Growing Up Evangelical: What Happens at the Table

Much of my life has been spent sitting at one table or another, most times with family members and friends. Not as many years as have been given to sleep of course; and who knows how TV time compares? While I've read that today's typical 14-year-old will have spent 19 years in front of some screen or other by age 60, I'm pretty sure that my siblings and I were formed more by our time around the table. 

While hunger and mom's dinner-time calls certainly drove us there, eating was only one among other table time activities. Talking, food passing and education on etiquette also happened as the five of us at various stages of development learned the grace of saying please and thank you and keeping our mouths closed around the food we were chewing. Thanks to my sister, we also learned not to compare our dinner to dog food (1). My parents worked hard to sow refinement and even camaraderie into our gatherings, all the while hoping, I'm sure, the seeds would somehow express themselves beyond multiplied and brain-numbing reminders (2). 

Mom was responsible for loveliness that always met us as we sat down together. Plates, silverware and napkins were set evenly and carefully, with knife blades turned inward. Our evangelical dinnertime prayers, prayed aloud whether our meals were eaten in or out of our home, were homegrown (3). My preacher-dad didn't mind making prayers audible (and loud). One summer at Disney World he offered a blessing in Liberty Square that was probably heard as far away as Frontier Land. That event, incidentally, happened during Paul's first visit to my family. 

Anyone who has spent more than an occasional meal with young offspring knows that the experience is not always pleasant (4). Accidents happen. Food comes under scrutiny. Corrections are inevitable. Children resist criticism for the way they sit, hold their fork or drink their milk and parents suffer as drinks are repeatedly spilled because "someone" once again placed her glass too close to the edge of the table. It's really no wonder families sometimes choose to eat in their cars. 

Over the years, memorable--sometimes spectacular-- events occurred at our evangelical table. Like the Thanksgiving my 80-year-old grandmother, in the middle of one of her stories, disappeared rapture-like. Her chair unexpectedly gave way beneath her and she landed, stunned but unhurt, in a sitting position on the florr with only her silver bun visible above the surface of the table. Once restored to another very well-tested chair, this noble woman picked up the thread of her tale as if nothing had happened and talked right through the post-traumatic explosion of hilarity that followed. At another dinner gathering, my brother relayed an incident about a pastor we knew who had inadvertently--and unfortunately-- used a very obvious double entendre during a worship service, deeply disturbing the reverence of worshipers who caught it and creating the very uncomfortable tension among teens and young adults who knew they weren't supposed to laugh in church but couldn't help it. The punch line of my brothers story resulted in unintentional food spitting and drink-spewing, some from our noses. You have to be fully church-initiated to appreciate the story as we did. 

Dad, sometimes spoon-wielding table-manner teacher, was often chief leader of the chaos eventuating from the unexpected or humorous and was the first one to laugh (explosively) at Dave's story. At times (maybe most times) he was the responsible party for the unexpected that happened at the table--like pulling our dog to his lap to make her "talk," or winking and announcing that his prediction concerning my youngest sister's bike, countless times left in the driveway, had finally come true. His table humor was not always appreciated.

As we grew and could sit longer than 10 minutes before asking to be excused, the table became our altar and the primary space for welcoming vulnerability and experiencing the intimacy upon which the soul of a family is nourished. We all knew the misery of eating a meal when someone among us was out of sorts; how tasteless food could become when unprocessed offense between members was present. Time and again the table was impetus for settling matters and the place where pain could safely be exposed. When Dad died we very naturally gathered around a breakfast table to process the long night we had spent around his bedside to share the mystery of loss and love. 

Despite the prominence of the table in my parents' home, I've wondered why it took so long for me to associate our family mealtimes with the observance of communion--our family repasts with the meal we share in church. Maybe because the "meal" at church was served by men in suits while food in our house was prepared and served by Mom and my sisters and I; or perhaps knowing that, in comparison to eating (at least) three times a day at home, the tiny once-a-month portions served at church could of themselves keep no one alive; or maybe, in contrast to the informal and (mostly) joyous atmosphere of meals at home, communion at church was and continues to be a largely formal and somber occasion. 

Over the years I have been warmly welcomed to many communion tables and have come to appreciate the times the community of Christ is gathered around a table, facing and to passing food a one another. Maybe the observance of communion becomes a true meal when members of the body of Christ bodily hand the elements to one another, saying as we do, this is for you, face to face intimacy that can only happen when members are at peace with God and each other. 

At the table on the night he was betrayed, Jesus expressed how deeply he had desired to share the meal with his friends (5). He continues to invite us to the table to be nourished on his life, poured out for us in order to console and be consoled, reprove and be reproved--to celebrate the family we are. And we can do this whenever we eat or drink (6). 

1. Only my sister Julie can tell this story appropriately, but the gist is this: when she was in elementary school, she described what was being served for dinner as dog food and immediately found herself alone in her bedroom, excused from the table. To this day she defends her comment as an observation. "I didn't say it tasted like dog food," she insists. As if. And by the way, "Language and the Evangelical" will be a chapter in my Growing Up Evangelical series. Spoiler alert: you'll learn how one of my children learned to say and remember the unfortunate name of an OT character.

2. Isn't it strange that positive behaviors take so long to learn and that bad habits are so hard to break; that bad words are instantaneously picked up and applied perfectly by even very small children? One of the 7 mysteries of raising a family. 

3. Not a criticism, but sometimes spoken mindlessly so that they sometimes pop out unexpectedly-like when Tim answered the phone and, instead of saying hello, said Dear Lord Jesus. These days I often prefer the written prayers to those made up on the spot. Common Book of Prayer is a great read and manual for prayer.

4. Of course adults too can be responsible for unpleasantness at the table, myself included. Think what happens to the dinner atmosphere when someone who has already given their brain to political science starts talking about elections and legislation.

5. Luke 22:15

6. Luke 22:19