Sermon - The Largest Table

Preached on March 3, 2013 at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, Ohio, UCC.

Scripture:   Isaiah 55:1-9

Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?

Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. 

Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. 

See, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples. 

See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.

Sermon

When we go on mission tours, in those hot summer months, and when we are working on those summer days: repairing a home, tending a community garden, building new housing after a storm, we have to remind ourselves to drink water.  Hey, everyone, time for a water break.  We may not feel thirsty yet, but we drink anyway, because we know that if you wait until you feel thirsty in Birmingham, you may already be mildly dehydrated, which leads to a loss of energy and headaches.  It doesn’t seem like it should be possible that we would need to be reminded to drink enough water, or that we would need to be reminded to eat something nourishing.  But we do need reminded.  So we say “Water Break!”

Isaiah wonders why people spend their money for that which is not bead, and their labor for that which does not satisfy?  Come to the waters, Isaiah says!  Eat what is good!  You would think that we wouldn’t need to be reminded, but we do.  In fact, there are lots of companies who have made a lot of money by selling us food which isn’t really food, but more like an engineered trick of artificial flavors, sugar and fat and a nice taste or crunch that we find irresistible…but doesn’t satisfy.  It doesn’t make us feel good except for the moment it is in our mouths. 

Why do we have such trouble knowing what we really need?  Isaiah throws out the welcome to drink good water, to buy wine and milk without price, to eat what is good.  It is an invitation, and it is a reminder of what we really need, because the food that Isaiah talks about is more than food.  It is a gift of God’s grace. 

Kate Huey delves into these words of Isaiah and sees that what “God promises” are “the things that we most yearn for, deep down in our hearts, the very basics of life: homecoming when we're lost or far away, a rich feast when we're hungry, flowing fresh water to satisfy our thirst, and a community of hope when we long for meaning in our lives--something greater than ourselves, in which and through which we might be a blessing to the whole world. Oh, and another thing: there will be no cost affixed to this wonderful feast, no price of admission, and everyone (even people you would never expect) will be invited to the party.”

That’s what Isaiah is talking about.  God offers us good food to nourish our bodies, and more than that, God offers a meal that nourishes our lives.

For years now, we have been saying that the communion table is the largest table in the world.  I first heard that in my college years from the minister of my church.  This is the largest table in the world because everyone is invited.  And it isn’t our invitation; it doesn’t belong to First Congregational Church.  It is the invitation of Jesus, who first broke the bread and poured the wine, and is always inviting us in this bread and this cup to receive God’s grace, to be a part of God’s community, to be of good to others.  This is the largest table, where all of us are invited to share again and again as we learn and relearn what it means to share in God’s food and God’s life.

And, because we share at this table, a mysterious and wonderful thing begins to happen, which is that we begin to realize that the communion table is not just here in worship, it’s out there as well.  If the communion table is the place where we invite people to share in the grace of God, then the communion table is out there as well.  And the more deeply we gather at the largest table here, the more we begin to see the communion table in other places as well: strange places, sometimes. 

I’ll give you an example.  Fred Craddock is a minister at a little church in Georgia who became kind of a famous preacher through his teaching and writing.  Sometimes he’d be invited to speak in other places, and so once he went up to Winnipeg for a conference and got there just before a big snow storm hit and he ended up stranded in the diner of a bus depot in Canada.  It was crowded with all the other stranded people but he found a table and pretty soon a guy in a greasy apron came over and asked him what he wanted.  “Can I see a menu?”  “We got soup.”  “Well, what kind of soup do you have?”  “Soup, you want some soup?”  And Fred said “that’s what I was going to order – soup.”  He brought the soup out and he tried a bit and it tasted as bad as it looked.  But it was warm so he put his hands around the bowl.  The door opened again and the wind blew in a woman who sat down nearby.  Greasy apron came and she asked for water.  He brought the water and said “what’ll you have?”  “just the glass of water.”  “look, we’ve got paying customers, what do you think this is, a church or something?  You have to order.”  “just a glass of water and some time to get warm.”  “you’ve got to pay or you’ve got to leave,” he said, really loud, and so she got up to leave, but suddenly, everyone else stood up to.  So Fred stood up and they all started toward the door, until greasy apron said “all right! All right, she can stay.”  And everyone sat down, and Fred tried the soup again.  Thinking back on it, Fred said “Everybody was eating the soup.  I started eating the soup, and it was pretty good soup.  I don’t know what was in it, but I do recall when I was eating it, it tasted a little bit like bread a wine.  Just a little like bread and wine.”  (Fred Craddock, Craddock Stories, pg 83-84.)

This is the largest table, where God’s grace is freely given and shared in a community which becomes the body of Christ, so that we may help to heal the world, to reconcile and heal and give ourselves to the world around us, whether it’s a woman who needs to get warm, a friend who needs to share his burdens, or country that needs to be sure that people have enough to eat while they work wherever they can get it.  We share this communion meal here and then it shows up in unexpected places.  It shows up wherever God is inviting people to be nourished, to get warm, to look out for each other as if we really were fellow travelers on a sacred journey, and not just strangers.

On the south side of Chicago sits the neighborhood of Englewood, whose children attend Harper High School.  Englewood is a tough neighborhood, and not just because of the widespread poverty.  This past fall, three reporters from Chicago Public Radio spent a semester at Harper High School to document life for the students at a school where 29 students and former students had been shot with a gun in the previous year (This American Life, episode #487, “Harper High School, Part 1”).  Students regularly came to school afraid, tired, and underfed.  One morning, a reporter happened to be in the hallway when the school’s business officer walked down the hall and came upon a student standing in the hall.  “Hi, what’s going on?  How are you?” He asked.  The student was trying not to show emotion, but he was clearly upset.  It turns out that the teacher had brought cookies to first period as an incentive for being on time.  Every student on time got to come up and take a cookie.  This student was on time, but he was really hungry and so he took two cookies.  “Put one back” the teacher said.  But he’d been afraid to go home the night before and he hadn’t eaten in a day.  He held on to both cookies, but he couldn’t bring himself to say why in the classroom.  The teacher sent him to the hall.

The business officer said, “come on, son.”  Back in his office he pulled a box of honey nut cheerios out of a cabinet.  He went out to the cafeteria for a bowl and a carton of milk, and then he sat with this hungry boy while he ate a bowl of cheerios before going on to his next class.  It wasn’t his job to keep kids in class.  It wasn’t his job to take a meeting with a kid who is hungry.  It wasn’t his job to keep cheerios in his office.  But here’s a kid who was running out of options, a kid who might have soon made a different choice and compounded his trouble.  It seems to me that the communion table extended to that office at Harper High School, where there are people who go beyond their jobs to give kids every chance they can get.  The grace of God, freely shared.

This is the largest table, because here everyone is invited to share in the grace of God that Jesus revealed in his own life and in the way he gave it.  Here everyone is made into one community, one body.  Here is the feast that Isaiah saw, where we receive food when we’re hungry, water when we are thirsty, and there is no cost.  Here we are invited into a community where our lives find meaning in becoming a gift to others. 

After the terrible years of the Great Depression, John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath about what he had seen and heard of the hardships faced especially by the poor families forced off farms in the dust bowl of Oklahoma.  These Okies took to the highway to make the slow journey to California, where they were willing to work hard in the fields and groves they’d heard about in news stories and maybe in their dreams. 

In one chapter is the story of a family who pulled their beat up car to a roadside diner.  They could never afford to buy a meal, of course, not like the truck drivers who made decent money and were eating at the counter, so the father asked if they could drink from the outside hose.  They all drank, and then he came back in to ask if he could buy ten cents worth of bread.  “Well, we’re not a grocery, we sell meals” says Mae at the counter.  She’s a tough one, with attitude.  The father answers “we can’t afford to order here, I just need some bread; I’ve got our money figured real close to get to California, and there’s not another place for miles they say.”  Mae’s husband calls from the kitchen “just sell them a loaf.”  She pulls out a fifteen cent loaf, and when the father asks her to cut off ten cents worth, her husband yells again “just sell the whole loaf!”  Meanwhile, the father’s two kids have been looking at the candy for sale.  “Is that penny candy,” the father asks?  “No!”  Mae says.  “That’s actually two for a penny candy.”  She pulls out two pieces of candy for the kids as the father pays a penny more.  They leave the store, and the truckers say “isn’t that nickel a piece candy?”  “Oh, you be quiet!  What’s it to you!”  (Chapter 15, some text paraphrased.)

The truckers finish their meals and get up to leave, putting down a fifty cent piece each, more than double what they’d ordered.  They don’t say another word, they just leave the money, because here in this diner was a place where a poor family could buy fifteen cent loaf for a dime, and candy for little children who had lost their home.

All you who thirst come to the waters.  And you without money, come buy and eat.  That diner became the feast that Isaiah spoke of.  That fifteen cent loaf became communion bread.  The largest table became a place where Mae and the truck drivers and a poor family from Oklahoma shared the grace of God with one another.

Our lives are centered on the grace of God that is given in communion.  It is good food.  It is what nourishes our spirit.  And there is no price - everyone is welcome.  What we share in this meal is the magnetic center of the church, of God’s people.  It is our identity; it is what we are made to share in the world, so that the largest table, where God’s grace is shared, shows up everywhere.