Renewed At Table

Dr. D. William McIvor

January 1, 2006

Presbyterian Church in Sudbury

Introduction to the Old Testament Lesson

    Before I read my text this morning from 1 Corinthians, I want us to hear a few verses the prophecy of Isaiah. This Old Testament lesson is from a section called the “Isaiah Apocalypse” (Isaiah 24-27). As you know, apocalyptic writing in the Bible is a type of literature, the themes of which are doom judgment, and hope. In this text, Isaiah talks about an evil city that God has destroyed so that hope might prevail — we don’t know what specific city, if any, Isaiah may have had in mind. Isaiah tells how God protects the poor, defeats the ruthless, and on Mt. Zion holds a grand feast for all peoples. Centuries later the New Testament transforms this feast into its understanding of the Messianic banquet. The point is that God will finally bring all people together. Let’s read it in Isaiah 25.

Isaiah 25.1-9 (NRSV)

O Lord, you are my God;
    I will exalt you, I will praise your name;

for you have done wonderful things,
    plans formed of old, faithful and sure.

For you have made the city a heap,
    the fortified city a ruin;

the palace of aliens is a city no more,
    it will never be rebuilt.

Therefore strong peoples will glorify you;
    cities of ruthless nations will fear you.

For you have been a refuge to the poor,
    a refuge to the needy in their distress,
    a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat.

When the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm,
    the noise of aliens like heat in a dry place,

you subdued the heat with the shade of clouds;
    the song of the ruthless was stilled.

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
    a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines,
    of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.

And he will destroy on this mountain
    the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
    the sheet that is spread over all nations;
    he will swallow up death forever.

Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces,
    and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,
    for the Lord has spoken.

It will be said on that day,
    Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us.
    This is the Lord for whom we have waited;
    let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

Introduction to the Morning Lesson

    Part of the morning lesson is very familiar to us: what we call the Words of Institution — Paul’s description of the Lord’s Supper. What we may not realize is that Paul’s instructions about the Lord’s Supper came about because some of the Corinthians were abusing it.

    In those early days of the church Christians would gather for a meal at the end of which the Lord’s Supper would be celebrated. The problem was that this meal was not what we would think of as a church potluck where we all bring something and share it with everyone else. No, the Corinthians brought their own and didn’t share with others. So wealthy people brought a lot of food and kept it to themselves and the poor went hungry. Some people brought wine and not only did they not share, but they got drunk. In other words, they came together because they were one in Christ but they acted as if they were completely separate. All of the divisions that were in society were brought with them into the very place where all those divisions should have been overcome. The New Testament understands the Lord’s Supper as a foretaste of the Messianic banquet, foretold by Isaiah, when all people would feast in fellowship with the Lord. But that was not reality in Corinth. Let’s read it in 1 Corinthians 11.

1 Corinthians 11.17-29 (NRSV)

    Now in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse. For, to begin with, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you; and to some extent I believe it. Indeed, there have to be factions among you, for only so will it become clear who among you are genuine. When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper. For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk. What! Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to you? Should I commend you? In this matter I do not commend you!

    For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

    Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves.

Introduction

    Next Sunday we are going to talk about baptism. Baptism marks our becoming the family of God, that is, the community of faith. Baptism tells us who we are and whose we are. In life and in death we belong to God. All that happens to us in our Christian life is an outworking of God’s grace in baptism.

    But I want to begin this new year by talking about, and in a few minutes observing, the other sacrament, the Lord’s Supper. Whereas baptism is the sacrament of entering the community of faith, the Lord’s Supper — also called communion or eucharist — is the sacrament of being sustained in the community of faith. Baptism begins our journey of faith. The Lord’s Supper nurtures us along the way. It is, as I sometimes say, bread for the wilderness and wine for the journey. It is what constantly renews us and is, therefore, good to think about on the first day of a new year. Here are three brief thoughts on the meaning of the Lord’s Supper.

ONE: The Lord’s Supper unites us

    First, the Lord’s Supper unites us. One of the ways we can understand this is to reflect on what happened, or didn’t happen, when you came into church this morning.

    First, you were able to sit anywhere you wanted. There are no assigned seats here. (Well, I guess the choir seats are assigned and the pastors’. But if you really feel like my seat is the only place you can sit, then I guess that would be okay. You may have a tough time convincing our head ushers but it’s okay with me. The point is that you don’t pay more for the seats up front or less for the seats in the back. You can sit anywhere you want.

    No one checked to see if you’re a church member. This is not a “members only” club. Anyone can come here. No one asked if your pledge was paid in full last year or even if you made a pledge in 2005 or have made one in 2006. No one looked you over to see if you were dressed right. No one asked about your political views or affiliations. No one asked about sexual orientation or your morality. Neither the ushers nor the people around you care about your racial or ethnic origin or your age. Gender was not important and neither was marital status. No one asked about your net worth or what neighborhood or town you lived in. In other words, none of the things the world thinks important, none of the things that the world fights wars over, were even thought about when you came into church today.

    Best of all, in a few minutes when I invite you in Jesus’ name to receive this sacrament, there is no test. There is no requirement at all. Paul did talk about an “unworthy manner.” Unfortunately, that has often been construed to mean that we have to muster some goodness on our part to receive the sacrament worthily. Just the opposite is true. To receive, all you have to have is a desire to put your faith in Jesus Christ. You are not even given a test to see if you really understand what it means to put your faith in Jesus Christ. We may be separated everywhere else but in this room and around this table we are united and all together.

TWO: Or are we?

    Or are we? Everything I just said is true but perhaps it’s not so simple. Maybe we need to probe a little more deeply.

    During the years I served at the First Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Michigan, some of the women in that church carried on an active ministry in the county jail. They went regularly to the women’s section of the jail for times of Bible study, prayer, singing, and crafts. Because of this ministry a number of the prisoners committed their lives to Christ and wanted to be baptized. So along with the women who were involved in this ministry, I went off to jail one day to baptize some new disciples of Jesus Christ. One woman I’ll never forget. When the baptismal waters ran down her forehead, a visible transformation took place in her. Maybe for the first time in her sad life she knew who she really was. She was a child of God and God was forever committed to her. She belonged to God and baptism was the sign of that transformation. We’ll talk more about that next week.

    But not long after that, we moved to our next church in Spokane, Washington. For awhile through letters and phone calls Merrie kept in contact with this woman — let’s call her Jolene and after some time she was released from jail. She had “paid her debt to society” and was free to resume her life. Could she now live as that child of God about whom she had learned when she was baptized?

    Well, being a child of God means she belonged to the family of God. Do you think she could become a part of that community of faith whose women helped her come to faith? She went to that church a couple of times, but it didn’t really work out. Why not? Well, let’s think about it.

    First, she couldn’t afford a house in that community. She couldn’t dress like the people of that community. She wasn’t educated like the people of that community. And — let’s be very truthful here — she didn’t have the cultural values of that community.

    Where does a woman go when she gets out of jail? Does she go to the church of the people who helped her? Probably not, especially if that church is in a completely different community. Does she go to any church? Perhaps. But what does that church do? What if she came here? How would we treat her? How would we treat her after we found out she had spent the last year or two in jail? Where does a woman go when she gets out of jail, a woman who has discovered that she is a child of God?

    Well, she likely goes back to the only family and community she knows. Unfortunately, it was that family and community that led her to commit crime in the first place, that abused her and where she was abusive in the first place. So before long she ends up back in jail. Which is, to the best of our knowledge, exactly what happened to Jolene.

    What’s wrong here? Were those Birmingham church women wrong in doing a jail ministry? No. Did they lack faith? No, the were committed to Jesus Christ and were sincerely seeking to show his love. Maybe Jolene wasn’t really committed to Christ? No. Her faith was real and she did the best she could. But if we belong to a family — that’s what baptism means — but you can’t receive the nurture of that family — that’s what the Lord’s Supper means — then it’s not likely that anyone could stay with that family. We know that in the church we are united. But the things that separate humans are so strong that the divisions of the world often overwhelm the union we have here. It happened in Corinth. It happened in Michigan. Is could easily happen here as well.

THREE: Confess our brokenness

    So what can we do? The only thing I can say is that we must confess our brokenness. Only when we stand before God broken, sinful, and needy can we know that in God’s grace we all stand together.

    This means that we must confess not just our weaknesses but also that at our very best we are still broken. When we are strong, when we are faithful, when we are at our very best, we are still broken before God. And it is in that brokenness that we stand and confess before the Lord.

    I mentioned this once during a communion service at my previous church and asked them to look with discerning eyes right at the communion table in that sanctuary. It was, of course, something they looked at every week during worship. But when we look at something all the time we don’t always really see it.

    In most Presbyterian churches communion tables are in one sense practical. We put the communion elements on them and serve from them. But their real importance is as a symbol. We say that we “gather around” the table and of course we don’t literally do that. But communion tables symbolize everything that the sacrament means about how we are united in God’s love, about how we gather around the “family table” to share together in the Lord’s Supper. A communion table’s greatest importance is symbolic.

    So I made the good folk of that church really look at their communion table and told them it was a broken symbol. Some folks didn’t appreciate me saying that. But I said it was a broken symbol because carved in the wood on the front of the table were images of a black man, a white man, and a yellow man. Back in the 1950s when that communion table was built, it was the best that could be done and it was a courageous statement then. There was the unity of man symbolized on the communion table. But now it was a broken symbol. For lots of races were not represented by that symbol. And most of all, there was no woman there, no child, no handicapped person, no poor person, no person who has spent time in jail. What was at one time the very best was now a broken symbol.

    Friends, that is what we must confess, that even at our very best, we are broken. That’s all we have to offer to God and in truth, that is our greatest hope. It is our hope as we stand here broken, having nothing to offer to God, but brokenness. Then we hear of God’s mercy and God’s grace. We hear the message of the cross made so real we can touch and taste it. In the Lord’s Supper we touch and taste the message of the cross where our Lords says, “I love you, you are forgiven, you are my people, you will be together with me in eternity.” This is the grace that comes to us when we confess our brokenness.

Conclusion

    Tom Long, the great preacher and teacher of preachers, tells about visiting a dear friend on a wintry Saturday morning some years ago. His friend was very sick and dying. It was this same time of year, the week after Christmas and the neighborhood was still gaudy with the usual holiday kitsch: an electric Frosty the Snowman winked at passersby and there were assorted Santa Clauses and Rudolphs and lights.

    The hospice people ushered Tom into the room and he sat down beside his friend. He remembers there was not much to say. This was his friend’s last Christmas and they both knew it. So they sat mostly in silence, a word passing between them now and then. Not so much an awkward silence but more the stillness of old friends content to sit and say farewell with quietness.

    Suddenly there was movement downstairs, the sounds of muffled voices, the shuffle of feet. It was a choir from his church come to sing Christmas carols. They could hear them whispering, trying to decide what to sing. Indeed, what do you sing to a dying man? Their voices started, softly at first, “Lo, how a rose e’er blooming.” The two friends looked at each other and waited as the choir slowly climbed the stairs, their voices growing nearer and stronger — “to show God’s love aright.”

    The choir was now standing in the doorway. Tom’s friend, deep into the darkness of dying and still agonizing hours away from the dawn, turned away so they would not see his tears as he listened to them as they sang. “She bore for us a Savior, when half spent was the night.”

    Tom said that even though that choir knew the meters and meanings of the songs of faith, as Christians and as human beings they also knew that “the night is dark and we are far from home.” They knew that it would be utterly dishonest to sing something cheery and upbeat like “We Wish You a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.” “They knew they needed to sing both truthfully and hopefully, to lament as well as rejoice, and so they sang of God’s love coming “When half spent was the night.”[1]

    This is why I am thankful that Christmas and a new year come, at least for us in the north, when it is cold and hard and dark. It helps us to know, as Tom’s friend knew, that hope doesn’t come from trying to be cheery and sweet. Hope comes from God. It comes when we confess our brokenness — our dying. Hope comes “a floweret bright, amid the cold of winter, when half spent was the night.”

    In that hope we are renewed — here and at table. Thanks be to God.

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