Mark 10:29-30: Jesus said, Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel’s sake, but that He shall receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions, and in the age to come, eternal life.

Jesus tells us that we are worthy disciples only if we take up our cross and follow Him, only if we love Him above father and mother and brother and sister and son and daughter. We are worthy of Jesus only if we are willing to give up our closest human ties to follow Jesus.

One reason this makes sense is that Jesus not only gives us these imposing commandments, but also gives us great promises. Jesus promises rewards. We might think that doing things for rewards is contemptible, beneath us. We want to do what’s right for its own sake, not for the sake of anything we might gain from it. Jesus knows what’s in us better than we do, and He knows that we are motivated by promised rewards. He knows that we will be motivated to lose life if we know that in the process we will gain it.

The way we usually think of this, Jesus is saying that when we give up these lesser things, we get a greater thing. That’s true. But that’s not all that Jesus says. Jesus also says in Mark 10, in a passage parallel to the one we’ve been studying, that those who give up family and property for Jesus’ sake receive the same, but a hundredfold. It’s not merely that we’re giving up farms for mansions of gold, or giving up our father for a heavenly Father; we are giving up one farm for a hundred farms, one father for a hundred.

That’s what this table expresses to us. Jesus comes with a sword to cut the family in pieces, and to hew the family table into pieces. But He doesn’t come only to kill with a sword. Jesus comes not only to hew the family table, but to establish a new table.

It’s at this table where we see, in very concrete ways, the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise. Few of us have had to give up our families for the sake of Jesus, but perhaps some of us have. If you have, Jesus promises a bigger family, and here we are. We are at the table as the household of God, surrounded by far more brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers than we ever gave up. At this table, Jesus welcomes His brothers, sisters, and mother.