Eucharistic exhortation

Matthew 8:15: And Jesus touched her hand, and the fever left her; and she arose and waited on Him.

Our sermon text contains a clear Eucharistic prophecy. When Jesus sees the faith of the centurion, He marvels, and He observes that this is a sign of a trend. Gentiles like the centurion who turn to Jesus are going to be included in the messianic, eschatological banquet. They will sit with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, while many who are “sons of the kingdom,” many Jews, will be cast into outer darkness. The kingdom of heaven is a feast, and it’s a feast for all nations.

Jesus goes on in the following chapters to initiate this feast in His own ministry. The table of the kingdom is not some distant, far-off, end-of-the-world hope, but is already enacted in Jesus. Jesus eats with all the wrong people, with tax gatherers and sinners, and His disciples quickly follow suit, eating and drinking with Gentiles.

That’s not the only reference to a table in this passage. When Jesus raises Peter’s mother-in-law from her sickbed, delivers her from her fire-sickness, she immediately begins serving. The word here is the verb form of “deacon,” and the Greek word has particular reference to table service. A “deacon” is a waiter. Jesus raised Peter’s mother-in-law, and she spread a table and waited on Jesus.

The same sequence is evident throughout the passage. Jesus heals the sick, delivers from demons, raises the dead. But Jesus raises the dead and heals so that the people restored by His word and His touch can become servants. They are healed in order to follow Jesus and participate in His mission,

That is the message of this table as well. This is a table of healing. Jesus invites you to this table to receive the life that is in Him. But He doesn’t invite you to this table merely to serve you. He does that, and it’s glorious. But He invites you to this table to become table servants. He heals, so that you will become healers. He is your deacon here, so you can rise up and be deacons to one another.