I’ve jokingly titled this post ‘Ex’rcist Meal Time” because of the popular program (Epic Meal Time).
Growing up in an Evangelical family the old German (Lutheran) meal time prayer ‘Come Lord Jesus, be our guest, let this food to us be blessed, Amen’. It was the closest we got to liturgy. Whenever I heard it later in life I thought of it as a mindless and childish substitute for a ‘real’ prayer, until I heard this story.
In 19th century Germany, in an obscure town there was once a devoted pastor named Johann Blumhardt. A girl in his congregation was deeply troubled and strange noises and phenomenon happened around her. She lived with her brother and sister and the three of them were eating together one night. Before the meal they prayed “Come Lord Jesus, be our guest…” and at that point in the prayer their sister began shouting and writhing. It was discovered that she was demon-possessed and this was the cause of all the troubles around them. It humbles me to think that a Child’s mealtime prayer like that, recited normally could yield such wild results.
It makes me remember that prayer is a big deal, that it isn’t something trifling, or as comedians say, something you offer to people when you’re to lazy to do anything else. The great Reformed theologian Karl Barth once wrote that “To fold one’s hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.”