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Written by Jack Keating
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Sunday, 01 October 2006 |
I gave the sermon I am about to preach today the title “United Around the Table” for two reasons.
The first reason is, I hope, rather obvious. We are celebrating communion today and I want you to think about our communion and the communion that we celebrate most weeks here, the celebration we call World Communion Sunday. The second reason is less obvious - because I want you to think about the communion that we have that extends beyond this table that we have built and how that might affect what God has planned for us.
As we gather here today inside this beautiful sanctuary, around this table and pray and sing and lift up the cup and the loaf and take and eat and drink in remembrance of Christ Jesus and how he showed us God's love, tens of thousands, indeed tens of millions of our sisters and brothers around the world are doing the very same thing.
Some of these people will be in churches like our own in nations like our own, but most of them will be in places like Africa, South America, Asia, and The Philippines, and they will be celebrating the sacrifice made by God, the offering that Christ made freely on our behalf, in single room schools made out of sheet metal, wood scraps and cardboard, or in the village squares in which the sound of chickens and the smell of goats will mingle with the sound of hymns and the sweet aroma of candles and incense.
Some even now are in magnificent cathedrals with vast pipe organs and huge choirs and paid musicians, others, throughout this day, will be gathering in straw huts, where a simple wooden cross tells those who come what the place is, and where the music is supplied by an oil barrel drum or a tambourine, and all those songs are sung without benefit of hymn books or music directors.
The immensity and the diversity of the family we have beyond these walls is truly mind boggling. We should take note of it and we should remember it and we should celebrate it as often as possible.
We have a communion; we have a family, beyond this table and these walls. And it is good and it is beautiful and it is a gift of God to us - and to our world. It is .' indeed something to celebrate, this week, next week, and every week.
The second reason for the title of today's sermon however, as I said at the beginning, is not as easy to explain.
It is not as easy to explain, because it asks each one of you to consider the walls around you today, and to think about what they might represent, to think about how they may be barriers to our communion with others, how they might even be a barrier to our communion with God.
Each one of us has a way of shutting things out, a way of shutting other people out.
We see that in both of our scripture readings today - we see Joshua asking Moses to stop two men, Eldad and Medad, from prophesying in the camp because that is not where they should be.
And we see John and the disciples of Jesus telling Jesus how they have come across a man driving out demons in his name and how they told him to stop, because he was not one of them.
The answer of both Moses and Jesus should be instructive for us today.
Moses replies to Joshua - Are you jealous for my sake? I wish that all the Lord's people were prophets and that the Lord would put his Spirit on them!" And Jesus says to John - Do not stop him. No one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, for whoever is not against us is for us. I tell you the truth, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to Christ will certainly not lose his reward."
We are so small and so frightened, and often we are so damaged, that we retreat into a place of safety, a place where we cannot be hurt. We go to a place of comfort, a place where we will not be judged, a place where, if we don't have the answers, no one will mind, a place were things are predictable, a place without too many surprises, without unexpected danger.
And this is not only understandable; it is at time even necessary.
All of us need a place of healing, a place of peace, a place where we do not have to struggle every moment, a place where we can rest secure in the knowledge that we are safe, a place where we can gather strength.
I pray that this church, around this table and with its warmly embracing walls, might be such a place for you. That is what the church is for. It is meant to be a place of refuge - a place of strengthening - a place where we are fed and prepared to serve God in the larger world.
But it is also meant to be an open place - a place for others to come in - and for us to go out. It's to be a place where the little children are welcomed instead of being told to mind their place and not bother you and me, a place where those whose lives have been shattered by the agony of divorce, may feel there is hope for experience the mending power of God, a place where strangers who seek to do good in the name of Christ might be affirmed rather than being told that they are not known to us and do not belong. It's a place where we learn that God is not only with us but with others as well.
The church, my friends, is more than a building, its more than a denomination; it is more than any particular way of doing things.
We have a communion beyond this table and beyond our walls and if we don't get in touch with it, if we don't understand that it is there and open our hearts to it, then all that we do and experience inside these walls is for naught.
In short - the places of safety that we enter into should not limit our vision of where God is and how God is working.
What we celebrate today when we lift of the cup and the loaf and eat and drink the meal of Jesus Christ is the fact that God reached out past the walls that surround heaven and entered into communion with us.
We celebrate in the Lord's Supper the fact that Christ Jesus loved us so much that he was prepared to give up his safety, his peace, his strength, his joy, indeed his very life so that we might become whole and be able to enter fully into God's kingdom. Our walls - our definitions - our understandings have a purpose; they serve a function they are necessary to us.
But the communion God calls us to so very often extends beyond our walls and our definitions and this table. It takes in those prophets who speak in the places where our rules say they should not be; and those disciples who heal others in Christ's name even though they don't belong to our group.
Today - as you receive the loaf and the cup of our Lord Jesus Christ, remember why it is given to you - and savor the moment. Take strength from the time that God gives you to build up your strength, and enter into the fullness of the communion God has called you to. See and feel and meditate on the wideness and the breadth of the family that God has created. Understand that diversity need not lead us to division, that those who are not against us are for us, and that God would have us all full of zeal to do his work.
Thanks be to God for the fact that the power of God is in his name and not in us. And thanks be to God that he has chosen - and he calls us - to break every barriers down and unite our hearts with his - and with all who call upon him.
Blessed be God, day by day. Amen
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August 2008 |
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