Posted 545 days ago

Justice at Christ's Table

By Ricci Kilmer, from the Revolution Starts at Home blog

Envision your local church—the altar, pew, or whatever space in which you take communion. What does that look like for you? Now imagine your dinner table, coffee table, couch—where you eat dinner most frequently—transported to that communion space.

What thoughts come to your mind?

Would your dinner plans change in reference to your new surrounding?

What would you eat?

Would the table look different?

Who would be sitting with you?

Who would cook and clean up?

Is it still your dinner table?

A lot of thoughts have been floating in and out of my mind as I’ve been preparing for a workshop I’m facilitating for The Revolution Starts at Home series entitled “Justice at the Table.” And from the beginning I’ve sensed that I’m missing something. Something essential and foundational, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

As so often happens in my life, something I recently read started to pull it all together for me. I decided to pick up the book Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion by Sara Miles. This book is a very open look at the life of an amazing woman who was dramatically transformed by partaking of the Eucharist. And it dawned on me finally what I was missing in my whole view of food issues and my faith: Communion. I was missing the body of Christ. And not just the spiritualized view of the Lord’s Table, but the actual down to earth translation of what “the body of Christ” means.

What does it mean to be Christ’s body for people? What does it mean to say that his body is offered freely? And how should that change me?

Christians are in no way unique in their desire to eat justly. There are many groups all over the world that are working extremely hard to change the systems that marginalize others. But I feel we have an added mandate and it is directly related to Christ’s body. He not only called himself the Bread of Life, but he shared bread with others many times in his ministry. He didn’t just talk, but literally became what he preached.

I’m at a crossroads right now. I feel that I can’t just buy fairly traded coffee and locally grown produce and say that’s the epitome of food justice for Christian life. I need a way in which to become the bread, to become the body, and I need to do it in a way that puts me in communion, in the truest sense of that word, with the rest of the body as well. I’m not sure where this will lead, but I think I’m finally at a place where I’m ready to find out.

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