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by: amilam The gesture was so tender I couldn’t help but smile. --------------------------------- Luke 19:1-6 tells us that… Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but being a short man he could not, because of the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.  When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. Brennan Manning writes in his book, The Ragamuffin Gospel, [in the Jewish tradition]: To share a meal with someone is a guarantee of peace, trust, fraternity, and forgiveness:  the shared table symbolizes a shared life. For a Jewish man to say, “I would like to have dinner with you,” is a metaphor implying “I would like to enter into a friendship with you.”...That is what Zacchaeus heard when Jesus called him down from the sycamore tree...” There was a time when I wondered what would happen if we treated the communion table in this fashion.  I wondered if such fellowship and community could ever truly be found inside the walls of a church.  Bad past experiences had led me to this conclusion.  But I was still hoping that things could be different. Then one night, at a candle lit Saturday evening service, as the table was opened for all to come, a marvelous thing happened.  A couple walked to the table first and broke the bread for each other saying, “This is His body which is broken for you.” They did the same with the juice saying, “This is His blood which is shed for you.” The gesture was so tender I couldn’t help but smile. And it became a ripple effect for the whole congregation.  Married couples broke bread for each other.  Entire families stepped up to the table together, the father breaking bread for them all.  A young man and his girlfriend.  A grandmother, mother, and daughter.  Two ladies stepped up to the table not as friends but as sisters-in-Christ.  “This is His body which is broken for you.  This is His blood which is shed for you.” Over and over again, the ritual was repeated.  And suddenly the Bible verses I’d read only days ago came to the front of my mind and I felt I understood how Jacob must have felt in Genesis 28:16-17 (NIV)When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it."…"How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.” View the story online at: http://www.storiesaboutgod.org/index.php/stories/story_page/the-shared-table/

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