Feature Article: Summer 2006
Who is welcome at the table?
by Nina B. Lanctot
Some people say that all we Mennonites do is eat and meet. We are the cookbook people, are we not? Indeed, food has a role in our corporate life together as congregations. One man who was invited to our adult class this week asked if we had a snack before he agreed to come in!
But table metaphors can also serve as markers of our faith.(1) Our “eating habits” make up the four main ingredients of church: worship, community, mission, and discipleship. And there are proper manners for each settting: the kitchen table where we share friendship, the round table where we wrestle with the way of Christ, the soup kitchen where we eat with the poor, and the communion table where we receive God’s grace. As we learn the manners of each table, we take on the welcoming character of our Host, Christ.
Community: making Friends
As we sit in each others’ kitchens or at coffee tables, we might imagine many meals where Jesus sat with his chosen friends. He listened to his friends’ questions and asked them hard questions about his identity. He shared his premonitions of his death and entrusted them with healing and preaching. All this took place over meals of fish, bread, and wine; around campfires; or at kitchen tables such as Martha and Mary’s. Jesus invited vulnerability as he revealed his needs. His friends knew when he was tired or hungry, when he had to be alone, or when, in fear, he needed their prayers through the night.
I believe these are the kind of heart and soul conversations that make us church to each other. Our congregations are only as strong as our face-to-face relationships. In an era where Sunday dinner at a restaurant replaces hospitality in homes, I believe we really hunger for the kitchen table. There, our Sunday-morning selves can relax into Sabbath afternoons and evenings.
Our congregations are only as strong as our face-to-face relationships.
We become human beings rather than human doings. Even amidst crumbs and clutter, our secret hopes and fears can find a place of grace. I have challenged my small congregation to visit at least twelve kitchen tables in the coming year, and especially in homes where they have never visited before. In this practice, as we center our friendships in Christ, I hope a contagion of creative hospitality will follow.
Discipleship: Finding the way
As we gather with our coffee and donuts at Sunday school tables or committee
meetings, we might imagine Jesus, the teacher and learner. The
circle, the round table, was the place where Jesus’ disciples and
friends (and sometimes enemies) talked about God at work in the world.
They learned how to heal, share good news, and keep the peace amidst threats
and violence from the religious and governmental leaders. Jesus was always
expanding the round table. He engaged in theological reflection with the
Samaritan woman and offered her living water. He gave bread (in the form
of healing) to a Syrophoenician woman who changed his mind when she told
him that even dogs get crumbs!
It is in this same way that our congregations and families are called to become well-rounded. The table manners of the round table are humility, prayer, Bible study, and reflective listening as we look one another, and life, in the eye. What would happen if we lingered and listened for the Spirit speaking at the round table in Sunday school classes and in committee and congregational meetings?
The model of “worshipful work” creates an atmosphere were we are conscious of the presence of the Spirit at our tables of discernment. By stopping to listen to the “Spirit of the meeting” as our Quaker brothers and sisters have taught us, we become more open to see each other and our agenda through the eyes of Christ. Therefore we will always keep an open chair for those people and ideas that might not usually belong and that might help us to more fully seek the mind of Christ.
Mission: eating with the poor
Jesus was known as a glutton and a drunkard. He earned this reputation because
he delighted in the image of God in all people. He had a special welcome
for the poor and the outcasts and met them on their own turf. Jesus’ generosity
was unprecedented. He fed thousands of hungry people, and he trained his
disciples to do the same as we see in the table ministry in Acts. The Jerusalem
church made sure there were none in need and created new soup kitchens
when the widows were neglected.
So where would we end up eating if we followed Jesus’ example in our choice of missional tables? The local bar? (We wouldn’t have to drink to hang out there.) The drag-race track? The beauty parlor? The ritzy gourmet restaurant? When we as congregations serve the very poor (or the very rich), we often forget to sit and eat with them as Jesus did.
Hospitality means erring on the side of love. God’s love incarnate in Jesus is the invitation to God’s love feast.
Our congregation serves a community meal each month for seniors. I note my tendency to visit with my congregational members in the kitchen, leaving one or two people to eat their soup meal alone. It takes mindfulness to leave my comfort zone and listen to the same lonely stories month after month, but I think it is the Jesus way. I have to remind myself that as we eat together with “the least of these” and “the lost” we learn how to dine with Christ.
Worship: turning the tables
Christ is our Host in worship, who draws us mysteriously into the heart of
God, whether our communion be joyful, reflective or repentant. In worship,
we are all the guests of God, and all that we receive is God’s grace.
This is made clear when we sing songs like “Great God the giver of
all good,” linking our deep thankfulness for all that sustains us
to this meal as well. This “real life” link draws us into God’s
embodied grace. It is the grace of God the Friend, who forgives; the grace
of God the Guide, who leads. It is the grace of God to the least and the
lost, whom, in Christ, we welcome and champion in this world. It is the
grace of Christ the Host, who has invited us all. It is no wonder that
we feel challenged about how to come together at the communion table. We
think of the Lord’s table, or communion, as the table of God, but
as we have seen, that can mean many things. It is the honest friendship,
the wise discernment, and the wide welcome of God all in one. But the challenge
of the communion table is that it can be so far removed from any ordinary
table fellowship that we sometimes forget our table manners and our welcome
there.
As we muse about the hospitality of God around the tables of our lives, we wrestle with questions. How do we celebrate the communion table as part of our Anabaptist worship? The invitation goes to those who have made the costly commitment of believer’s baptism. At the same time we want to emulate Jesus’ welcome to the poor and to sinners, outcasts, and enemies, as well as his blessing of children. So who is welcome at each of our tables?
As I prepare to lead communion in my congregation I am torn. Part of me wants to err on the side of God’s wide embrace and let any who wishes to come to the table. But my preparation for baptism and first communion when I became a Mennonite also remind me of the value of the life-risking promise that we renew each time we share this special meal.
So I go back to musing on Jesus. Hospitality means erring on the side of love.
God’s love incarnate in Jesus is the invitation to God’s love feast. When Jesus encountered table manners that barred the way, he turned the tables. He bucked the system, shaming Simon for his cold welcome and praising the sinful woman for her extravagant care. He told tales of upsidedown banquets where the first were last and the poor got the finest food. He toppled the tables of the money changers in the temple, striking out against the system of worship segregated according to social class.
So maybe we, too, need to turn the tables occasionally in the household of God. What would happen if we practiced the spiritual discipline of feasting frequently and in a leisurely manner at kitchen tables and round tables and soup kitchen tables, as well at the communion table? And where would the potluck table fit in? After all this eating and drinking, we might also be called gluttons and drunkards as we are carried away by the new wine, the Spirit that enlivens the reign of God. We might become known for a wider, wiser, and wilder welcome—and be blessed by the wink of Christ.
1 Letty M. Russell, in her book Church in the Round (Westminster/John Knox, 1993), inspired me to play with table metaphors as Mennonite markers of faith.
Nina B. Lanctot is pastor of Florence Church of the Brethren in Constantine, Michigan, which also belongs to the Central District Conference of Mennonite ChurchUSA..