Forty People Coming at Two

Forty people at two, which means the rice at twelve, which means the meat at nine, which means he was at the market at seven with a list he did not need to write down because he has been writing it down for nineteen years.

He is good at it. That has to be said, because it is not false modesty, it is the actual problem. He is very good at it. He can hold the whole afternoon in his head like a piece of music: what goes on, what comes off, what rests, when the bread goes in so that it comes out at the exact minute somebody says are we eating.

And at ten past two the singing starts in the other room, which it always does, because his uncle cannot be in a room with more than nine people and not start something. And he is at the stove with his back to it, doing the second pan, and he hears it start and he does what he does, which is smile and keep going.

Nineteen years.

He worked it out at the market this morning, standing in front of a crate of tomatoes, which is a stupid place to work out anything. Nineteen years of these, near enough four a year, so seventy something afternoons, and he has never sat down at one. Not once. He has eaten at the counter, standing, out of the pan, after everybody else, and he has told himself that this is what the cook does, and that his mother did it and her mother did it.

But his mother sat down. He has photographs. She sat down in the middle of it with a plate in front of her and her hand on somebody's arm and her mouth open laughing.

He is forty six and he is at a stove with his back to a room full of every person he loves, and the singing is going, and he is not in it, and this afternoon in front of the tomatoes he understood for the first time that he is not in it because he has arranged not to be.

The steam is going up in the light from the window over the sink, and the light this time of year comes in at the angle that makes the whole kitchen gold.

You have stood at that stove. It might be a stove. It might be a laptop, a schedule you drew up yourself, a job you are so good at that nobody has ever thought to ask you to stop. And the question is not whether you should serve less. The question is one Jesus asked in a kitchen, and it is not the question you think it is.

One thing, and it was not the meal

I have to be careful here, because there is a version of this that hands a good cook a duty roster and calls it balance. It is not balance. Telling him to delegate two dishes leaves him running an afternoon he is not in, and the arranging is the injury. So there is no system coming out of this.

There is a house in Luke 10 with two sisters in it. One is serving, and the text says she was cumbered about much serving, which is a beautiful old phrase for a state most people know from the inside. And she comes out and says the thing a person says when they are the only one working: does it not bother you that I am doing this on my own.

And Jesus does not say she is wrong to serve. He does not tell her to stop cooking. He says her name twice, which is what you do to somebody you love who is spinning, and then: she is careful and troubled about many things, but one thing is needful (Luke 10:41-42).

One thing. Not one dish. One thing, and Mary had found it, and what Mary was doing was sitting down in the room where He was.

You are wanted in the room, and the wanting has nothing to do with the second pan. That is not sentiment laid over the text; Luke 10:42 says one thing is needful and the thing named is a woman sitting at His feet, and the Holy Spirit who preserved that scene put it in a kitchen on purpose.

And notice what Jesus does not do. He does not shame the serving. Somebody cooked that meal and He ate it. What He does is name the ranking, and the ranking is the part a good servant never quite believes.

But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.Luke 10:42

Abiding is being in the room

Now John 15, because it says the same thing in the language this whole site is built on.

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me (John 15:4). A branch is not a worker. There is no branch method and no branch schedule. It is attached, and sap comes up through it, and something appears on it that it did not make.

Which means that being in the room is not a reward for having finished. It is the condition under which anything grows at all, including the cooking.

You have been attached through all nineteen years, including every afternoon you spent facing a wall. John 15:4 makes abiding a place and not a performance, and the Spirit is the sap; a man does not come loose from the vine because he is holding a pan.

And that is the guardrail on this one, said plainly: standing at a stove is not distance from God. A man who has served his family for nineteen years is not far off. He has simply never let himself find out that he was wanted for something other than the arranging.

This is yours right now, with your back to the singing: a place at that table that nobody is going to take from you. Luke 10:42 says the good part shall not be taken away from her, and the same Spirit who bears witness that you are a child of God (Romans 8:16) is the one who set a chair at that table with your name on it.

Why the apron never comes off

Let me say the thing under nineteen years, because it is not servanthood and it is not tradition.

It sounds like this: if I sit down, I will find out whether they want me here for me, and I have never been willing to run that experiment. That is the sentence, and it is the reason there is always a second pan, and he has never said it to a living soul in this house.

You were loved in this family before you could cook a thing. Ephesians 1:4 says He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, which is as far back as a claim can go, and the Holy Spirit who carried that into the letter did not add a clause about usefulness.

Fruit is not output, and a kitchen is the best possible place to see it. Output is the meal: the rice at twelve, the bread out at the right minute, seventy afternoons that ran perfectly. Fruit is what has grown on a man who has gotten up at six for other people for nineteen years, and Galatians 5:22 calls part of that goodness and part of it faithfulness, and the Spirit grew both without ever putting them on the list.