December 8, 2019 – Luke 22:14

When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table.
—Luke 22:14

What [else] did this table companionship imply?67
A third meaning of the assembling around the table is camaraderie. Our Lord showed himself one with them, a brother indeed. We do not read that there was any order of priority by which their seats were arranged.
You have no right to come to that table unless those who are washed in Jesus’ blood have a claim on your love and on your benevolence. Are you to live together forever in heaven, and will you show no affection for one another here below? It is your Master’s new command that you love one another; will you disregard it? He has given this as the badge of Christians: “By this all men will know that you are my disciples”—not if you wear a gold cross, but—“if you love one another” (John 13:35).
But this table means more yet: it signifies common enjoyment. Jesus eats, and they eat, the same bread. He drinks, and they drink, the same cup. There is no distinction in the provisions. What means this? The very joy that delights Christ is that which he prepares for his people. You, if you are a true believer, have part in Christ’s joy, you delight to see his kingdom come, the truth advanced, sinners saved, grace glorified, holiness promoted, God exalted; this also is his delight. But are you certain that the mainstay of your life is the same as his, namely, to do the will of the heavenly Father? If it is, may you joy in him as he joys in you, and so may your fellowship be sweet!
The feast at the one table indicated familiar affection. It is the child’s place to sit at the table with its parents, for there affection rules. People at the table often reveal their minds more fully than elsewhere. Now, the Lord Jesus Christ sat at the table with his disciples.’ Twas a meal of a simple kind; intimate exchange ruled the hour. Oh, brothers and sisters, I am afraid we have come to this table sometimes and gone away again without having had communion with Christ, and then it has been an empty formality and nothing more. Do pray the Lord to reveal himself to you. Ask that it may not be a dead form to you but that now in very deed you may give to Christ your heart, while he will show you his hands and his side and make known to you his agonies and death, with which he redeemed you from the coming wrath. All this, and vastly more, is the teaching of the table at which Jesus sat with the Twelve.
—C. H. Spurgeon