The Table - Lockdown 2.0 Reflection
As The Table microchurch, we are all about bringing the marginalised and the lonely into community and fellowship around a table – our literal dining tables. Since the pandemic kicked off, restrictions have prohibited us from meeting with other households inside and so this has totally stalled our in-person activities and communal mission as a microchurch.
However, determined to stay inspired and in community with one another we have been having regular zoom calls. Over the past couple of months in these zoom calls, we have followed a series from Bridgetown Church in the US, where well known evangelical preacher and author of books like Loveology and The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, John Mark Comer ministers. The series is called “Eating and Drinking” (link down below) and has felt tailor made for us – ‘twas a very good find!
To give you a flavour of what this series has been helping us to think about, I’m going to give you a run down of my personal two top highlights from the series (so far).
1. The missional importance of hospitality.
John Mark is a huge bookworm and so has a great knowledge and ability to communicate things about antiquity. He explained that hospitality was significant for the early church as it was how Christianity was able to spread so widely through the Roman Empire where it was an illegal religion and punishable by death for over 300 years. John Mark used the phrase “radically ordinary hospitality” to encourage us to be radically open and hospitable with our very ordinary, normal and chaotic lives. Our homes, as with the early church, are to be places of welcome, acceptance and grace, and ultimately places to facilitate encounters with God.
I love this chat and will perhaps talk more about it when it comes to mind. Anyway,
2. Reimagining the Lord’s Supper.
In the most recent talk, we listened to John Mark run through all the popular names for the occasion when believers come together to share in the bread and wine together in remembrance of Jesus. Each name encourages us to approach the table slightly differently, which isn’t something I’d considered before. He also said that the communion (or however you refer to it) is the collision point where all that is wrong meets all that is right, the past meets the future, all in order to inform our present. When Jesus tells us to, “Do this in remembrance of me” it is not to remember, tick that spiritual task off the list and carry on. But it is to remember, in a way, like Spiderman might be giving his all to conquer the villain but doesn’t quite feel strong enough when MJ shouts from the sidelines, “Remember what Uncle Ben said!”, Spiderman then recites this proverb under his breath before surging his powers and obliterating the other. In a more realistic example, it is your child flailing in the swimming pool and you reminding them, “Remember what you did in your swimming lessons!” We are to to remember Jesus in communion in the way that we remember what went before, and all Jesus did so that it can inform our present and change the future.
It was fun exploring these names and foci through our chat. We wondered whether (when Nicola lets us meet inside again) we could use each of these focus points as aspects within our meal together, or whether to take them in turn to be the focus of a meal. Whilst the ability to live out our table top church dream remains in the hands of politicians, we remain hopeful and keen to engage with the people around us. Right now that looks like exploring how to show others hospitality in these weird times, and tending to our own dinner table culture. If there is anything these different names of and approaches to communion show us, it is that there is no need for our grace prayers before eating to go stale.
Bethany Shelton, Community
Links:
The Eating and Drinking series: bridgetown.church/series/eating-drinking/