Ps 23:5, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies…”
“Table” implies rest, rejoicing, supply, and—perhaps most important—fellowship, while “in the presence of my enemies” conjures images of threat, danger, tension, and enmity. It is not natural to set the experience of table fellowship and the immediate presence of enemies in the same line, and yet this is precisely what the Holy Spirit says. YHWH prepares a table for His people in the presence of their enemies….He opens up a space of peace and rest and plenty and fellowship even in the midst of immediate and real danger, of oppressive and hostile opposition.
And what is the table that YHWH prepares in the midst of enemies? It is, I would suggest, the same table upon which He prepares the feast of rich food and well-aged wine spoken of in Isaiah 25 (the feast at which YHWH gives food to His people while He Himself swallows up their death into Himself, v.6-8). Which is to say: this table is the cross.
Yes, the table that YHWH prepares for His people in the midst of their enemies—the space of peace, and sustenance, and rest in the midst of enmity, want, and chaos—that table is the cross of Jesus Christ. The cross is planted in the very heart of enmity: enmity of man against man, of man against God, and even God’s holy enmity against man. The cross is the crossing of all enmities, the nexus of all oppositions, the brilliant confluence of every fiery thread of hostility that has or will or can exist—woven into a table of fellowship by the Love of the one who dies thereupon and rises again. The table of Ps. 23:5 is the table upon which God offers Himself in His Son as the feast, the table to which He invites His own bitterest enemies, and the table from which to eat is to become a guest in God’s house, a child of the Father, a sheep of the Shepherd.
May we come to this table! In the midst of fear, in the midst of threat, in the midst of uncertainty, may we find the table of the cross—lit in the darkness by the light of the resurrection—and there enjoy intimate and peace-filled fellowship with one another and with our slain and risen God even “in the presence of our enemies.”
