The Great Paradox

“Nothing can be for Luke more serious than a dining table.” [1]

So writes Fred Craddock. Serious things happen at the dining table in the life of Jesus, the life of his disciples, and the life of the church. It is at the dining table where both the Eucharist and the revelation of the risen Lord occur. Eating together was also arguably a foundational feature of Christian life in the early Church (recall the story in Acts of Peter being told by God to break kosher laws so that he, a Jew, could break bread with Cornelius, a Gentile).

The Kingdom of Heaven is described as a dining table where all are welcome and all are fed. It’s no surprise then that those who pray “on earth as it is in heaven,” would be so concerned with putting food on dining tables: collecting hunger offerings, donating food to neighborhood food pantries, packaging meals to ship all over the world to communities in need, cooking stew to raise money for packing those meals, cooking food so that we can eat together and be together and talk together at dinners, picnics, breakfasts, wedding receptions, funeral receptions…

It’s no overstatement to say that something of God’s love is captured in food...God’s very first act of love towards humankind was to tell them to eat. It’s the first thing God speaks to the man in the garden. Eat. But...it’s also no overstatement to say that something of sinful temptation is captured in food. Eating is also what got us in trouble, isn’t it? Ignoring the warning and listening to the voice that says “Hey, that looks good...go for it!”

Food is a metaphor for life and love: you must eat to live. But food is also a metaphor for temptation: knowing when to say no. Just so gardening is a metaphor for discipleship: cultivating that which nurtures and sustains life. But gardening is also a metaphor for human disobedience: “cursed is this fertile land because of you; in pain you will eat from it every day of your life” (Genesis 3:17). In this way, the dining table is a great paradox: a reminder of food as a blessing and a curse.

Let’s go back to the phrase, “on earth as it is in heaven.” Consider hunger ministry and fellowship meals as an attempt to redeem the curse, seeking to reconcile the brokenness and pain that human sinfulness has caused through acts of sincere obedience to God’s will (“thy will be done”). Let us also consider the serious things that happen at dining tables in Jesus’ life...and look at them through this lens: Jesus is actually redeeming the curse and achieving reconciliation for human brokenness. In grand allusion to the accomplishment of all of this, Jesus breaks bread and blesses it, and gives it to his disciples saying “take, eat, and remember.”

Remember all of this as we reflect again on the parable Jesus tells the Pharisees while he shares a meal with them. He is teaching them the lesson of Proverbs 25:6-7, but he’s teaching this lesson through the great paradox of the dining table: if you want to be honored, then take a seat in the place of least importance. If the “Last Supper” is a foretaste of the Kingdom of God restored amidst creation, then this supper demonstrates the need for restoration. There is petty squabbling over who will sit where and what the seating arrangement implies about how important each of them is. And it can be presumed by the self-important ardor of the guests and by the parable that Jesus tells that the host has only invited those whom he presumes can pay him back.

The scene reminds me of the stereotypical middle school cafeteria in which there’s a cool kid’s table and a table for losers. It would be social suicide for anyone who has earned a seat at the cool kid’s table table to be seen eating with, hanging out with, or even talking to someone who eats at the loser’s table.

Jesus was invited to this dinner because he was a “new kid” in town and the Pharisees and lawyers wanted to welcome him to the cool kid’s table. They were hoping to show him the ropes, but instead he speaks up and says, “Each of you acts as if you truly believe you’re the most important one here...I don’t want to eat with you if this is how you’re going to act all the time. If you truly wish to be honorable, then you should sit at the table in a way that brings honor and respect to the people you’re with.”

Then the next chapter opens up with “the tax collectors and sinners gathering around Jesus to listen to him. The Pharisees and legal experts were grumbling, saying, ‘well, looks like he’s gone to eat with the losers.’”

The great paradox of the dining table also reminds me of Jesus’ words to his disciples who argued over who was the “greatest” and who would “sit” at the right hand of Jesus when his Kingdom was established in all its glory. “If any of you wish to be great,” he tells them, “let him become like a servant.” Fred Craddock warns about misinterpreting these lessons as ways to become great or to maintain the greatness one already thinks they have. [2] This is, as I have defined it in the past, “Yertle the Turtle” greatness, a greatness modeled by the famous Dr. Seuss character who thought he could become greater and greater the more turtles he put beneath him. No one should approach service and humility as ways of getting a “leg up” on others...but that is exactly what the Pharisees and legal experts and scribes have done with religion and piety...turned it into a status symbol.

The great paradox of the dining table is best summed up by God who, through the Christ, leaves his throne, takes on flesh and comes to sit with us, beside us, at a meal that he himself serves. And he does this just before he is arrested, persecuted, and crucified. I suppose God doesn’t ultimately call us to the head of the table...God comes to sit beside us, and inside us. Don’t live your life as if you’re expecting to be called away to a more important place; where you are right now is the most important place you can be, and that is the place where you are commissioned to serve. This is what we are asked to remember at the communion table: that the presence of Christ dwells in us who partake of his body and blood, that God is in us and in those with whom we share this feast, that we literally and figuratively sit beside God at this table, in a seat of honor.

And what we are asked to remember at this table is also what we are commissioned to take with us into the world: a life that bears the presence of God to others and that seeks out that presence in them. George Fox puts this commission beautifully in his Statement of 1656: “Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations wherever you come; that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone; whereby in them you may be a blessing, and make the witness of God in them to bless you.” [3]

Come to the table of joy and then go with joy into the world. May you be blessed and may you be a blessing. And may you sit at the table in a way that brings joy and honor and respect to the people you’re with, for in doing so, you will bring joy and honor and respect to God!

1) Craddock, Fred. “Luke” from Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. (Louisville, KY: Westminster-John Knox Press, 1990), 175.

2) Ibid. 177.

3) Fox, George. Statement of 1656. Online. 9/1/2019. <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Fox>