This story is from an article by Reverend
Dr. Darren J.N. Middleton published in The Expository Times where he relates a
Ghanaian parable:
Once Kwaku Anansie lived in a town filled with wicked [selfish]
people. They were always fighting, backbiting … [gossiping, and just being
selfish]. Finally Kwaku decides to teach the people a lesson. He tells his wife
to prepare a large banquet. Then he invites everyone in the town on one
condition, that they have to eat with the spoons that are provided. As the
guests arrive Kwaku hands each guest a spoon with a very [very] long handle.
The guests then begin to eat the delicious food set before them. But since they
are sitting close together they begin to disturb each other with their long
spoons. In a short time all the guests are pushing, shouting, and fighting with
one another. Kwaku [then] stands on a chair and calls for order. ‘I have
invited you to a banquet and you have turned it into a battleground. Why are
you doing this?’ One of the guests then raises his spoon and shouts, ‘Kwaku
Anansie, you have [betrayed and] deceived us and made us look foolish! Nobody
can eat with these long spoons you have given us! Kwaku responds, ‘no, it is
not that I have made you look foolish but rather your own selfishness has
betrayed you.’ Then he calls one of the guests to sit across the table from
him. ‘This is the way to use these spoons’, he says as he dips his long spoon
into the soup and feeds the person across from him.
Kwaku fed his guest personally, everyone at
the banquet needed to do the same in order to enjoy the meal. Jesus washed his
disciples feet and every one of us who has been cleansed by Jesus needs to do
likewise at the eschatological banquet as we inherit everlasting life. Jesus
says, John 13:13-17:
“You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what
I am. 14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also
should wash one another’s feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do
as I have done for you. 16 Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than
his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17 Now that
you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.
Now that we know these things, we will be
blessed if we do them. This is important. There is no room for selfishness at
the everlasting banquet. There is no room for thinking we are above helping
others and serving them as a servant would serve a friend of his master. This
is the only way we can truly enjoy our place at the eternal feast with Christ.
In what ways can we accept a spoonful of
salvation from someone else while we offer them the same?
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