Scripture: Isaiah 25:6-10; Luke 14:7-24.
Those who were here for the Ash Wednesday service a few days ago heard the scripture from Luke then. We got to warm up on this passage a little bit anyway.
Let me begin though not with my interpretation of this passage from the Bible (I’ll get to that), but with right here, literally right here. There is a table before us—a communion table. And frankly when I look at that table it brings all kinds of things into my head and heart.
I stare at that table and I flashback to a time when I was in seminary—already in training for the ministry, but still unsure whether I was a Christian. How that happened is that I enrolled in the ministry program because of the advice and encouragement of a mentor who understood me to be a Christian before I understood myself to be a Christian. He assured me that I could always change my mind, but that I would never know about being a minister or a Christian unless I tried it.
So I did. I took a couple of quarters worth of courses, did well, found them stimulating, even found that I was beginning to get my mind around this Christian thing, thinking maybe I can do this, maybe I can be this. Then came a six-month period where our courses were not in the classroom. Dr. King was in Chicago that summer, and we learned about ministry on the streets of Chicago and in the churches of Chicago. And once a week we students had a worship service that included communion.
I thought I was coming along pretty far in my journey toward Christianity but I wasn’t quite there, so I decided I wasn’t going to take communion. The bread and the wine were being passed around the circle, and I thought that when they came to me I would just pass them on to the next person, except when the bread and wine were passed to me, my hands began to shake (more than they usually do) and my heart began to pound. I held them for a moment wondering what was going on, and then passed them on.
I might have been all right with Christianity on some levels, but when it came to communion, there was something pre-verbal, and very powerful that caused that reaction in me. Apparently, I was not yet ready to identify myself as a Christian, because whatever else communion meant or didn’t mean, it meant that to me, I’m pretty sure. Yes, this is who I am. I am a Christian. Or in my case, no, I’m not, not yet, not yet ready to say yes to the Christian faith. The next week when the bread and wine came to me, I stepped back out of the circle and didn’t even touch them. It was another year before I held communion bread again.
Eventually I got to the point, obviously, where I was able not only to receive but also to offer communion. But I didn’t get, have never got, to the point where communion is just something you do without thinking about it, without some hesitation, without at least some small amount of fear and trembling. I stare at the table and I can see a minister standing there at the table—maybe it’s even me—standing there and saying, “We remember that on the night when he was betrayed our Lord Jesus took bread and broke it and said: take and eat: this is my body that is broken for you.” And I can still wonder—and maybe some people in this room are wondering—what am I supposed to believe about this bread? And what about the wine that that person is saying is poured out for the forgiveness of sins? Is this table wrapped in some kind of a theology that says that God required Jesus to suffer as a kind of payment for human sin, a kind of commercial transaction where God would accept Christ’s unmerited suffering and in return would not punish the rest of us for our sin? Is that what I’m supposed to believe when I come to this table? Because I don’t, and if I’m supposed to, maybe I need to step back out of the circle again.
Well, I’m not going to step out of the circle. At one level I’ve settled the question of whether I identify myself as a Christian. I’ve identified myself with the Christian church for over 30 years. But at another level, there’s always a question. “Christian” is never a comfortable designation, for a lot of reasons, never has been for me, probably shouldn’t be for anyone. Nothing seems more out of the spirit of Christianity, in fact, than the proud and confident proclamation of one’s Christian-ness. And when I come to the communion table there is always the voice in me that asks whether I believe what I’m supposed to believe, or whether I am who I am supposed to be, in order to come to this table. I always come in a way unsure of myself, because I don’t know how else to come, but I’ve been coming anyway as a symbolic action, saying to myself: yes, I am, or I’m trying to be, or intending to be, or hoping to be, or growing into being a Christian along with all my sisters and brothers who are, or are trying to be, or intending to be, or hoping to be, or growing into being Christian.
In any case, for many years I came to the communion table thinking that this is an expression of my, our, Christian identity. This is what Christians do. And when I said words around communion I said things—thinking I was being very open-minded and liberal—I said things like, “We invite to this table all who are members of a Christian church and who desire peace with God and their neighbor.” I thought I was being liberal because I welcomed all Christians. Some Christians, you know, in fact many Christians, when they serve communion, serve only to those who are “true” Christians, meaning those who belong to their tribe or clan. So I felt good about being U.C.C. and welcoming all flavors of Christians to the communion table: Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, A.M.E., C.M.E., Church of Christ, Church of God in Christ, Assembly of God, we don’t care. Come have communion.
I don’t think that any more. I don’t think how liberal or inclusive it is to invite all manner of Christians to share communion, because I don’t any longer think that communion is a Christian observance.
I know I better explain myself. Yes, communion is done in Christian churches. People of other faiths wouldn’t do it because it’s rooted in the last supper Christ shared with his disciples, and didn’t he say in words that echo through the ages, to do this in remembrance of me. This is all about Jesus, isn’t it? And it’s a table for those who try to find their way by following Jesus…isn’t it?
Well slowly over the years I have come to be more and more clear that the answer for me is “no”. This is not a table that is about Jesus. Well it is and it isn’t. There’s a paradox here.
You know in my own mind I’ve been doing a string of sermons about Jesus and what he is all about. I know you don’t have this in mind from week to week. You don’t think about whether there’s a connection between last week’s sermon and this week’s, but every week since the new year began I have been trying slowly to build, week by week, a portrait of who I understand Jesus to be. And that picture is based on the first appearance Jesus made when he started out on his public ministry. He said, (I’m paraphrasing) “The time has come. The reign of God is at hand. It’s here. It’s not some far away, fanciful, idealistic, and irrelevant notion. I’m going to tell you about it. And we’re going to start living it, here, now, anyone who will come along and be part of this. So repent. Reorient yourselves. Look at this vision and set your hearts on it. Believe this good news.
I believe that everything Jesus said and did after that was to give us hints and glimpses of the reign of God. Including this morning’s reading where we find Jesus having dinner with some self-styled religious role models and having a conversation with them about compassion and some things that might get in the way of compassion like rules and customs and ego and rewards, and then one the people at this dinner party leans over to Jesus and says, you know won’t it be great when we can have a dinner like this in God’s kingdom rather than the Romans’ kingdom? And Jesus said, Let me tell you about the reign of God. I think you and I may have different ideas about this.
And then he said, imagine a wonderful, lavish, joyful banquet, like a wedding feast, and imagine that everyone is invited, imagine that there is a place card made out for everyone, imagine that seated at the table are people of every conceivable description and condition, and that especially visible are people who the society has often made to be invisible and would prefer to keep invisible, and people who have not been invited to this table or that table, people who have found the doors locked and the shades drawn, people who the best they have been able to hope for is pity from some smug, but temporarily generous, person of privilege. but now here everyone is, laughing, breaking spontaneously into song, arms around each other, waiting for the champagne to be poured and the sesame crusted salmon garnished with broccoli florets and miso sauce to be served. The reign of God, Jesus says, is going to be something like that. (And I’m sure if you prefer crab legs, filet mignon, greens, or tofu God can handle that too.)
And this is who Jesus is for me: someone who draws me pictures of what the reign of God is like, who acts out what the reign of God is like, someone who not so much asks me to focus my spiritual life on him, but who in asking me to remember him at the very same time invites me to envision a new world, a new creation where people have come back together and no one is kept out. Jesus is One who brings this vision to life for me, and thereby brings me to life, because what a joyful, life-giving vision that is.
And so when I now look at the communion table and squint and see things, what I see is not Jesus and the disciples at the last supper only, not Christians gathered around the table for a family meal, but a vision of the banquet table at which all are welcome. Because I think that is what Jesus wanted me to see here. My soul tells me that this is what Jesus wants me to see here. And it is not a vision just of Christians. I have slowly come to believe that this table is not about religion. It is not about Christians coming together to do this thing they do. It is not about this ceremony that will bring us Christians closer to God and bring us into a kind of relationship to God that others don’t have. This table is about the dream of human beings sitting again at a table together. Human beings. Not Christian human beings. Yes, I know in a certain sense this is a Christian ceremony, but it also points beyond itself, as Jesus did, to what is more than Christian, what transcends religion, to what will bring us together again as God’s people. And that means that communion is not just open to any Christian, but open to any human being who for any reason wants to come. And that also means paradoxically again being open to those who for any reason don’t want to come, and there may be a whole lot of reasons for people not to want to come because of various images that are attached to it.
But what a liberating thing it would be, what a liberating, joyful, life-giving thing it would be for all of us if no one had to look in vain for their place at the table, and if no one had to struggle to protect a place of privilege, if no one had to struggle to break in to the circle and no one had to struggle to keep others out. What a wonderful, liberating, joyful, life-giving thing it would be if there were a place at the table for all people, truly all people. That, I have come slowly to believe, is what this table is all about. There is a promise here. There is a vision here, a vision that if we take it to heart, will give us life. And that is why when we receive bread from this table it will come to us as “the bread of life”. Amen.
Jim Bundy
March 4, 2001