I don’t know if the perfect poem exists—that may not be a reasonable category. But if it does, my vote might be Donald Hall’s beautiful poem, “Summer Kitchen,” which is printed in your bulletin, in which he captures, perfectly, a moment in time: an ordinary evening not unlike so many evenings that you or I have known. But as he remembers it years later, after his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, died too young of cancer, it is revealed as something much more. He writes,
In June’s high light she stood at the sink
With a glass of wine,
And listened for the bobolink,
And crushed garlic in late sunshine.
I watched her cooking, from my chair.
She pressed her lips
Together, reached for kitchenware,
And tasted sauce from her fingertips.
“It’s ready now. Come on,” she said.
“You light the candle.”
We ate, and talked, and went to bed,
And slept. It was a miracle.
The subtle rhyme, the lilting meter, the simple, unadorned language. All of it focuses our view on this scene that, seen one way, is just Tuesday night spaghetti. And yet, if we look closely—or if we look from the heart, we see there is perhaps no such thing as just Tuesday night spaghetti. Or at least, that even Tuesday night spaghetti can become a resurrection story.
I.
As Luke remembers it, it was later that same day that the tomb was found empty. Two of the disciples are leaving town, headed to the village of Emmaus, just outside of Jerusalem, and they’re talking with each other about these things that have been reported. As they’re walking, Jesus comes to walk with them, although we’re told “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” He asks them, in a coy sort of way, What’s all this that you’re talking about? One of them, an otherwise unknown follower of Jesus named Cleopas, responds incredulously, Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?
What things? Jesus asks—again, playing it very cool here, I think we can say.
These things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped he would be the one to redeem Israel—hold that for a moment.
He continues, And besides that, it’s now been three days since these things took place, and some women in our group have astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they didn’t find the body there, they had a vision of angels who said he was alive. Others went to the tomb and confirmed everything they said, but didn’t see him.
At this point, Jesus jumps in, seemingly unable to contain himself any longer: How foolish can you be, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!—I imagine he says with a smile. Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer and die in this way and enter into glory! And then, starting back with Moses and the prophets, he unfolds the gospel story for them. And yet—they still do not see it is him.
Now they’ve reached the village, and Jesus, still in the form of the stranger they’ve just met, begins to walk ahead of them as if he were going on. And here is where these disciples make their critical move, though they did not see it as such at the time. He was about to leave them, but they urged him to stay for supper and the night, and so he did. They find themselves around the table with this stranger, and as they’re all seated, he takes the loaf of bread before them, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them. And at this—in the taking, the blessing, the breaking, the giving, “their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.” And just like that, he vanished.
A resurrection story.
II.
Now, it must be said that throughout their time with Jesus, the disciples are famously slow learners. They can’t seem to keep up with just what he’s doing, where he’s headed, and what it all means. And that was especially true of his attempts to prepare them for the events of Holy Week: the trial and cross and resurrection—they couldn’t grasp it, right up to the final days.
On Palm Sunday, the crowds greeted Jesus as a conquering hero, expecting him to lead the armies of heaven in rising up against the powers of Rome. Jesus had told them he was indeed bringing another Kingdom, but this Kingdom would be different from what they expected. It would be defined not by fighting fire with fire or meeting sword with sword, but by turning the other cheek, going the extra mile. Spreading mustard seeds on the ground, and searching for lost sheep.
Here on the day of resurrection, they’re still struggling to understand. These two disciples are dejected and confused. They thought Jesus would be the one to “redeem Israel,” it says—the Greek literally reads “to set Israel free.” They’re still waiting for the swords to come out and the armies of heaven!
There was much they were still figuring out, God bless them. But we miss something important if we miss what they got right. Before his death, it was Jesus who invited the disciples to the table. The final table where they shared their last meal together, but so many others. So much of the story of the gospels happens around tables. Jesus was constantly gathering around tables with friends, enemies, and strangers alike, those on the inside and those scandalized or on the margins. It was around the table that Jesus exposed the lines that separated people and offered them a way to see each other anew.
Yet here, after his resurrection, it’s not Jesus who invites the disciples to the table, but the disciples who invite him, though they did not know it was him. In other words, it was an act of hospitality—that familiar motion they had seen so often in Jesus, that, even in their bewilderment and fear, they instinctively offered—that made this resurrection story possible.
They did not yet know just what this new Kingdom would look like, but without even realizing it, they had internalized how and where it would appear. Not in the wielding of a sword, but in the breaking of bread. Not by rallying troops, but by welcoming the stranger. Not in an act of war, but an act of friendship—of companionship; com-panion, literally, “who you eat bread with.” An act of community—or better yet, an act of communion. To break bread with another, they found, can be to commune with the holy. A taste of life in the world to come, revealed in the miracle of these simple things: the breaking of bread, the glass of wine. The crushing of garlic, lighting a candle, the taste of sauce from our fingertips. This is where a new world begins. A miracle.
III.
It should tell us something that just about all of these resurrection stories recorded in the gospels take place around a table or a meal. As the Gospel of John recalled last week, Christ appears to the disciples as they were gathered around the same table where he’d left them just days before. Later in John, he appears to them on the lakeshore, where he cooks fish over a charcoal fire. Here he appears to two of them in the breaking of bread, and if we’d continue reading, we’d see he soon appears to the whole of them around a table, where he shows them his hands and feet, and then asks them for something to eat. All of these resurrection stories happen over meals. None of them is especially extravagant. Some shared among friends, others shared with strangers. We take this for granted, perhaps, but the risen Christ surely could have appeared to his followers anywhere, doing anything. Why the table?
The church historian and theologian Diana Butler Bass argues that we should understand the table in contrast with the cross, as two competing ways of encountering or approaching the world.[1]
They’re both made of the same stuff, just wood and nails. Though from these same materials, they’re made for entirely different purposes. One is meant to celebrate life, the other to carry out death. One draws people toward it in hope; the other is meant to repel them in fear. One breaks down the walls that separate people in love. The other defends those same walls with violence.
In the arc from Holy Week into Easter, the pattern of movement is: table/trial/cross/tomb/table. After his resurrection, Christ returned not to the cross, but to the table. In fact, in all of these resurrection stories, Jesus says nothing about the cross. He shows them his wounds, but says nothing of how he got them. Almost as if to say, All of that is done now. You can leave the cross behind. Think nothing of vengeance or reprisal—let the world have its crosses. The life you’re looking for won’t be found there. It will be found right here, around a table.
Bass wonders what would be different if the church, through the generations, had listened more closely. If we’d spent less time gazing at crosses and more time gathering around tables.
IV.
She makes a point. We do continue to gaze at crosses: on the walls, in our windows. But we do gather around tables quite a bit. We share this table on the first Sunday of each month, where we say those words handed down to us: As often as you do this, remember me. But where we’ve maybe gotten it wrong is in being too narrow in our understanding of what Jesus meant by “this.” Because I don’t think he meant only this ceremonial breaking of bread and lifting of the cup in our sanctuary—that didn’t even exist yet. I think he meant “this” in the broadest terms possible. Whenever you gather around food and maybe even some wine,
with friends,
or family,
or friends who are like family,
or strangers,
or strangers who end up becoming family,
or enemies,
or enemies who by holy twist become friends,
or children,
or old folks,
husbands, wives, beloveds,
—as often as you do this, wherever and whenever and with whomever you do this, gathering before some small taste of the abundance promised one day in full, may your hearts be flooded with memory of me, and all the faces you have seen me in, some hidden from you for a time, and then revealed, felt in the warming of your hearts.
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1 Diana Butler Bass has written about this in many places. Here is one of them: https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/the-holy-thursday-revolution