Susan Dorothea White Bibliography

Workshop Booklet, No. 2 (as at July 2021)

‘AT ONE TABLE Together – Diverse – Global’ Year of Action for the Day of Justice 2021/22

With this workshop booklet AN EINEM TISCH zusammen – vielfältig – global, we are opening a forum for your ideas and proposals for church services and devotions, for projects, encounters, workshops, discussions, events, and participatory activities for the Year of Action for the Day of Justice 2021/22.

In this booklet, you will find ideas developed and compiled by the team from the Department of Migration and International Social Welfare of the Diakonisches Werk Württemberg.

The workshop booklet will continue to grow with your stimuli. We would be delighted to receive your constructive ideas and texts, which we will use to update this booklet on an ongoing basis. Please send your suggestions by e-mail to: an-einem-tisch@diakonie-wuerttemberg.de.

One idea generates new ones, is multiplied, and gains strength like a wave. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them (Matthew 18:20). When one person sits down at a table and invites others to take a seat, more people will join them. When one perspective is expressed, others will become obvious – sharing does not make us poorer, but richer... With you, we look forward to putting together clear evidence for being ‘AT ONE TABLE together – diverse – global’ in the Year of Action for the Day of Justice 2021/22.

Your Department of Migration and International Social Welfare
Dr. Birgit Susanne Dinzinger

1. Stimuli for devotions and services
1.1 Devotion ‘You prepare a table before me’ / Psalm 23
Dr. Birgit Susanne Dinzinger
The service was conducted as part of the devotional programme for staff at the regional office of the Diakonisches Werk Württemberg.
Picture reflection on The First Supper (1988) by Susan Dorothea White, Australia
The image is found in Luzia Sutter Rehmann’s book Wut im Bauch. Hunger im New Testament (Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh, 2014). The thoughts expressed in the devotion are also based on this book. The image can also be found on the Internet. Unfortunately, after much research we were not able to obtain permission to print it.
Design of the room: if possible, set a long table decorated with colourful flowers, various fruits, candles, etc.

Welcome to the service – held today in a new and perhaps unfamiliar set-up of our prayer room. The fact that today we are sitting together at one table reflects the theme of our devotion and makes it possible to experience Psalm 23: You prepare a table before me. I would like to trace this Psalm verse in our devotion today.
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Painting reflection: The First Supper (1988), Susan Dorothea White, Australia

‘You prepare a table before me.’ The books of the Bible are full of table stories. Table stories are often stories of food and drink. And table stories are often community stories. Thus, table fellowship has become one of the most powerful biblical images.

Today I’d like to invite you to contemplate an image. Australian artist Susan Dorothea White’s painting tells a table story, a story of eating and drinking, a community story that has shaped our Christian faith like no other.
The title she gave her painting is significant – The First Supper, the first meal. With it, she reinterprets the story of Jesus’ last supper. The First Supper – this title points to the present and beyond to the future.

Susan White takes up Leonardo da Vinci’s depiction of the Last Supper, which many have probably seen before – Susan White also places the table crosswise. In this way, we the viewers, both women and men, can face everyone at the table and can, so to speak, sit at the table ourselves, opposite those who are guests at this first meal. We, the women and men who view the picture, are therefore part of the action – You prepare a table before me...

But the company at the table is strikingly different from that at Leonardo da Vinci’s. Whereas Leonardo da Vinci has a uniform-looking group of disciples sitting at the table, the community of the table here is colourful, composed of different age groups, from all parts of the world, from different social milieus – take a look under the table: sneakers, sandals, fine shoes, and bare feet. And what is on the table also refers to the diversity of our earth, to the diversity of creation.

There are 12 people sitting at the table – here Susan White is keeping exactly to the tradition from the texts of the Gospels. 12 persons – already the number gives an indication of how this first supper can be understood.

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Back to Susan White and The First Supper. That all are eating and all belong together – for me this is the message of her portrayal. There is no exclusion at the table of Jesus – everyone belongs, everyone has a place – people from all parts of the world, young and old, poor and rich, healthy and sick, people with and without disabilities, people with and without a migration background. A community is formed at the table. All are equal and equally welcome at Jesus’ table. There is enough for everyone and there is even a surplus –not by chance, with 12 baskets full of bread at the feeding of the 5000.

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In this sense, the Last Supper is the first meal of a world understood in a new and different way – a meal of hope and a meal of longing that bread for all, that bread for the world, for the whole world, will one day reach its goal. This longing, this hunger for all to be satisfied, for a future and for life – for me it is an invitation and a mission that we stand together today and, in this world, continue to work against hunger, against marginalisation, and against exclusion, not least in the ‘Bread for the World’ campaign that our department is a part of.

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