The Supper That Was Not An Occasion

The tray comes down the row from the left, and she has about forty seconds.

She knows the forty seconds well. She has had them four times a year for nine years, which is thirty six of them, and she has spent every single one of them getting ready to feel something.

She closes her eyes at the right moment. She thinks about the cross deliberately, on purpose, the way a person thinks about a topic. She tries to picture it, and what she actually pictures is a painting she saw once in a book with a blue cover. She tells herself, quietly and firmly, that this is the most serious thing that will happen to her this quarter.

The tray reaches her. She takes the small square of bread. It is dry and it sticks to the roof of her mouth, and while she is working it loose with her tongue she becomes aware that she is now thinking about the roof of her mouth.

Then the cup. Then the organ. Then the man in front of her puts his glasses back on, and there is a general shuffle while everyone sorts out their coats.

And she is walking to the car park again, past the same hedge, doing the thing she does, which is the arithmetic.

Thirty six times. Twice she felt something, and both times, if she is being honest with herself, she thinks it was the tune.

She has never told a living soul this. What she has concluded, over nine years, entirely in private, is that the fault must be in her. That everybody else in that row is having an encounter and she is having a Sunday. That she is the flat one.

And on Tuesday she will stand at the kitchen counter at half past one and eat a cheese sandwich, and nothing whatsoever about that will seem to her to have anything to do with God.

Two men, a long road, and supper on the table

First, the thing this page is not going to do, so that you can relax and read the rest of it.

It is not going to tell you how often bread should be broken in your congregation. That is your church's to hold and it is held by people who love you and it is not mine to touch from here. Nothing on this page is a criticism of anybody's practice, and nothing on this page is asking you to do anything anywhere except in your own kitchen.

Your ache is not about the calendar. Your ache is that you have been waiting for a day to do something to you, and the day keeps not doing it, and you have started to think that says something about you. Scripture never once put it that way, and His Spirit is the one who feeds a person.

So let me take you to a supper.

It was the same Sunday. Two of them were walking to a village a few miles out, and they were talking the whole way about everything that had just happened, and their faces were down. He came alongside them on the road and walked with them, and they did not know Him.

Sit in that a second, because it is the most comforting sentence in the account and everybody reads straight past it. They did not know Him. Their eyes were kept from recognizing Him. Not weak eyes. Not distracted eyes. Kept.

They walked the whole way with Him. He opened the Scriptures to them as they went, and their hearts burned inside them while He did it, and they still did not know who He was. They got to the village and He made as though He would carry on, and they pressed Him to stay because it was getting towards evening and the day was nearly gone.

And then this.

When he was at the table with them, he took the bread and blessed it and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognised him.Luke 24:30 to 31

Look hard at that supper, because there is nothing to it.

It is late. They are tired. It is an ordinary evening meal in an ordinary house at the end of a long walk, put on the table because people have to eat. Nobody has prepared. Nobody has closed their eyes on purpose. There is no tray, no row, no arithmetic, no forty seconds. They are being polite to a stranger they talked into staying because it was getting dark and he had a long way to go.

That is where they saw Him.

And when they ran the whole way back to tell the others, listen to how they told it. They said He was made known to them in the breaking of the bread. Not in the sermon on the road, and that sermon was the finest ever preached, by a distance nobody will ever close. In the bread. At the table. Over supper.

He said it about Himself in the plainest words He ever used: I am the bread of life, and whoever comes to me is never left hungry.

Bread is not an occasion. Bread is the most ordinary thing on earth. It is the thing a house always has, the thing you eat standing up, the thing that is there on a Tuesday at half past one at the kitchen counter with the radio on.

Now hear the release, because you have been carrying the wrong verdict for nine years. Scripture is what lifts it and His Spirit is the one who does the lifting.

You have not been flat. You have been faithful. You went and sat in the row thirty six times and closed your eyes at the right moment and tried, every time, with everything you had. That is not the behavior of a spiritually dull woman. That is nine years of showing up.

And the two men on that road had their eyes kept the entire way, which was nothing to do with their faith and nothing to do with their effort, and when their eyes opened it was not because they had finally concentrated hard enough. It was because He broke the bread. He did it. They were just at the table.

The people whose name is over this page set out wanting a table that was open often and a door nobody had to qualify for, because they had watched requirements pile up in front of ordinary hungry people. Whatever your congregation does with that, here is the thing they were reaching for, handed back to you.

Often is not a lesser word than rare. The ordinary day is not the leftovers.

The bread in the wilderness came down every single morning, and it was exactly the same bread on a Thursday.