Using the Right Fork

Mark 14:22-25

Robert M Watkins

September 2, 2007

My grandmother had a complete set of silver that she received as a wedding present in 1922. And when I say “complete,” I do indeed mean complete. The set held five kinds of fork--cocktail, fruit, salad, meat, and dessert. It held three kinds of spoon--soup, tea, and sherbet. It held three kinds of knife--butter, entree, and steak. What this meant was that for a given place setting at one of her formal dinners, each diner had to contend with no less than ELEVEN different implements to get through the meal!

Never have I felt such a certain sense of doom than when I sat down at her table for someone’s celebration. I was only eight years old. Confronted with all that cutlery, I felt like a surgeon or an auto mechanic. For a moment, I dreamed of being in one of those old Westerns armed with only a tin spoon. Better yet, how about a reduction to pure primitivism? I’ll just grub my dinner with my hands!

However, one thing we all knew when we gathered at her table was that we were participants in an event. This meal was a happening and we have the stuff to prove it. One felt exalted just sitting there.

Now in the Upper Room on a fateful Passover 2000 years ago, the tableware was certainly more rudimentary than in my grandmother’s dining room. The gospels afford only the barest of glimpses of the table, but they agree that the service was bowls and spoons, maybe a knife, accompanied by rough cups from which to drink. The men reclined at the table--something that would have horrified my grandmother should any of us have dared to lay down on the floor beneath her table--and the women took their own meal in the kitchen. Some dishes were communal, with various hands dipping into the same pots for that item. In terms of etiquette, it was a far more relaxed affair than most meals we take on holidays.

And yet it was holy.

It was a sacred event, full of wonder and revelation. God was most certainly present. An air of transcendence filled the room on that evening.

The irony is that it did so because a careful order was imposed on the meal, an order of which my grandmother would have been most proud. Sacred rites and rituals were being imposed on the meal. This was no simple supper among close friends--this was worship.

Within our families, we all can list the sacred rites and rituals that accompany special occasions. Some folks have a designated carver with a select knife. Some folks have designated seats when a particular constellation of relatives enter the dining room. There are sacred foods that must be served when certain individuals come to dine. We sometimes smile at our idiosyncrasies, but they are powerful signs of the importance of what is happening. Everyone knows the symbolism and would find things out of whack if something or someone was missed. They imbue the gathering with power.

Jesus is intentionally doing so as he gathers at table with the disciples. The words, the order, the food itself, all of it matters. Even though he alone knows what is actually happening at this particular dinner, he wants the details ingrained in their consciousness. They have to remember what happened. He is revealing to them the new order of God’s reconciliation with humanity. He is showing them the total reality of God’s presence within their lives through the actions of Christ. A new creation is dawning all around them. They have to see the signs of its arrival.

The sacrament we are about to partake of hardly resembles a family dinner, but in so many ways, that is exactly what it is. One of the hallmarks of our faith is that in Christ we are all brothers and sisters, part of God’s family, intimately interconnected through the Holy Spirit. We look at this table and the practices surrounding it as essential to our understanding of who we are as God’s people within God’s fellowship. What we say and do matters. At this table we encounter the Risen Christ and we share his redemptive presence as we go through the rite. Christ himself anchors us in place with his words as he speaks to the first disciples. What happens at that dinner table carries through the ages. This is a moment of eternity fused within our transitory existence.

With that power in place and revealed, there comes an astounding irony.

Look to the Twelve. There could be a no more unholy group of congregants than the twelve men gathered with Christ in the Upper Room. They are confused, angry, afraid, full of questions, certain of failure, questioning one another, accusing one another, and completely devoid of contemplative spirituality. Hardly any time at all will pass after this meal when all of them will run away into to the cover of darkness. Yet, they are communed with by Christ. How does that work? Because as they sat there with Jesus, they were open in the only way that truly mattered--they were hungry for God. They recognized their own state of being lost and they hungered for God to find them. The meal did not miraculously transform them instantaneously into shining beacons of holiness, but it took hold of them. Within that meal, they received the grace of God, grace that would carry them through the infinitely dark night of the soul the following days plunged them within. God was with them.

That is comfort for us this day. We enter this sanctuary all along the gamut of human emotions. We carry with us the lingering words on the way here, the detritus of the week, and all the cares and worries and distractions that come with simply living. The good news is that we are in the exact state necessary for communion. We are hungry and God is waiting with the feast of souls. And we don’t even have to know which fork to use.