Table Fellowship
Written by Jared Burkholder | Pastor of Outreach & Connections
If you know me at all, it’s no secret I love to eat. I’m not a foodie in a true sense; I’ll eat Taco Bell with as much (more?) gusto as good sushi. But for some people, food is just fuel. Others of us think about dinner at breakfast and have never successfully made it past a box of donuts without partaking.
In my family, many of our great experiences happen in the kitchen at the table. There, we not only eat, we talk, we strategize, we cry, we laugh…someone usually spills something.
“While we recognize the beauty and purpose of the Lord’s Table in our corporate worship life, it can be easy to miss the import of the kitchen table in normal life.”
Nestled among the crumbs and cutlery, meals point us beyond themselves to a God who provides, who delights, and who saves. Let’s quickly consider how the table in your home offers the chance for worship and witness. As Aaron likes to say, the table is set—let’s eat.
1. The table as visible provision: God is the one who sustains our needs.
Christians can hardly think rightly about food unless they first think about the hand that provides it. While most of us do not experience food insecurity and don’t consider the source of our food beyond our stop at Albertsons, the Bible is clear that God alone provides for our needs. The story of Israel in the wilderness is a story of God’s miraculous provision. Manna rains from heaven, ravens bring food to Elijah, and David and his men feast on the bread of the presence. In short, our tables have food on them not primarily because we work or shop or cook: God meets the needs of his children.
Matthew 6 calls Christians not to worry, but to rest in the provision of God.
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”
Whether your dinner table represents the chaos of demanding children or the quiet meal of just one at home, each meal we eat evidences God’s provision for us. Christians have long prayed before meals to acknowledge this very thing. If many of us are honest, the rote prayers we offer fail to move from our lips to our hearts in true gratitude for God’s provision. But each day, the table represents God’s care for us. A sumptuous feast or a bowl of Kix all come from his good, fatherly hand.
2. The table as visible grace: God gives the gift of enjoyment because he's good.
We are more than robots, though, and meals aren’t simply about shoveling fuel down our pipes so that we can move on to the next thing. In his beautiful design, God has so orchestrated that the very food that sustains our life also delights our senses. This is not by accident. Sometimes, the more puritanical corners of Christianity sniff their noses at the wonder of enjoyment. But God gave us the ability to taste, to cook, and to enjoy food and drink. The Bible is filled with feasts that not only celebrate God’s provision and goodness but also fill the participants with delicious treats.
Fear of gluttony and drunkenness, abuses of the table, often predominate our thinking more than recognizing the gift of enjoyment that God bestows on his people through food. To be clear, the abuse of the table through gluttony and drunkenness isn’t an over-enjoyment of God’s gift, it is a misappropriation. The provision of Christ means we find our truest rest in him, which means we don’t depend on the table, we are freed to merely enjoy it. And we honor the giver of gifts when we enjoy what he has given.
Among many other texts, we consider:
Ecclesiastes 9:7
Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do.
Psalm 104:14–15
You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth and wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine and bread to strengthen man’s heart.
Each meal represents an opportunity for us to experience the kind gifts of a good God who delights to delight his children.
3. The table as visible witness: God calls us to show hospitality as a means to reaching the lost.
Meals are not merely for our provision and enjoyment, though. They offer the chance to share physical and spiritual food with those who are hungry. No one exemplifies this more consistently or powerfully than Jesus. Jesus ate with sinners so often that he was accused of being a glutton and a drunkard. But these meals represented great intention, to meet with sinners and point them beyond their food and drink to the one who is the bread of life and living water.
Luke 5:27–32
After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth. And he said to him, “Follow me.” And leaving everything, he rose and followed him. And Levi made him a great feast in his house, and there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with them. And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” And Jesus answered them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”
In both word and action, Jesus here models the beauty of table hospitality with the lost. Recognizing the deep need they have for spiritual life, Jesus came to eat and drink with sinners so that those meals would bring healing to the spiritually sick.
In similar ways, our hospitality opens doors of relationship and witness. We live in an era when people’s homes are their castles and meals with outsiders happen outside the home. We have a great opportunity to love and serve our neighbors by inviting them to our table. Meals disarm, they invite, they express love tangibly and practically, and can move neighboring relationships beyond perfunctory hellos to familiar interactions.
“Our tables represent more than God’s provision and delight; they can be outposts of kingdom engagement.”
There’s lots more we could say about this, but here are three closing exhortations:
Eat with Thanksgiving.
Every meal we eat represents God’s active provision in our lives. Not a single morsel of food comes to us outside the good fatherliness of our God. Beyond rote prayers, let’s embrace meals as a chance to remember and express our thankful dependence on the kind provision of our Father.
Eat with joy.
God has fitted us with the capacity for delight, and he’s filled his world with delightful things. Sobriety and maturity in the Christian life come not in the avoidance of his good gifts but in the right enjoyment of them. And this right enjoyment points beyond the gift itself to the greatness of its Giver.
Eat with purpose.
When was the last time you had someone outside of your normal circle at your table? When was the last time you ate with an unbeliever? Meals build bridges to the marginalized, the hurting, and the lost. Let’s not miss the delight of showing God’s love through meals.
Just don’t forget to season appropriately.