What Is Valuable at the Table?

* On Sundays (or Saturday nights for Sunday) I post communion meditations that I wrote at some point over the past few years. I pray that they will help the body remember the significance of why we gather together each week.

It is still two days before the Passover. Around Jerusalem families and friends are uniting for a yearly ritual. An air of celebration permeates everything as thoughts turn back to how God led the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery. The minds of a nation turned backward to a night long before any of them were born… a night when all the firstborn of Egypt were killed, but the Israelites were spared.
Now, years later, they celebrate the Passover near the Temple. But before the Passover celebration began, the Jews would gather in homes and celebrate, laugh, reminisce, and enjoy one another’s company. Each table would contain a mixture of family and friends as homes were opened for loved ones.
But the tables weren’t open tables. You couldn’t just walk in off the street and be welcomed to a table. Or could you?

While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table.
When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. “Why this waste?’ they asked. “This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.”
Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. I tell you the truth, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.” Matthew 26:6-13

Notice those around Jesus. A leper named Simon who has invited them all together. A sinful woman willing to “waste” a whole jar of expensive perfume. And the disciples – a group of men who are shocked at such extravagant waste in their presence. Their training with Jesus has taught them to value the poor. He has trained them to know the right answers. But they hadn’t fully understood what was valuable at the table.
At the table of fellowship, it is not the gift that is valuable, no matter the monetary value people assign to it. It isn’t the size of the check or the gift. What matters at the table is the giver and their relationship with Jesus. What matters is pouring out one’s all for the one who gave all.
As we gather around this table, don’t miss the value of this moment. It is not in any of the physical things that we see, but on the attitudes and intents of those gathered. It is on the renewing of that relationship with Christ. What is valuable is pouring out one’s own self and being filled with the Spirit of God as we partake of the body and blood of Christ.