Holy Thursday Musings: What Story Does Your Table Tell?
(John 13:1-17)
I am a cradle Anglican from Nassau, Bahamas. I first encountered Jesus sitting at my grandmother’s table. It was at her table where she welcomed everyone to our home and shared a meal. It was there where she taught me the hymns of the church while we shucked corn or peas. It was there where she reinforced what was preached from the pulpit and taught in Sunday School. It was there where she comforted those afflicted and downtrodden by life’s trials, and it was there that she tenderly reprimanded family members who didn’t “act right!” It was also at her table where the stories of the family were handed down from one generation to the next, and it was there where we all gathered to mourn, when she died.
For me, my grandmother’s table was a place of love, a place of acceptance, a place of laughter, a place of forgiveness, a place of learning, a place of belonging and a place of story! It was a place of prayer, and a place of healing. No matter what we did, or said, or how we behaved, she patiently and lovingly waited for us to return to her table to make amends, and create new stories. You see, at her table, “stories painted a vision, shared a lesson, captured an insight, gave shape to experience, held memory, supplied a guidepost, forged a connection and unified us.”
So, dream with me into another table story. More than two thousand years ago, an itinerant teacher and his motley group of twelve disciples gathered around a table too! That night it was not the typical gathering. The women were suspiciously absent. The servants too. It seemed no one had been invited to join in. It was a private meal only for the twelve and the teacher. How come? Every other meal included the host and the host’s household, and members of the neighborhood! In fact, no one other than the disciples were there that night according to the evangelist. A night, which was different, and the disciples didn’t question it. They seemed happy to be together without the distractions of the raucous crowds they encountered entering Jerusalem, or at the synagogue. Perhaps now, the teacher would explain the crazy talk about his death! Instead, he got up from the table, removed his outer garment, tied a towel around his waist and began washing their feet! What are you doing man? This was not the job of a teacher! Yet here he was washing their feet and in turn asking them to wash each other’s feet as an act of love, servant leadership, and vulnerability.
Sisters, what stories do your tables tell? Who is at your table? Who is not? Do you even have a table? As Black Women in Ministry, those responses and stories may vary! For me, there has been a long list of firsts; the first Black woman hired by a community that is more than 300 years old; the first Black woman as rector in a parish that is over 150 years old! In these spaces, my table stories balance the importance of lifting myself up against and ensuring the door is open for the next sister, the next one who will stand on my shoulders as I stand on my grandmother’s!
Sisters, it has been said that “the shortest distance between two people is a story.” What story does your table tell?
The Rev. Rowena J. Kemp is the Ninth Rector (first female and first Person of Color) of Grace Episcopal Church, Hartford, CT and the National Chaplain of the Girls’ Friendly Society USA. She previously served as the Assistant Rector at the historic Trinity on the Green in New Haven, CT and as a Presbyter in the Middlesex Area Cluster ministry of the Episcopal churches in Northford, Higganum and Killingworth, CT while continuing full-time employment with the Program of Applied Translational Research at the Yale School of Medicine. She is a native of the Bahamas who received her M.DIV. and diploma in Anglican Studies from Yale Divinity School and the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale. She has served as a Board member for the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, the South Park Inn, a homeless shelter in Hartford, CT and Seabury, a continuing care retirement center in Bloomfield, CT and as President of the Episcopal Church in CT (ECCT) Standing Committee. She is also a former co-convener and founding member of the ECCT Racial Healing, Justice and Reconciliation ministry network. She has two adopted sons, Keegan and Kane.