Near the beginning of Chapter VI in Bed and Board about “Board” Capon writes:
“The table can make us or break us. It has its own laws and will not change. Food and litter will lie upon it; fair speech and venom will pour across it; it will be the scene of manners or meanness, the place of charity or the wall of division, depending.”
Capon, of course, is talking about the family dining table. But not only does it apply to the Lord’s family table, let us consider that the breaking up of the household meal cannot be considered without correlation to, if not causation from, how we come to the Communion meal.
For a church, the bread and wine make or break us. Those who refuse to humble themselves, who bring their un-repented sin and selfish “virtue” of participation, they will be guilty of such unworthy manner and they will injure the entire body. The alternative is that those who come by faith, looking to the Head of the Church, Jesus Christ, feed on His flesh and blood and have fellowship with the rest.
Here is a place of love or disgust, a place of joy or ego, a place of thanksgiving or discontent.
The Good Shepherd laid down His life that we may have life and have it abundantly. This is a table of life, spread in His remembrance. May our remembrance of Him here spread to all our tables.