she said, “Boys, I am so proud of you. I only regret that you didn’t do this 10 years ago.”[5]

The time is now for you and for me to live the truth that Jesus lived. He came eating and drinking, offending seemingly sacred social norms, disrespecting seemingly sacred traditions of class and caste. He came eating and drinking, sharing love without limits. At his table, we practice the scandalous truth of absolute affirmation, acceptance, equality, and belonging. And then we go out into the world to live that truth, knowing that it will undoubtedly offend and anger some people, just as it did in Jesus’ day. Sometimes, when people sit down at a table together, they can change the world. What happens at this table can’t stay at this table. We have to take it out there. It’s time.

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[1] Ester Bardone, “How Sharing a Meal Is About Sharing a Culture,” UT Blog, University of Tartu, December 23, 2015, http://blog.ut.ee/how-sharing-a-meal-is-about-sharing-a-culture/
[2] Michele Norris, “The Woolworth Sit-In That Launched a Movement,” All Things Considered, NPR, February 1, 2008, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18615556
[3] http://www.churchinacircle.com/2015/10/10/why-the-eucharist-is-useless-unless-we-put-it-into-practice/
[4] http://www.primates2016.org/articles/2016/01/05/jesus-and-table-hospitality/
[5] Michele Norris, “The Woolworth Sit-In That Launched a Movement”