TAKE YOUR LADLE OFF THIS SOUP

Tonight, I shared a meal table with an interesting bunch of people. I, a Filipino Worship Pastor, had tea with a nominal Muslim East Indian optometrist dating a Vietnamese Buddhist university student, a Pentecostal-turned-Baptist South African doctor and his mother, a white Canadian Lutheran musician married to a Muslim-raised-turned-Charismatic man from the Caribbean. We proceeded to share a meal together while sharing things we face as individuals and in our vocations.

It occurred to me that the table is probably one of the most intimate places in our lives. What happens during meals shapes a large part of our existence – sometimes good and sometimes bad. Whether at home, or in a restaurant, or sitting in a park, it is there that we give ourselves to one another in a special way. We invite our friends to become part of our lives. We want them to be nurtured by the same food and drink that nurtures us. Eve in Church life, we share holy communion and, as strange as it may sound, we actually become food – nourishment – for one another.

It is at the table that we learn about being a part of something larger than ourselves; a family or community is shared. While it is also around the table we made re-aware of our own calling -vocations- and responsibilities within the community in which we find ourselves. We find our places in relation to the whole family.

Earlier, I had a short but very interesting conversation with a co-worker in ministry. In a rather awkward moment I was asked a strange question: “Where were you when we were scrambling over the mike problem last Sunday? Wasn’t that your responsibility?” While he said that without meaning any offense, I found that strange and invasive mainly because they were actually scrambling over someone else’s responsibility. I knew it was mine that was why I was there assembling a new mike! I told him exactly where I was and what I was doing, I just don’t make a lot of noise when I work, unless necessary. He remembered. I told him that one of the things I haven’t gotten used to and I wish would end in my current situation is how many cooks are huddled over one pot of broth who might spoil it in the process! Humbly, he admitted how he tends to be a cook who looks into someone else’s pot with intentions of making the soup better.
I don’t tell the children’s pastor how to run the kids department nor do I tell the church gardener how to mow the lawns or trim the hedges.

There is a reason why Christ Himself calls the church “the Body”– each of us who belong in it function according to individual calling, responsibility, and service- all for the good of the whole! Perhaps not always agreeing or seeing eye to eye – and that’s the beauty of it really – but engaged in a process that makes room for the other’s gifts, graces, ideas, opinions, in the end however, we are called to be faithful to what God called us to do.

This Sunday, the church in which I serve will gather around the communion table, to which we bring our differences while being reminded of our unity.