Holy Dishes

There’s a sermon by the great Tony Evans in which he uses an illustration involving dishes to make sense of the term “holy.” In his home, and in most homes really, there are two types of dishes. There are the regular dishes. The ones you corner off with French fries and squirt with ketchup. Those dishes that contain the average meal, on normal days, for your ordinary and unimpressive breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Some of them are chipped, maybe even cracked, and if they are, you don’t whine over their disposal because they were never made to be special anyway. Then there is another type of dish.

These dishes don’t even see the light of day until a tall green tree with multi-colored lights flicker them onto the dining table. Something significant has to be happening under the roof to make their use a necessity. And when all is normal again, the candles have been blown out, the wrapping paper has been scattered and collected, the guests have finally gotten up from the table, these dishes, after being cleaned, aren’t placed in the cabinets with the French fry and ketchup plates.

Those are too typical and regular for their company. They’re placed in an entirely different cabinet that may be in an entirely different room, separated from everything unlike them because there is nothing in the house like them. They are set apart, unique, different, other, distinct, cut off from what’s considered common. To put it metaphorically, these dishes are “holy.”