A Bigger Table - Maundy Thursday - 2025
A Bigger Table
John 13:1-17; 31b-35
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.” After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them. Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Prayer – Gracious and loving God – we come this night to remember, to remember that Jesus’ best friends were just as fallible and broken as any of us. Ordinary people called to a bigger table where love was the most important ingredient. Jesus offers a love without bounds, a love that is indomitable, a love that knows no stopping. Gather us to this bigger table where we can share in a feast of life – amen.
For as long as I can remember, I have had two great stories planted within my heart, stories that not everyone has. The first was a story of my family – where love was both unconditional and conditional – perhaps that has been your experience as well – and yet on a deep level I knew that I was loved. Most of the time home was a safe place but sometimes expectations and affirmations were confusing and not clear, that I had to be a certain way in order to gain love and affection.
The second was the story of God and in my God story, God was real, God was good and I was made in the image of this very good God. My faith story told me that God was massive and made everything, and yet this very same God knew me by name and loved me completely. It was and is a beautiful story, one that for most of my life reminded me that I was never alone and God was always present, that God’s love had little if no strings attached.
Along with these stories about a big God who created and loves me, there were some false stories as well – about people of color, about poor people, about drug users and atheists. In my handed down narratives, these people were to be avoided because they could in some way ‘rub off on me’ and perhaps make me less deserving of God’s love. I needed to associate with only people who looked like me, talked like me, dressed like me – because we were God’s chosen and beloved people and those others just didn’t quite measure up.
I imagine some if not most of you were raised in a similar self-centered faith story. You trusted that God was for you just because of that and nothing else. Such thinking forced us to become experts on exclusion and at crafting a God who plays favorites. This is far easier when everything around you tells you that you have a place at the table.
My combined stories led me to believe that some were beloved while others were somehow a little less than and perhaps were not as welcome at the table as those of us who were. I remember what it felt like to think about God and to count myself as close and cared for, while believing that so many others were just not welcome at the table.
False stories and small tables will do that every time. In fact, the source of the greatest falsehood in the modern church is the belief that there are clearly defined insiders and outsiders; that God is somewhere up there keeping score like a cosmic Santa and we all need to figure out how to separate people into allies and adversaries, lest we be aligned with the damned and not saved.
These false stories weren’t the result of targeted and sinister indoctrination. They were simply the byproduct of being around people who looked and talked and believed the way that they did. When this happens, your table is going to be incredibly small. That’s what uniformity brings – an inherited affinity for the familiar and a fear of what isn’t. When the table you’re sitting at is small, so too is your understanding of those seated elsewhere.
We religious folks seem to need our deal breakers, our litmus-test issues and categories and stances that help us identify our common enemy and separate ourselves from them. It’s why so often in the church today, our points of difference, political affiliations, theological positions and social stances, which could explain the table of our understanding, all become so divisive and so polarizing – because we need them to be to keep the battle lines visibly drawn. And so, we double down on exclusion, certain that this is defending the faith.
We’re all looking for a way to judge our own moral worth, to quantify our goodness in our heads, to prove ourselves righteous to others, and so we survey the landscape and scan other’s lives for those beliefs and behaviors by which we can declare them inferior from a distance. We may be aware of our fatal flaws, but we can overlook those things when we need to. We can ignore our hypocrisy if it helps us tell a better story about us.
In the face of our weaknesses and flaws, we want for ourselves God’s grace because we are insiders – we want compassion, forgiveness, restoration. We feel we deserve such things without caveat, and in those moments, this is the God we choose to believe in. But when it comes to those on the outside, we’re far more willing to believe in a Maker who sends traitors to foreign prisons, who puts them on ice and make them disappear without warning or reprieve. We seek for ourselves the kind of mercy that we are so very hesitant to give to those who we see as outsiders. We get our grace, and they get their damnation. We receive restoration and they get bumped off. Perhaps the biggest, most damaging mistake too many Christians so willingly make is assuming that God is just as judgmental as they are.
And it is here that I am reminded of the enormity of Christ’s table. If you think there were only men in that upper room then you are gravely mistaken. It took women to cook and prepare the Passover meal. It took women to help serve the food and women were as much a part of Jesus’ inner group as any male we know of. But what if, what if we could make room for difference and disagreement in our community as Jesus did with his friends and disciples? What if, we could give permission for moral failure and freedom to not be certain, and the chance to gloriously fail without needing those things to become black marks against people or death-penalty sentences? What if we made space for people who are as screwed up as we are – people who would deny or betray or run away frightened of being mistaken as a follower?
Jesus regularly ate with people who were outsiders – sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors. Jesus included Samaritans and Romans in his healing ministry. Jesus didn’t exclude anyone. Jesus wanted to prepare a feast where all were welcome, where all are known and recognized and loved as the beloved children of God they are and were and will always be. This is the heart of the Gospel – the ever-expanding hospitality of God. Jesus after all, was a carpenter. Building bigger tables was right in his wheelhouse.
What strikes me as I read the Gospel stories is Jesus’ table ministry, the way he so often used the act of sharing a meal, the act of breaking bread, as a way of letting people know that they are seen and heard and known and respected. Jesus’ table was an altar around which he welcomed the world to experience communion with God and with one another. Jesus’ table was diverse – priests and prostitutes, religious elite and common street rabble, with friends and adversaries. There at the ‘grown up table’ all were treated with equal dignity, and they all left that table with their dignity intact – even if he had hard words for them.
Religious folks then, and now, said, “Look at him, he is eating with sinners.” The wonder aloud why a proper rabbi would associate himself with such reprehensible characters. And I can imagine street people criticizing him for breaking bread with the Pharisees too, accusing him of conspiring with their oppressors. When you and I look to expand the table, we will be invariably pulled in all directions by those who are more interested in claiming ownership of our allegiance than extending grace to the other.
For Jesus, the bigger table is a tool of connection. It transcends difference. It bridges disagreement. It declares the other welcomed and worthy of hearing It recognizes the other and declares commonality with him or her. I’m not sure we care to follow Jesus all the way to the table with those we have contempt for from a distance, and yet this is the path of the disciple. At the center of a bigger table is the idea of creating shalom for others, enabling them to have the same access to wholeness, sustenance, justice and joy as everyone else. It is not merely some internal understanding about the intrinsic value of all people Jesus holds in his heart, but the tangible, visible response in the world that a bigger table means everyone.
A bigger table can’t be for ourselves and only those who are to the left or the right of us. Redemptive community requires that we extend the invitation to both sides of our political and religious perspectives, and endeavor to build relationship, or at the very least acceptance and understanding. Recalling the gospel story of the feeding of the multitudes we often focus on the how of the story. But if we view this as a who and why story, we will find the clear invitation for we who seek the ways of Jesus. We can the heart of God for hungry people. We can see the challenge of expanding the table. This is where the miracle takes place.
Tonight, as we gather around this table that God has prepared for us, may we be reminded that it isn’t our table, it is God’s table, and whether from the east or the west, the north or the south; whether you are a sinner or saint; whether you believe and follow or are filled with more questions than answers. A Bigger Table does not require an altar call, no spiritual gifts assessment, no membership class, no moral screenings, no litmus test to verify one’s theology. Our hunger and Jesus’ love for us alone, nothing else, makes us worthy – thanks be to God for a bigger table – amen.
Adapted from ‘A Bigger Table’ – John Pavlovitz