At His Table

Imagine you pick up your post from the doormat one day and there is a letter in a beautiful, expensive-looking, high-quality envelope.  When you open it, it is an invitation to dine with royalty, in beautifully crafted, exquisite writing; the kind that makes you want to keep the invitation long after the event.  What do you do?

This is in fact what has happened to us.  Actually, we have been invited not just to dine, but to live with the King of Kings.  God has been talking to me about the invitation to the banqueting table this last few weeks.  This image of dining with the king is throughout scripture and the gospels have Jesus eating with people in many scenes.  In fact, it even got him into trouble at his choice of table companions. Matthew 9:11 records

When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with “sinners” and tax collectors?

Feasting with the Lord is established in the Jewish calendar, and in Hebraic culture, sitting round the table together as family is woven into the weekly routine.  In our busy, TV-dinners lifestyle, this is maybe something that in the West we have lost as a priority. 

I think that hospitality is an integral part of who we are to be as the family of God and yet it is easy to overlook it as a gift in favour of apparently more “powerful”, dramatic gifts.  The gift of hospitality has a great deal to offer in the days ahead, I believe.  The table as a focal point, a place of fellowship and connection, of emotional, relational, mental, and obviously physical nourishment is to be encouraged.

I believe that eating together, restoring that sense of companionship round the table is a key part of God’s solution for some of the problems that we face today.  Many of us turn to food for emotional comfort but, without sitting round the table and enjoying fellowship with others, it does not hit the right spot and so the internal hunger that drives us to chocolate or crisps rages on.  I know it is overly simplistic but maybe eating doesn’t solve loneliness in the way that eating with others could be part of the solution.  Just a thought.

Eating together can also be a place of relational restoration, just ask Peter who had that memorable breakfast on the shore of the lake (see John 21).  Not a quick perfunctory “sorry” and a formal handshake or even a coffee in your favourite takeaway place but taking time to cook, sit together, talk, eat and slow down long enough to re-establish relationship.  Sitting having a meal together takes time.  It is an investment into relationship.  Jesus came to restore our relationship with the Father, so he invites us to eat with him.

His first miracle was at a wedding feast, how fitting!  Some key moments in the gospels take place round the table or when they are sitting and eating, and we are also asked to remember him through an act of eating and drinking.  As I contemplated the invitation and the importance God seems to place on eating together, I was drawn to the story in Matthew 22 of the wedding banquet.  We have not just been invited to any old meal, it is a wedding banquet, and we are the bride.  Matthew 22:2-3 reads:

The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son.  He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come …

Life with Jesus is a series of moments where we have the opportunity to say “yes” to an invitation.   I know that we can look at this passage of scripture through the lens of salvation, but I think there is also important application for those of us who are continuing our journey with Jesus.  I think we back out of or miss opportunities to “dine with the king”, like the guests in Matthew 22, more often than we realise.

The word for the Lord’s feasts used in Leviticus 23 means “appointed time” ~ like a diary date, something that is scheduled in.  I remember years ago, Jesus talking to me about scheduling ‘breakfast dates’ with him every morning.  He shows up faithfully every morning, ready and willing to spend time with me.  How amazing.

In those times, I learned to read scripture and listen for his voice and then respond to what he was saying.  I learned to pray and listen for his response.  The art of conversation!  Engaging with him in this way over our “breakfast” together changed everything.  The difference was not so much about what I did but that the point of the exercise was building my friendship with him.  Feasting with our king is about building relationship.

However, Psalm 23:5 in the Passion Translation helped me go even deeper:

You become my delicious feast even when my enemies dare to fight. You anoint me with the fragrance of your Holy Spirit; you give me all I can drink of you until my cup overflows.

It is a place of strengthening in the face of all we battle with; a place of re-filling when we become empty.  Life-giving communion, reminding us we are one with him.  But more than that, I think pausing to commune with Jesus, in the face of battle, in the moment when we are facing fiercest opposition becomes a place of abundance.  We choose to stop and deliberately, consciously, dare I say it, defiantly, pause and rest in his presence whilst resisting everything in us that says “run”, taking our eyes off what the enemy is doing and looking into Jesus’ eyes.  This becomes a place that enables us to receive him, the fullness of who he is, as our feast, on a different level. 

Matthew 6:35, again from the Passion Translation

Jesus said to them, “I am the Bread of Life. Come every day to me and you will never be hungry. Believe in me and you will never be thirsty.

Jesus IS the feast, and he satisfies like no other.  Matthew 6:51

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.

There were those who turned away from Jesus at this thought, at the offense of Jesus.  However, this bread is the bread of life, and our unlimited God is sufficient for all.  There is room for all at this banqueting table. 

I wonder how we would respond if we really got an invite to dine with royalty.  As in the story of the wedding banquet in Matthew 22, would we allow busyness or distraction to rob us of the opportunity?  I know for me that often distraction is the biggest battle. 

Equally we can’t let over-familiarity rob us of the fact that we are dining with the King of Kings.  One guest in Matthew 22 obviously did not take time to “dress appropriately” for the occasion.  We come because we are invited and we come dressed in his robes of righteousness, because he has opened the door for us.  It is not an invitation to take lightly, to treat carelessly.  I never want to lose the wonder of the fact that the creator of the universe is choosing to spend time with me.  And he enjoys it, he values it.  Wow!

Other excuses or reasons for refusing the invite, every issue we could think of, have all been swept aside by his provision.  He can’t wait for us to join him and there is nothing to stop us.  And so, we are brought back to that well-known verse in Revelation 3:20 where Jesus makes this incredible promise:

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.

I know that snacking between meals can spoil my appetite.  I can be tempted to snack on fast food that has the appearance of spirituality – Instagram posts of scripture taken out of context; YouTube worship that becomes background music or verses of the day as I rush to get ready for work.  Let’s not be in a rush for a quick takeaway but let’s really make time to feast on him, the word become flesh, the bread of life.  Maybe then we will not have so much hunger for the lesser satisfactions the world has to offer.  Let’s take time to dine with the King!  Let’s linger at the table with him, eating and drinking our fill.