Library
Sunday, October 04, 2009
Come To The Table
By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
Isaiah 55:1-3a New Revised Standard Version
1Ho, 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. 2Why 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 ric
The prophet Isaiah is inviting us to the most abundant life we can have, and to do that he has to use the images of food. If you are thirsty, if you are hungry, come to God and you will be nourished.
Symbols of table and food are so important in the Bible. In the Lord’s prayer we pray for God to give us our daily bread. Psalm 23 promises us that even when we are in the midst of our enemies, whoever and whatever they are, God will set a table before us. God will nourish and refresh us.
We have complicated feelings about food. Author Anne Lamott, in a lecture at the Tattered Cover bookstore a few years ago, told of rescued children in war torn countries who had gone hungry and who had been deprived of food, had developed, at times, the habit of taking a hunk of bread with them from the dinner table, to keep with them at night, because they feared that they might not have food ever again. It was their security bread, their safety bread.
Food means love and hospitality. It would have been unthinkable, in the small Greek American community I grew up in, not to offer a planned or unplanned guest in one’s home a small pastry or some other food item. The host would even feel some insult if that item would be refused. When our family was in Greece a few years ago, on the island my father came from, we were looking for gift items in a small shop and we thoughtlessly refused the proprietors offer of a small glass of juice because we had just eaten. He diplomatically informed us, after we had finished shopping, that it was discourteous for us to refuse that small offer of hospitality from him.
Food can mean love and preparing food can be an expression of love. If someone in my family of origin happened to not eat a particular item my mom had prepared, for whatever reason, she might take that as a rejection of her love.
We have complicated feelings about food. I shared with a couple in of our worship services recently the story of one of our members who figured out that the key to her getting healthier and losing a significant amount of weight was when she began to ask herself questions, not about what she was eating, but about what was eating her and what she was trying to use food to address emotionally.
Food stirs strong emotions. We are seeing this in the past few days as one of America’s food lobbies is opposing any possibility that a tax on sugary soft drinks might be possible. Whatever the right solution is to our over indulgent sugar intake, something should happen to get people healthier in a time when our self indulgence and obesity continues to increase.
For us to worship God and to center our lives on Christ, we gather around food, around a table, and we use a meal to celebrate our connectedness with God and each other. If you want to learn something about a congregation, if you are new there, look at how the furniture looks on the platform. How important is the pulpit and where is it placed? What does the shape and size of the cross say about this church? How prominent is the baptismal font? And, what about the altar/table? Is it the center of worship, or is it a small afterthought placed, as I saw in one church, almost invisibly to the side? We are about to have those discussions with our building committee, and we like very much what these current symbols of cross and table and font and pulpit say about our beliefs at St. Andrew Church. If you have not taken time to look at and appreciate each of these liturgical items made especially, uniquely for this church, take a few moments after a worship service.
Christ is the host at this table. Jesus says in the gospel of John that he comes to offer us living bread, the bread of life, the sustenance and nourishment of life. Bishop Will Willimon, in a new book, says that the two early miracle stories in John’s gospel tell us that Jesus comes to replace the Greek gods of the first century associated with bread and wine. In Jesus’ miracle of water into wine at a wedding in Cana, we are told that he is now supplanting the Greek god Dionysius, god of celebration and wine. And in his feeding of the multitudes a few verses later, he is supplanting the Greek goddess Demeter, goddess of bread and the harvest.
The primary act of worship, of particular importance on this world communion Sunday, is that when Jesus, on that Thursday night of Passover in the Upper Room in Jerusalem, transformed the Passover meal remembering God’s liberation of God’s people from bondage; he turned that meal into a communion meal with him, a time to remember Christ.
There are many ideas about what happens here at Christ’s table and many of them are not part of our Methodist tradition. Some churches teach that when we say the right words over the bread and the cup, their substance changes and they actually become the body and blood of Christ. That is not a United Methodist teaching. Some churches teach that when we say the right prayers at this table, we are actually repeating the sacrificial act of Christ giving his life. Methodism does not teach that reenactment of sacrifice, because we believe that sacrifice was done once and for all.
We do believe that, when we pray for these elements to represent Christ, and to help us remember and experience the presence of Christ, that Christ is here, as he said he would be, when two or three gather in his name. We can, in the words of one communion ritual, “feed on him in our hearts by faith and with thanksgiving.” By the way, the word Eucharist, in its Greek root, actually means thanksgiving.
When we come to this table, we do so to remember Christ, which is what he asked us to do. Do this in remembrance of me. This symbolic meal helps us remember and partake of the one who called Himself the Bread of Life.
We use some words in our communion that come, not from Jesus, but from St. Paul. I belong to Christ. I belong to Christ. Those are powerful words. There is assurance and assignment in those words.
The last time I served communion was last Monday with one of our members who is critically ill. Her battle with cancer is nearing an end. I bought the bread and the jug of juice at Whole Foods. It was just great bread. We gathered in her living room around the coffee table. Several family members were present who had come to be with her in these last days. We broke the bread and shared the cup, and in the closing prayer we talked about how each of us belongs to Christ. In life and in death, in the gift of each precious day of life, we belong to Christ. That is our comfort and our assurance.
But there is also an assignment in those words. If we come with open hearts to this table and if we come with the prayer for God, to give us this day our daily bread for our belly and for our soul, there is an assignment when we leave. We have prayed for daily bread, but before those words in the Lord’s Prayer, we prayed for God’s kingdom to come and God’s will to be done—through us, as instruments of that kingdom and of that will.
God’s will is for justice and for peace and for kindness and for compassion. When we take this bread and cup, we are renewing our promise that we act for Christ and we are to live by his words.
Religious historian Karen Armstrong has just released a new book: THE CASE FOR GOD. In it she takes on the shallow critiques of religion from people like Christopher Hitchens. In a recent interview on NPR about her new book, she said we need to acknowledge the bad things that have been done in the name of religion: bigotry, violence, being judgmental, and hypocrisy. She also says that we need to remember that any religion at its best, engenders compassion and kindness in its people. In Luke 6 Jesus says, be compassionate, just as God is compassionate toward you.
To take these elements of Christ into ourselves is to take up an assignment to become more compassionate, to live this week and every week as someone who belongs to Christ.
Come here those of you who hunger and thirst. Why do you spend your money for things which are not bread? Why do you work for things that do not satisfy? Incline your ear and come to me so that you might really live. Amen.