Jesus’ table manners

My recent project, a downloadable study booklet called “Come Lord Jesus, be our Host,” inspired me to dig more deeply into the table manners of Jesus. I’m not referring to how he placed his knife and fork, but the way he approached the table.

Jesus’ table manners concerned a lot of his contemporaries, including his disciples. When he told them to provide food for a crowd of the five thousand, they worried. How could they possibly feed so many people (Matthew 14:17)? I certainly would have fretted and fussed aplenty. But Jesus’ graciousness taught them the practical theology of abundance. There was more than enough to feed everyone.

Some people worried about Jesus’ practice of eating with sinners and tax collectors. Yet he seemed quite unconcerned. He taught that salvation was coming to the very social outcasts with whom he was willing to sup.

Jesus sometimes mixed up the roles of guest and host. Consider the time our resurrected Jesus met his despondent disciples on the road to Emmaus. Following a deep and moving conversation with this “stranger” about the violent death of their beloved rabbi, they invited him to share supper and offered him a place to spend the night as their guest. But then we read, “When he was at table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them” (Luke 24:30). Jesus, the guest, stepped into the bread-breaking role of host! As he did so, he revealed himself not only as guest-turned-host, but as their risen Lord.

This alternating relationship between guest and host recalls the inclusiveness expressed by Jesus in John 6:56: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” His words come after he feeds the crowd of five thousand. He is clearly the host, but a host who receives the bread and fish for blessing and sharing from a boy who is willing to share his lunch.

Jesus’ examples of sharing and his words of blessing are often reflected upon in communion services. In our Anabaptist and Mennonite church practice, we’ve made strong distinctions between the meals and fellowship we offer freely to all and the communion meal by which we remember Jesus and his saving sacrifice—a meal traditionally reserved for baptized believers. I’m learning that the purpose of Jesus’ tables went well beyond what we typically think of as communion. It is becoming increasingly clear to me that we need to acknowledge Jesus’ place at all of our tables, and his.

“Come Lord Jesus, be our host—please and thank you.”

Elsie Rempel is a Mennonite Church Canada Formation consultant. Her new resource, “Come Lord Jesus, be our Host,” will be available through www.commonword.ca/home this spring.