I like eating. It’s really more than just the food though – it’s also the preparing and the sitting down to eat. I love the cooking part, especially when I’m preparing something special. When it’s a special meal for friends and family, I’m at my best. It’s a dance and for those of you who know me you know – I DON’T DANCE! Planning the meal, buying the goods, preparing the courses, adding the ingredients, timing when each piece needs to be added and pulled, plating the food – it’s just awesome. The one thing I hate doing is the clean-up! Dishes that are cleaned in the middle of the cooking are doable but after the meal the last thing I wanna do is wash, dry and put up – UGH!
A couple years ago, I was honored to make a dinner for my wife, kids and in-laws. I poured over recipe books looking for just the right grouping of foods that would make everyone crazy. I knew that my world famous “Nana Cheshire French Silk Pie” had to be made, but the other pieces had to be built around that pie. I decided on a gorgonzola encrusted sirloin, balsamic green beans and mushrooms (I hate mushrooms) and roasted garlic Potatoes with a really nice salad. I chopped, and mixed for an hour just preparing the kitchen for the craziness that would soon ensue. Everything was going great, until the potatoes rebelled.
I seasoned and oiled down the potatoes and stuck them in the oven. The problem? Well, the tray I was using for the roasting bowed ever so slightly in the middle. Do you know what happens to olive oil that pools at the bottom of a bowed tray in the oven? Smoke, that’s what happens. Smoke began filling the kitchen. My steak was perfect, my salad awesome, my veggies brilliant and my potatoes very tasty, but the smoke did me in!
My in-laws very testy fire alarm went off and as we aired out the house and returned to some semblance of norlmacy we were once again interrupted but this time by a knock at the door. The Fire Chief and 2 trucks were parked out front wondering where the fire was! For me, the meal was ruined!My family to this day remembers the meal as one of their favorites (it was actually requested on a subsequent visit), but to me – I had failed! The fire chief even asked if he could stay and eat with us – ugh.
I’ve been reading this book about how the ancient Hebrews sat at the table the other day and it helped me with my Table Failure at my in-laws. For the people of Jesus’ culture, eating around a table was a HUGE deal. You didn’t just go out to eat with anyone. Special people who were invited into intimate relationships ate together. Hospitality to strangers was a big deal, but inviting a neighbor to table spoke volumes as to the relationship you wanted to have with this invitee. Eating at table told people that you were at peace with each other. Inviting someone you had wronged or who had wronged you was a gesture at restoring relationship. Eating with one group of people over another spoke about who and what you valued.
As a traveling teacher/Rabbi, Jesus would’ve been invited to eat with respectable people all the time – Pharisees, scribes, honorable people. It would’ve been expected for him to eat there. Other families of esteem or social ranking would also have Jesus to table and that too would’ve been acceptable. But Jesus also did some pretty unacceptable things at table – like eating with publicans and prostitutes. Jesus was often accused of being a glutton and drunkard and we have no record of him getting drunk. It was the company he kept that brought on this description.
When Jesus sat at the “table” on his last night with his disciples – he was inviting them to a feast but also into a deeper relationship with him. The Seder Feast needs the table to sit and join in around. The table brought the family together to eat and more importantly to share their story. Jesus took the seder table and reframed the story. Every time we gather around HIS table today – the same thing is being offered. We are being asked to sit with HIM – the most High God, creator of the whole world, sustainer of life, giver of freedom and joy, redeemer and friend and share in what he’s done for us. Going to the table is to sit intimately with our friend and experience His goodness.
That dinner I made a couple years ago wasn’t about the food. Oh the food was good! It was about the time, care, attention that went into the food. It was about sitting together at the table sharing life – sharing a bit of me! It’s something I still need to remember when I sit down to Table – wether we feast on bread and juice or chicken and broccoli, wether it’s with my church family on sunday morning or with my blood family every evening!
grace and peace…