The Table- Part 3 An Invitation to Vulnerability We have lived overseas for six years now. During that time we have seen many teammates come and go. The life of an expat is a revolving door of people. One of the biggest barriers to relationships that I hear expat women talking about is the struggle to invest in friendships that very well may be temporary. It’s hard to spend time and energy developing a friendship with someone that may only be here for a year or two. I get that. I have been guilty myself of holding back from relationships because I knew someone wasn’t going to be in my community long-term and I just didn’t feel like I had the emotional capacity to get close to someone and then deal with the pain of having them leave. Perhaps you’ve lived in the same town for a long time, but you’ve still experienced the pain of investing in a relationship only to see that person move, change churches, or close themselves off from you. Those things can cause us to want to protect ourselves from future hurt rather than open ourselves up to new relationships. When Jesus first called his disciples to follow him, I have to believe he knew in his sovereignty that his time with them would be short. In reality, it was only about three years that they did life together. And now, at the Last Supper, Jesus knows this is it. He knows the end is near and his greatest test and trial is about to begin. And instead of pulling back and putting up a wall as we sometimes have a tendency to do when we know a goodbye is coming, he chose vulnerability. He extended an invitation for them to enter into his grief with him. He knew in doing this he was positioning himself to get hurt, but he didn’t hold back. “When it was evening, Jesus sat down at the table with the Twelve. While they were eating, he said, “I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me.” Greatly distressed, each one asked in turn, “Am I the one, Lord?” He replied, “One of you who has just eaten from this bowl with me will betray me.” Matthew 26:20-23 A few years ago when my husband and I were youth pastors, we had a college girl who was a part of our youth leadership team. We pursued her, loved her, invited her into our home, and spent a lot of time investing in this young woman. One night we arrived home after dinner to find that our mailbox had been bashed in and our house had been egged. Because someone else provided the police with information, this young woman was arrested for trespassing and destroying private property. We were heartbroken by this, so when her parents came into our office the next day, I was completely caught off guard by their response. I expected an apology, and instead, they blamed us. They sat there for almost an hour telling us if we had spent more time with their daughter and had done a better job of pastoring her that she wouldn’t be in jail.
After that incident, I remember feeling so violated, I just wanted to put walls up. I didn’t want to allow myself to get hurt like that again. I felt like the cost of pursuing people wasn’t worth the risk. Because the reality is, when you pursue relationship and allow yourself to be vulnerable, there’s no guarantee you won’t get hurt. That’s why Jesus’ vulnerability at the Last Supper is so astonishing to me. He didn’t go into self-preservation mode to protect himself from the one he knew would betray him. There was still a place at the table for Judas. Jesus still washed Judas’s feet. But he also didn’t dodge around the uncomfortable tension that had grown between him and Judas. John 13:21 says that “Jesus was deeply troubled, and he exclaimed, “I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me!” He sat there at the table with the one who would hand him over to death, looked him in the eyes, and told him, “go do what you’re going to do.” If that’s not vulnerability, I don’t know what is. As hard as it must have been for Jesus to sit at the table with someone he knew was going betray him, I believe what was even harder was the pain of loving someone who he had to let go of. Jesus knew this had to happen. But it couldn’t have made it any easier. I imagine Jesus wanting to call out after Judas and say, “You don’t have to do this!” In this moment, Jesus shows us that the invitation to be vulnerable in friendship doesn’t always end up how we want it to, but that doesn’t excuse us from pulling up a seat at the table for everyone. The call to pursue friendship like Jesus isn’t a call to safety, it’s a call to obedience. We cannot live our lives guarded in fear of hurt or loss. However long we have with people and whatever the outcome, we have to say, “You’re worth it. You’re worth my time and my full self.” When we come to the table willing to be vulnerable, that’s when our friendships start to look a lot less like the world’s and a lot more like Jesus. Join us next week for the final invitation- an invitation to be known.