Communion Meditation May 2024
For our household, the table is a place not only of food and fellowship, but of constant instruction. We are teaching table manners: pass the food, chew with your mouth closed, say please and thank you, eat what’s on your plate, DON’T THROW THAT, etc… But with kids from 16 months to 10 years old, you can imagine there are a lot of different learning levels going on. Once the specifics have been instructed, parents just get to say things like “Mind your manners!” and it’s enough to trigger those behaviors in their children.
The Lord’s table is not only a place of food and fellowship, it is also a place of instruction. You could say as believers, we too are learning table manners. We are learning how to treat others at the table. We are learning that everyone who comes belongs, and belonging comes with responsibility. And how are we learning these things? We are learning these things from the Head of the Table, where the Bread of Life is broken and the wine of a new and better covenant flows.
We are learning these things through the sacrificial love of the Son of God. The One who would soon don the garb of a slave in order to wash the disciple’s feet was breaking the bread and pouring the wine. The One who was greatest was servant of all. With His broken body and His shed blood, He would rescue those who could not rescue themselves. As His children, we eat in His Presence.
So when we come to the Table, we are instructed -we are catechized- about how to treat others. About how to love others. About how to serve others. We are reminded that table fellowship is only possible because someone served us with greater humility, greater sacrifice, and greater love than we could possible imagine. In light of this, admonitions like Ephesians 4:31-32 make sense:
Eph 4:31-32 Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: (32) And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.
So welcome to the table, and mind your manners.
Nathan Writes 