Reflections at the Roundtable
(Reflections at the conclusion of a JustPeace Gathering, April 9, 2003, in Nashville,
TN. JustPeace is a restorative justice movement in the United Methodist Church.)
We have been gathered in circles of mutual reflection for the past two days. The circle is the natural geometry of the equality, mutuality, forgiveness, and reconciliation we are seeking in our relationships. So it is appropriate that we gather around a roundtable in our time of worship. It has become the symbol of reconciliation in our time - the roundtables of the revolutions to democratic self-government in east Europe as well as the roundtable conversations that spring up wherever people seek to negotiate their conflicts as equals.
The roundtable is not the only symbol of reconciliation in Christian history. For much of our history reconciliation has been symbolized in terms of an altar of sacrifice. Recalling the intended sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham, it has dramatized the sacrifice of Jesus, as the son of God, to the Father. The submission of the son's will to the father - a fundamental model of patriarchal rule - has stood at the center of our worship life. We have assembled in churches to look passively at the altar, whose shape was often dictated by the size of the sarcophagus below it, and rehearse that sacrifice of reconciliation.
The Roundtable symbolizes reconciliation through the table presence of Christ, who calls everyone to participate in a real dialogue of mutual confession, forgiveness, and reconciliation through the forging of new covenants of mutual accountability. Jesus's whole ministry took place through meals and table gatherings. He broke the taboos that separated people from table fellowship, drawing people into conversation and conviviality as well as controversy. In his final table gathering, his honest confrontation was a necessary prelude to the invitation to participate in the one body of his fellowship at the table.
This table, with its circular shape, invites us over and over to participate in this conversation of reconciliation, with its many dimensions of honest address, argument, mutual acceptance, and new covenant. But it is not only a table of common counsel. It is not only a table of democratic participation. It is also the table of nurture - of food and drink that unites us with our bodies and with this precious planet that sustains us. Through the table we rehearse - in immediate physical ways -- not only our reconciliation with other humans but also with the earth and our common Creator.
The table in our midst has green and blue ribbons laid on the axes of this earth and intersecting at the center, where a candle burns in a bowl of water. The light illuminating our lives and drawing us to God's center floats in the waters of passage, of death, and of new life. Surrounding the candle is a circle of barbed wire to remind us of the captivity and brokenness of our world and of each one of us. But it is a barrier we overcome in the eating and drinking, in the breaking down of hostility through honest conversation at the table where the Spirit of Christ presides. Come, come to the table.
William Johnson Everett
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