Psalm 23
A Psalm of David.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;
he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths
for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
I fear no evil;
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff—
they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
my whole life long.
Though some of you may stay home and eat a homecooked meal today, most of you may not. Today is notoriously the busiest day for restaurants of the entire year logging more meals served then Valentine’s Day. Regardless, if you are eating “in” or eating “out,” you most probably shall be eating around a table. It’s not just a cultural coincidence that throughout the ages, all over the world, people gather together at a table in order to get to know one another. It’s how we connect with other people. That’s why first dates almost always involve a meal. Ask match.com. Or eharmony.com. Or Zoosk.com. Or ChristianMingle.com. Or dateafarmer.com. You can’t build a relationship without spending time together. You can’t get to know someone without talking with them. The best place to spend time together, talking to each other and getting to know one another, is at the table. Relationships are not like mirrors, or social media or listening to the news, where everything you see is really about you. Relationships are like meals, where you feed yourself while feeding each other.
One of my favorite lines from Psalm 23 is the line that begins the third stanza of the poem: “You prepare a table before me…” Whenever I read this line or hear his line read, I image a loving mother serving wonderfully wholesome food on a beautifully set table. Not necessarily fancy, just crisp and clean and with love. I think of my grandmother Helen almost sprinting around the table in her sundress and apron being sure each person at the table was served with everything they needed. My grandfather Wallace sat at the head of the table and told the stories that defined our family, the stories that gave us an identity. All of his stories started with leaving the horrors of Germany and immigrating to the United States. Quickly they would go to his enlistment in the army during World War I. Followed by his return to the states to farm with his brother and become the post-master of Osceola. His stories usually ended with his latest fishing trip on Lake Jackson in Sebring, Florida. We grandkids would not have listened nearly as well as we did had our bellies not been full from grandma’s cooking and serving.
Jesus gave his disciples a “stored identity” – meaning that he framed their identity in the stories he told as he walked about, healed, and taught in ancient Palestine. The stories that Jesus reframed hearkened back to God’s very creation at the beginning of time, so to be a follower of Jesus means, in some ways, you have to be in a right relationship with Judaism. Our true identity as Christians begins in the Old Testament with the Jewish collective memory, with the people of Israel whose identity was rooted in God’s miraculous salvation from slavery in Egypt. Our identity deepens with the New Testament, where Jesus increases the use of stories to plumb the depths of our human nature.
Somehow, we have lost our ability to tell stories to our children. I say this not to shame anyone. I say this to acknowledge a truth about who we are as people. The families that gather about our tables have lost their identities as disciples of Jesus. Almost all protestant denominations have plummeting retention rates, keeping only 30-50 percent of their kids into adulthood. There are some studies that say the church is losing upwards of 90% of its kids. Not everyone, though, has lost their ability to pass on the stories.
The Old Order Amish, for example, despite a refusal to evangelize and being a particularly stringent form of the Christian faith, keep 95 percent of their kids. Elders teach succeeding generations the songs and stories of the faith around the table. Family devotions take place at the table. The table is where the Amish traditions of Nachfolge, of “following after” Jesus, is introduced and instilled in the children. Even when an Amish teenager goes on Rumspringa (“running around,” a period in which some adolescents leave the group to experience life outside the community), their place at the table is still set, three times a day. Some Amish families even put food on their plate in anticipation of their “running around” kids returning to the table. Amish life, in short, revolves around the table, and it’s rare for a young person to leave it behind.
Mormon theology is similarly effective in retaining its youth into adulthood. In many ways a theology of the family, Mormonism makes families a first-order priority, emphasizing three things: a formal declaration of the faith, after which kids understand themselves as “heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17); an intentional process of discipleship and identity formation; and perhaps most importantly, a family mealtime in which parents intentionally see to “train up a child in the way he should go” (Proverbs 22:6, NIV 1984). Pastor Jon Nielson sees these three practices as essential for retaining children in the faith as they enter adulthood.
Also, the Jews-who represent a statistically insignificant .00185 percent of the world’s population – have had an impact on science, medicine, literature, and the arts well beyond that of any other people group. The steeple of the Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv, Israel, is called “the Pillar of Remembrance,” because there one finds testimony to the way the Jewish people have overcome the worst suffering to achieve epic triumphs. The Jews have seven official feasts, but the center of religious life in Judaism was not the massive slaughter of animals to accommodate its feast calendar, but the telling of stories around the table. In fact, the most sacred ritual today in the Jewish religion is the Passover, in which a family gathers at the table and the father serves up a meal that tells the Jewish story.
In the Seder, the story of the Jews’ deliverance from slavery in Egypt is told not through words but by the food. Children are encourage to question the story, to probe it, even to doubt it. The story is strong enough, it is assumed, to take on anything you can bring to it. There is a sense that to be a child of the story is not to proclaim final answers but to profess a life story and devote oneself to a lifelong pilgrimage. The story becomes “my story” by my participation in the story and my interrogation of the story. All around the table. It is thus a requirement of Judaism that you don’t just learn the story, but you see yourself in the story. The tagline for the Museum of the Jewish People suggests as much: “You are part of the story.”
The Jewish table is a place of fireworks. Ideas that emerge there diffuse, spread, and intermingle, producing energy and sometimes propagation into new ideas. The Jewish table is not hospitable to ego-driven debates; rather, the table encourages logic and inquiry, uncertainty, and the exercise of one’s intelligence. It is the rigors of the Jewish table that contributes to the endurance of the Jewish people. The quest for identity demands the questioning identity.
Of course, the broader culture is eager to story our kids: “Build your identity on my sneakers!” “See yourself through this singer!” “Discover your best self in these Jeans!” Too often we leave our kids to fashion an identity for themselves in the wilderness of these mass-mediated images. But Jesus didn’t go to the wilderness to find himself. Jesus went into the wilderness to encounter God. Paul didn’t say, “I know who I am.” Paul said, “I know whom I have believed” (2 Timothy 1:12). Identities are indigenous, homegrown, not mass-disseminated. They are revealed in a context, not mediated without context. They are reflective of an underlying truth, not born of trends. It is at the table that identity is formed.
At the table you learn tribal boundaries, the manners and customs of the table. Table boundaries create stable identities. When we find our identity in Christ, we are introduced to those uniquely Christian table boundaries. We are to be not imitators but incarnators of Christ. Food connects us to one another while setting us apart, giving us a unique tribal identity. In Jesus’ day, Jewish authorities protected their identity by not eating with “sinners” and people of bad repute. But Jesus didn’t care about a “holy table” as the religious establishment defined “holy.” For Jesus, the table was a table of grace. A gracious table was one that was open to anyone, a table where all God’s children were present.
That table grace could be anywhere: in a homeless shelter, in a café, in an online chat room, at a casino – anywhere grace is needed. Jesus didn’t keep a moral table, he kept a healing table. People who sat at table with Jesus didn’t see him primarily as a moral teacher but as a healer and friend. For Jesus, the very thing that set his followers apart is what united them as a group: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40).
It is the next line in the third stanza of the Shepherd’s Psalm that raise my eyebrows. The stanza begins, “You prepare a table before me” and then continues with, “in the presence of my enemies.” This line has always given me pause and created a angst within my stomach. Who wants to eat with people who are enemies? I have learn the difference between someone who may be in opposition to me and someone who may want to do me harm. Either way, God is sitting this person next me at the dinner table. God is sitting this person next to me, perhaps, even at Mother’s Day brunch at Maria’s House of Pancakes.
I would like to give you an example of what it means for God to prepare a table in presence of enemies. This story came to me from Arthur Brooks.
Both Robert “Robby” George and Cornel West are professors at Princeton University, globally renowned for their contributions to the field of political philosophy. That’s where the similarities end.
George is one of the nation’s most prominent conservative Christian intellectuals. A devout Catholic, he has written numerous books and articles opposing same-sex marriage and the ‘dogmas of liberal secularism.’ He drafted the Manhattan declaration, a manifesto signed by dozens of Christian leaders who promise resistance against any effort to “compel our institutions to participate in abortions, in embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia … [or] to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality in marriage and family.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, he is also Republican.
Cornell West is Robby George’s ideological opposite – one of the nation’s most prominent progressive thinkers. A professor of religion and African American studies, he is the honorary chairman of Democratic Socialists of America, a self-described anti-imperialist, and sworn enemy of “the brutality of profit driven capitalism.” He was one of Barack Obamas harshest critics because, Obama was “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats.”
What could be more combustible then I debate between George and West, who disagreed vehemently on most issues, including human sexuality, race, identity, economics, and abortion? It has all the ingredients of pure vitriol.
What would you expect to hear from either of these two about the other especially in this current political climate? Here is what they told Arthur Brooks.
“I have a deep love for this brother. I have a deep respect for this brother.” That’s Cornell West referring to Robby George.
“We’re united to each other in love, in true fraternal affection,” says George about West. “When I call Brother Cornell ‘Brother Cornell’ I mean he’s my brother.”
“We revel in each other’s humanity,” says West. “we share a fundamental commitment to the life of the mind and of the world of ideas. We’ve had a chance to teach and lecture around the country, and so when I see him, I don’t see him first and foremost as a conservative thinker, a Catholic philosopher, one of the major political theorists of our day. I see him as my brother.”
This is a wonderful example what it means for God to prepare a table in presence of my enemies. Though fierce rivals in ideas and philosophies and how to fix the problems of this society, they share a deep human connection. The human connection, the brotherly love they share, comes first. Why, because they are able to share the grace of a table.
Today, you just may have the opportunity to share a table of grace with your family. Some of those you sit beside may even feel like an enemy. Remember, Jesus invites everyone to the table, it’s his table. Jesus’ table of grace is primarily a table of healing and friendship. At this table we share our stories. We find our identities. At this table we listen to the stories of others. At this table of grace, we may just learn to love our enemies. By loving, we all become family.
God of comfort and compassion,
through Jesus, your Son, you lead us
to the water of life and table of your bounty.
May we who have received
the tender love of our Good Shepherd
be strengthened by your grace
to care for your flock. Amen.
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