THE LONGEST TABLE

                Today is World Wide Communion Sunday and Christians all over the world have gathered at the Lord’s Table to remember Jesus Christ.

                Matthew 26:20 says: “When evening came, Jesus was reclining at the table with the twelve.”  The table Jesus and his disciples used in the upper room of a home was probably quite low, U shaped, and they reclined on cushions.

          

      As Christianity spread around the world many kinds of tables have been used. I like this simple yet elegant table that the Scottish architect Rennie Mackintosh designed for a church in Glasgow, Scotland.

                Our table in Corinth where Paul taught about the Lord’s Supper was unique. On a Sunday morning our tour group sat on the ground and used a flat rock for a table as we had communion.  Also, in youth camps I have had communion where only what nature provided – a rock, a stump, even the ground – served as our table.

                In Spokane, our son’s family attended a church that had an exceptionally long table. It was long because there is indented across the entire front of the table a carving of the last Supper.

                Thinking of long tables, a writer in the Christian Standard magazine once pointed out how appropriate a long table can be. He begins by describing his grandmother’s Christmas dinner table. He says, “It stretched through the dining room to the living room of her old farmhouse. It was so long there was a place for all her children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. It was so long that there was room for folks far from home – Ireland, Germany, even Tennessee. … That table was so long that it was never full until family members who sat there in years gone by were brought back by a fond remembrance or a hilarious memory of Christmases past. It was Christmas at grandmother’s house, and it was the longest table I had ever seen.” Then he added: “But I came to know different, or better. The communion table is the longest table in the world. And I know just how far it stretches” (Lee Magness, Christian Standard, June 10, 2007).

                You and I also know how long this table is, don’t we? It stretches from here to the poor in Calcutta’s slums, to the affluent in Anglican Cathedrals, and to the weary warriors in the Mid-East. It has room for the peasant farmers of India, the beaded Maasai woman of Kenya, the immigrant laborer from South America, and the socialite from New York. There is always room for more at this table, and all are welcome. It is the longest table in the world.

                Certainly, it has room for us and Jesus invites us to come, to eat this broken bread, his body given for us; to drink this cup, his blood shed for us. Come to the Thanksgiving Table, the longest table in the world.