We should be serious about food, about feasting, about serving the best our resources and skill allows—whether that’s chicken dippers or cordon bleu cuisine. We become friends around a table, because we become friends with God around a table. If at the Lord’s supper God meets with man, then at our tables man can meet with man because God has done so first, even if some round the table have not known this for themselves.
The world is infused with wonder, and the presence of God reveals truth that was previously unseen.
When seen with the eyes of faith, every tree is a song that sings of life, of wisdom, of death that flowers with the scent of unknown spices. Every rock is the Rock and hides honey and gushing water. Every sky is a painting masterfully created for the eyes of a single human, before another masterpiece is hung as the wind blows. Every table is the Table.
I have a thing about tables. You might have picked that up if you’ve been around nuakh for a little while. You will certainly have if we know each other in real life. I’ve written why, or at least the superficial reasons why, and tables make homes, but there’s a deeper reason that I’ve only scouted around the edges of. The Table changes our tables.
Where does God meet man? At a table, where we celebrate the Lord’s Supper. Not only there, but if anywhere then there is where we can be assured that God will meet with us.
As our Sunday meetings culminate in this acted story, this symbol, this faith bought opportunity to sup with God, we sit down with God at the Table. And as we eat by faith we are lifted to the heavenly Temple and feast on Christ’s body and blood, a genuine foretaste of the feast at the end of history.
If you agree with my vision of the world—riven with the presence of God through the heart of every atom—then how could this not change the world? Most importantly because we get to eat with God, but how could that event not change the nature of the act of eating on every occasion? We cannot eat anything in the same way ever again—the simple of act of sustenance has gained a new resonance, a significance beyond itself, as though it became a sign itself.
