Sermon - A Prepared Table

Preached on April 13, 2008, fourth Sunday of Easter, at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, UCC

Psalm 23 Acts 2:42-47

Dedicated to the glory of God.

In the novel The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck told the story of the Joad family from Oklahoma who lost their farm in the dust bowl and the depression. They bought an old truck (it barely ran), loaded it with their family of thirteen and the few possessions they had left, and drove toward California, the promised land of fruit trees and plenty of work for every man who was willing.

It was a long journey, and they shared the road with many others in desperate situations. Spending all their savings on gasoline and a bit of food, they would camp at night with fellow travelers on the side of the road. The Joads clung to life on a razor’s edge, and you might think that in such straits they would hoard what food they had among themselves. But they did just the opposite. When they had food and others were without, they made their portions just a bit smaller. They shared with others, knowing that there might come a time when they would be without and would depend on the generosity of strangers. The only way for anyone to make it was for everyone to watch out for each other.

If you can picture the Joads, then you have begun to understand the life of Israel at the time of the 23rd Psalm. Just like the dust bowl, the Middle East could be an unforgiving landscape. Many people were forced to travel, either seeking a new home or leading their animals to find pasture. But when you traveled from your hometown, away from where your people had a well and crops in the field, food and water could become dangerously scarce. Just as in The Grapes of Wrath, there was a code of hospitality in the Middle East. If a stranger or a traveler came by your home, you were bound to offer food, water, and shelter, even if the stranger was from a rival tribe or nation, even if the stranger had wandered far from home, among his enemies. Even so, you provided; the stranger showed respect to you by accepting. And if ever you were a stranger in need, the same fabric of hospitality would guard your life.

The psalmist must have thought that this quality of generosity was a way for us to know and understand the character of God. The 23rd psalm asks us first to understand God the way a shepherd cares for his sheep. Again, there is the image of providing food and water: green pastures, and still waters, which are, incidentally, the only kind of water sheep will drink - they don’t trust a moving stream. But then in verse 5, the imagery of the psalm changes to desert hospitality. “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows.” The hospitality for travelers in a strange land and hostile land is the care of God for us in our travels, even in the midst of danger and suffering. A prepared table shows us the character of God.

In today’s passage from the book of Acts there is a brief summary of the Christian community in the first century. It says that they devoted themselves to four things: the apostle’s teaching, prayers, fellowship, and the breaking of bread. Eating is listed right along with prayers and the teaching as the important aspects of Christian community.

We are not very different. We share Sunday meals for breakfast and lunch here in fellowship hall. We meet in small groups to sup with seven, getting to know each other over a meal. Women’s fellowship gathers over meals; youth fellowship has a regular lunch, and meals are important parts of lock-ins and retreats. Often we have a meal following a memorial service, and this congregation shows up with food for the families and friends of the one who has died, even when most of them may be strangers to us.

Through the Social Action Board, we take meals to serve at our sister church on Miller Ave. in Akron to their neighbors, and many of you have volunteered with that outreach. You also prepare meals for homeless families who are staying in Tallmadge with the Interfaith Hospitality Network.

Three weeks ago, our youth group helped to serve lunch at the Gennesaret Soup Kitchen in west Akron. We’ve been doing this four times a year for almost three years now, and it is always an intense experience. There are two rooms, maybe the size of our narthex, and they are filled with as many tables and chairs as possible, I actually think there are too many. But that’s part of the message of a place that says we want there to be room for everyone, and we will not turn anyone away. We carry trays out from the kitchen, squeeze between the crowded tables and then feverishly reset the places where people have finished so that those who are still waiting can have a seat. Just as we say about the communion table here in the sanctuary, there is a place here for everyone to share the meal.

This point is made very clearly in a story from Abraham’s life in the book of Genesis. Abraham and Sarah are advanced in age, childless, and living in their tent near the great oaks of Mamre. One day, three strangers approach the tent where they have made their home. Abraham, following the code for hospitality with great care and thoughtfulness, welcomes them and gives them water and rest while Sarah begins to prepare food and a servant kills a calf for dinner. There’s that desert hospitality! It is only after the food has been served that the three strangers reveal that they are messengers of God, and have come to bring a message that God will provide Abraham and Sarah with a child, even in their old age. Perhaps with this story in mind, the book of Hebrews, in the New Testament, reminds us to always “show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so, some have entertained angels unaware.”

The book of Acts says of the Christians in Jerusalem that “Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” You see, when we prepare a table, when with glad and sincere hearts we share our meals with everyone who will come, God is at work in that. The table is a place of the love and generosity of God, and that is how we welcome each other. That is how people discover the character of God

I would guess that everyone here can think of times in your own lives when you have known the love of God in the simple experience of a shared meal. I think of my grandparents’ home for special dinners: Christmas, birthdays. I remember once when I was home from college for Easter weekend, I stopped by my their home on Saturday evening and I noticed that my grandmother had already set the dining room table with the china, the centerpiece, the name cards at the places, welcoming each of us by name, our place at the table thoughtfully chosen. “You prepare a table for me.” A glimpse of the love of God.

Jesus certainly thought that a shared meal was a way of knowing God.
· Jesus saw that the crowds were hungry and fed them with a few loaves and fish. Every gospel tells at least one version of this story, some two. This is such a powerful symbol of the abundance and fellowship in the kingdom of God that in the first centuries after Christ, it was not the cross but the loaves and fish that were the central symbols of the church.
· Jesus shared meals with sinners: prostitutes and tax collectors. People criticized him for his table fellowship, but Jesus said “no, everyone is welcome at my table.”
· Jesus went to the wedding at Cana and made sure they didn’t run out of wine for the guests who gathered to celebrate.
· Jesus told parables about a king throwing a banquet and telling his servants to invite anyone who would come, including the poor and the lame and many who usually did not get invited to banquets.
· Jesus told about a father who has a feast when his prodigal son returned.
· Jesus showed up on the beach when the disciples were fishing, made a fire, and fixed them breakfast.
· Jesus said that the ones who know me are those who saw someone hungry and gave food, or saw someone thirsty and gave a drink, especially for the least of his brothers and sisters.
· Jesus said I am the living water – no one will go thirsty.
· Jesus said I am the bread of life.
· Jesus took the broken bread and the cup and said this is me, given completely to you.

After that breakfast on the beach, when Peter told the risen Jesus that he loved him, Jesus said to Peter, “feed my sheep.”

The prepared table is a way of knowing and understanding the character of God, God whose hospitality and generosity sustains us even when we wander into strange and foreign stages of life, even in the presence of our enemies. And the prepared table is one of the ways that we show others what God is like, the God who loves us, who makes us whole.
Let us eat together, with glad and sincere hearts.

Preaching Makes the News

It has been a long time since a major story in the news originated from the words of a minister preaching in the pulpit. It used to be that city newspapers would regularly print the entire text of a sermon or homily delivered at a prominent church on a Sunday evening. This was back in the time of two Sunday services. The morning service would focus on the relationship between God and the faithful, while the evening service would speak directly to the issues of the day, the life of the city, nation, and world. But those days are gone. The message from the pulpit rarely makes news outside of the congregation.

But that all changed a couple weeks ago, when the words of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the former senior minister at Trinity United Church of Christ in south Chicago, made the news. Sadly, all the news centered on very short, incendiary excerpts that were pulled apart from their context, and the reason for all the attention is the presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama, who is a member at that church. I am saddened by the way all of this was handled for several reasons. The issues of Christian faith are more complex than a brief sound byte can handle. We should be having responsible conversations about these issues, instead of oversimplifying them. I have listened to a longer portion of two of Rev. Wright’s sermons, and I can tell you that he was not justifying or condoning the attacks of September 11, 2001. He spoke unequivocally against violence against innocent people, but he also extended this message to a difficult self-examination. Worship should call us to honesty such as this. I can also tell you that when Rev. Wright pronounced God’s judgment on the wrongs that our government has committed (and I join all those who wish he had used different words), it was in the context of a sermon that proclaimed God’s faithfulness and righteousness which does not change, even as we, God’s people, have failed to live up to it. We need a larger context.

I thought that Mike Huckabee, Baptist minister and former presidential candidate, was insightful in a recent news commentary. He spoke about how statements are often lifted out of the context of a larger sermon. “Sermons, after all, are rarely written word for word by pastors like Rev. Wright, who are delivering them extemporaneously, and caught up in the emotion of the moment. There are things that sometimes get said, that if you put them on paper and looked at them in print, you'd say ‘Well, I didn't mean to say it quite like that.’” He also reminded us of the larger context of the history of race in this country: “I grew up in a very segregated South. And I think that you have to cut some slack…to people who grew up being called names.”
There is at least one more frame that we need around those words that made the news, and that is the context of a congregation that has never been content to sit back and criticize others. Trinity United Church of Christ is a leader in outreach programs to encourage individual responsibility toward the issues of family, work, crime, disease, and education.

There is a place to faithfully disagree and to call on our Christian leaders to do things differently, but first we need to have a complete understanding, so that we don’t react to an incomplete story. The tradition of the United Church of Christ and the Congregationalist Church is of a place where we realize that we have different views and different experiences, and we are in covenant to be in honest, respectful relationships together. We worship God as one, and God holds us together.