Setting the Table

So he sent two of his disciples, telling them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him. Say to the owner of the house he enters, ‘The Teacher asks: Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ He will show you a large room upstairs, furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there.”

Mark 14:13-15

Mark, the gospel writer, could have jumped straight into the Last Supper but he chooses not to. He takes the time to draw our attention to the fact that without preparation there wouldn’t have been a meal at all. This is true of every meal. Someone has to set the table. Someone has buy and cook the food. Drinks have to be poured. All of this is necessary before there can be a meal.

And in the case of the Last Supper, Jesus sends two disciples to make preparations. Luke’s gospel reveals to us that it was Peter and John whom Jesus sent to make preparation. And since this was a Passover Meal, the preparations would have included making sure the room was in order, gathering the supplies, and finally “preparing the lamb, the bitter herbs, the unleavened bread, the wine, the crushed fruit, etc.”*

Now, I don’t know if preparing the Passover Meal was considered a great honor or if it was something that servants normally did. But I can tell you that without Peter and John prepping the herbs and purchasing the lamb and doing all the work that was required to make that meal possible, without that behind the scenes preparation, there would have been no Lord’s Supper.

And I think this is a good reminder for us that there are a lot of people who do work behind the scenes. And those people and the work they do matter... a lot. Someone cooks the meals and washes the clothes and cleans the toilets in your home. None of those are particularly glamorous jobs, but they are all necessary. And your life, and the lives of your family, are made better by the person or persons who do that work. And at your church, you may not think about who runs sound on Sunday morning, but without them you wouldn’t be able to hear the sermon or the music. You may not know who is on the Building and Grounds Committee, but without them the roof would leak and there would be no working HVAC units. You may not know who works in the preschool and children’s area, but without them your children would be neglected.

So, understand that service matters, because it makes everything else possible. And sometimes, it is the small jobs... the behind the scenes jobs, the jobs that you don’t even think about, that make everything else possible. So, be thankful for those who serve you. And make sure that you find your own way to serve both at home and at church.

*Ross H. McLaren, “Mark,” in CSB Study Bible: Notes, ed. Edwin A. Blum and Trevin Wax (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2017), 1587.