If this were the last night of your life, what would you do?
On his last night, Jesus gathered at table with his friends.

Jesus loved tables. He spent a lot of time sitting at tables.
At a table, Jesus ate and drank with sinners,
so that you and I would know we are always welcome at God’s feast.
At a table a woman became a teacher to the apostles
when she anointed Jesus with oil.
At a table Jesus presented a startling image of God
as slave and servant of all, when he washed his disciples’ feet.
At a table our Lord gave us, in bread and wine,
the means of tasting his sweetness forever.

I think Jesus liked tables because they are places of intimacy.
Everyone is close together—
it’s a place to let your guard down.
Jesus probably did more teaching quietly around a table
than he did shouting from boats or mountaintops to vast multitudes.

And I don’t think Jesus just walked into a room
and started telling people about God.
I think he sat down with them, and learned their names,
and listened to their stories.
And after a while, they would open up to him,
sharing their broken dreams and broken hearts,
their longings and their demons.
And it was there, responding to their particular stories,
that he would bring God to them, casting out their demons,
unbinding them with forgiveness,
empowering them to stand up and walk through that open door into God’s story,
proclaiming them—even the most prodigal sinner—the beloved children of God.

Tables also got Jesus into deep trouble.
In the Temple of Jerusalem, he overturned the tables of the old paradigm,
the tables of the smug and comfortable religionists
who can’t see the fault lines running through their ecclesiastical constructions
and their lifeless pieties.
He overturned the tables where some are in and some are out,
where some are welcome and some are not.

“This isn’t what God wants!” said the carpenter from Nazareth,
and he made a new table,
a table where all divisions and discriminations are put aside,

where enemies are embraced,
where outcasts and fools are honored as our wisest teachers,
where the abundant life of God’s future is as close
as the food you see before you tonight.

The world was not ready to sit at such a table –
the world didn’t even want to know there was such a table.
So it stretched its maker upon another piece of wood,
hoping to bury the dream before it could infect the general population.

But the table survived, and we sit round it tonight.
How costly and precious it is!
Gathered around Christ’s table,
we will do simple things—wash feet, share a meal, tell stories.

And as we do, we will begin,
as St. Augustine says,
to say Amen to the mystery we have become.