Afro American Spiritual:

We’re gonna sit at the welcome table!

We’re gonna sit at the welcome table

One of these days!  Hallelujah!

Gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days.

 

All kinds of people around that table

One of these days! Hallelujah!

All kinds of people round that table!

Gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days.

 

This song likely comes from a time when black people were not welcome to sit, were forbidden, to eat with white people.  The hope was that with the coming of Christ everyone would be welcome to the table of the Lord at the great wedding banquet in heaven.

The origin of all division in the world is expressed in an English carol.

Then after this was God’s own choice

To place them both in Paradise,

There to remain from evil free

Except if they ate from such a tree.

 

And they did eat, which was a sin,

And thus their ruin did begin;

Ruined themselves, both you and me

And all of our posterity.

 

The hope of the ending of such table exclusion was expressed by Isaiah when the shoot from the  root of Jesse will be born, filled with the Wisdom of the Holy Spirit.  One of the results of his coming would be cows and bear feeding together and lions eating straw with the ox rather than eating the ox.

Jesus gave us a sacred act with which to express our unity as we come to the welcome table and receive, “The body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ which strengthens and preserves us in body and soul to life everlasting.”

Come Lord Jesus, be our guest.