Sermons
A Message by the Rev. Harvey G. Throop
Palisades Presbyterian Church
San Diego, California
October 4 , 2009
World Communion Sunday
The Guest List to the Lord's Table
(Luke 14:15–24)
“Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in,
so that my house may be filled.”
( Luke 15:23)
Seventy-three years ago, back in 1936, a group of Presbyterians initiated the idea of observing World Communion Sunday , a celebration that was eventually taken on by the former Federal Council of Churches. Since that beginning, the observance has spread to countries around the world and to numerous denominations. The purpose of this observance is that professing Christians everywhere join together – one in Spirit -- at the Lord's Table.
So here we are again today, celebrating a sacrament that reaches out to Christians everywhere. Whether young or old, rich or poor, black or white, male or female, our faith embraces people from all walks of life. As the Gospel of John puts it, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life" (John 3:16).
As much as we like to talk about “oneness in Christ,” however, the fact is that that reality has rarely been realized. Even Jesus was aware of divisions at the very start of his movement, an awareness that prompted him to pray in his high priestly prayer, recorded in John 17 – “that they (we) may be one” (John 17:22b).
Why is this “oneness” so difficult to realize? Dr. Cynthia M. Campbell, president of McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, reflected on that recently in an editorial in The Presbyterian Outlook. She writes: “Every once in awhile, I see a white, twelve-passenger van in my neighborhood with the name of a church painted on the sides. On the back are the words: ‘Follow me to the one, true church!'”
Dr. Campbell continues, “How many times in the history of the Christian movement have parts of the church claimed this for themselves? Within religious traditions as well as between them, the tendency to claim that one's own revelation or path is the ‘one and only' is well documented. The problem is that all too often this conviction leads to behavior that is fundamentally at odds with the core message of virtually every religious tradition. The belief that we are right and the rest of you are wrong has led members of almost every religious family to acts of intolerance, violence, warfare, even genocide. The critics of religion are quick to use this as ammunition against religion in general: see these people of faith, how they hate, vilify, discriminate against, and murder others!
Just as nearly every religion harbors exclusivist and potentially dangerous tendencies, so almost most if not all religions are shaped by the opposite – by values and practices that welcome the stranger, condemn violence, and show respect to all as members of one, human family ( The Presbyterian Outlook , September 7, 2009 edition p. 19).
How distressing! How sad!
In the Scripture lesson for today, we read how Jesus told a story once about a man who planned a dinner party and whose invited guests all declined, for a variety of not-very-important reasons.
So, instead of canceling the dinner, he orders his servants to go out into the streets and invite those who would not be accustomed to feasting at all, let alone with a rich man. All the local outcasts, the half-breeds, the misfits, the bandaged and those in tattered clothes are asked to come to dinner. And they begin to arrive. The lame come limping in. The blind come stumbling through the unfamiliar door. The poor shuffle in and stare at the heaps of food. The disabled are carried in and set down at the largest table they've ever seen. It's a motley group assembled there and the rich man realizes there's room for more.
So he sends out for all who are in the streets of the city and even outside the gates to come and join the feast. In Matthew's version of the same story, the host tells his servants “invite everyone, the good and the bad” (Matthew 22:10).
The banquet is big; the table, enormous. All those in town and from the surrounding area are invited and come, with the exception of the privileged few who give lame excuses, stay away and miss the party.
What Jesus conjures up in this parable is nothing less than the heavenly banquet, when the entire world will be invited to feast with him in glory. One feast for all the world.
Remember how the prophet Isaiah portrayed it: “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make a feast 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” (Isaiah 25:6).
As followers of that same Jesus, our task today is to live as if such a banquet were possible.
What an amazing idea that is. The banquet table is not reserved for those who have the correct beliefs about the food. It is not restricted to those who uphold particular moral standards. It certainly is not restricted to those who espouse a particular theology, ideology or political philosophy. This table, Jesus said, is open. All are welcome here. This table, Jesus said, is the place where all the boundaries that divide the human family—nations, class, ethnicity, gender, age—this table is precisely the place where all of that is transcended and where reconciliation actually happens. The point is not to exclude but to include everyone.
Could it be that for all these years, all these centuries, we've been getting this wrong, that the guest list to the Lord's Table is far more inclusive than anyone ever dared imagine? Could it possibly be that Jesus wants everybody to be at the table?
This is World Communion Sunday – the one Sunday of the year when Christians all over the world are invited to celebrate the Sacrament of Holy Communion. There may be other occasions when Christians around the world celebrate Communion, but this is the one occasion when all Christians are invited and encouraged – but not required – to celebrate Communion.
To claim that we are “one in Christ” is not supposed to be just pleasing rhetoric; it is supposedly what we believe and practice.
As we come to the Table and partake once again of the food representing Christ's body and blood, let us commit ourselves anew to finding common ground with those who may seem different but who, like we, have responded in the affirmative to Christ's invitation.
