A large extended table centred the crowded dining room. Three times a day, at least, and hours in-between, this table was our gathering place, our home-base. 

Even when we travelled into the mountains of the south, or the cities toward the northeast, when we came back this was the first place we went to in the house. Up the stairs, by the kitchen, across the hall and into that dining room to that table.

The trip to Poland last Fall was like a homecoming. Not so much for me, individually. Home for me is here — Arnprior, Ottawa, the Ottawa Valley. Not Poland.

But the trip to Poland last Fall was a homecoming of sorts. For my mother, more so. It was, from a family point of view, a pilgrimage into a land that birthed my family history, a return to the land that culturally conditioned me. After years and decades of absence, with a few exceptions, it felt for me like a return to a place of genesis. Reconnecting with cousins and uncles thrice removed, etc., who personally knew my father and mother, I was plugging again into the source.

And that table upstairs in the dining room of my aunt’s and uncle’s house was the magnet force. Around food and drink, we came back here, no matter how far afield and distant each of us may have stretched the proverbial rubber band, here we snapped back and gathered, again.

I’ve reflected on the meaning of the last week in the events of Jesus’ death and resurrection, and I keep coming back to the table. Let’s just pause at the first sentence of this perennial Gospel text for the Easter season recounting Jesus’ first post-resurrection appearance:

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” (1)

Like for theologian Diana Butler Bass, this phrase popped out for me: “The house where the disciples had met.”(2) What house?

Of course, it was the house where, just a few days before, the disciples had met with Jesus to celebrate the Passover meal. It was the upper room of the house where Jesus had washed their feet and called them friends. It was around the table in that house where they had shared bread and wine.

After Jesus’ crucifixion at Golgotha, and in the wake of the outlandish reports from Mary Magdalene of Jesus in the garden, the frightened disciples had gone back to the upper room in that house. Why?

Maybe, to grieve. Maybe, to await what they expected would be their own arrest. But perhaps they went back to remember. They had gone back to the dining room with the table. Their last place where they had all gathered.

This was the place where memory was encoded into their hearts, a place of sharing food and intimacy. And it was here where Jesus first showed up on the night of the resurrection, to be with his friends. On Easter, Jesus went from the tomb back to the table.

Those three holy days last week started at table. And when all was said and done, those three holy days ended up back at the table.

We normally think of Maundy Thursday as the run-up to the real show on Good Friday. And because we have placed such an emphasis on Good Friday we interpret Maundy Thursday through the events of the cross, the meal prefiguring Jesus’ broken body and the shedding of his blood for the forgiveness of sins.

But what if his disciples didn’t see it that way? What if they weren’t thinking about a cross or a blood sacrifice? What if they saw Good Friday through Thursday’s meal? After all, they came to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. They were in Jerusalem “with friends and family (not just twelve guys at a long table – sorry, Leonardo).” They were in Jerusalem “at a big, busy, bustling holiday meal to commemorate God freeing their ancestors from slavery.”

“Passover is a joyful meal” and as such the disciples were “thinking about their history and their future, and they were enjoying the supper together.” Jesus loved meals, and they knew that. They had shared so many with so many people.

In the resurrection stories, as it had always been for Jesus and the disciples, the table was the point. The table was, and is, as Diana Butler Bass claims, “the hinge of history.”(3)

What are your table memories? Where do you go, literally or in your heart, to return home, after a tumultuous season in your life? Entering a new chapter of life, where is your anchor-point, your homeland, so to speak, or home-base? 

To take the metaphor further, in this Easter season as you worship the risen Lord, recall those special experiences in those special places.

“Can you remember a moment when you experienced God, in a surprising way, in a vivid way, in a way that changed you? A moment when you were in touch with God and with the deepest, wisest part of yourself?

“Perhaps this was a moment [or place] in childhood, or a more recent moment, in nature, in church, looking at an artwork, or dancing. A time when you had a feeling of ease or transcendence or oneness with something outside yourself. Feel this moment. Taste it. What does it feel like in your body? What are the sights and sounds that you associate with this feeling? 

“Let’s make some space [these Easter days] … for that part of yourself that you are feeling and tasting. Spend some time with it and reflect on how to nurture and protect it. [And if you can’t bring such a moment to bear] … just now, I invite you to simply trust that God is at work in the way you have made the effort to come [to church] … today, and open yourself to this … experience [of worship].”(4)

And come to the table, just as you are. Pull up a chair. Because Jesus is alive! Christ is with us here and now!

——

(1) John 20:19-31

(2) Diana Butler Bass, “The Holy Thursday Revolution: Pull Up A Chair”, The Cottage. https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/the-holy-thursday-revolution-pull 

(3) ibid.

(4) Lindsay Boyer, Centering Prayer for Everyone: With Readings, Programs, and Instructions for Home and Group Practice. Oregon: Cascade Books, 2020. p. 72.