You Shall Eat at My Table

June 18th, 2023

Due to recording issues, we are not able to provide audio for this sermon. However, below is a transcript (un-edited) of the sermon.

Introduction

Good morning, everyone. Grace and peace to you.

Over the past couple weeks, I have been trying to demonstrate the importance of this gathering for the rest of our lives. That is, it is not a mere religious activity (whatever that might mean), it is something that shapes our lives and teaches us what the faith is.

It is something theologians call a thick habit, as opposed to a thin one. Thin habits are rituals or routines that are less meaningful, like brushing our teeth. Thick habits are more meaningful, like consuming social media or a nightly family dinner—these habits shape our desires and form our identity. Attending church is a similarly thick habit: what we do here, how we do it, matters, it is shaping us into a certain kind of person.

The first aspect of that person (and this is what we discussed last week), is a listening person. Through the central practice of hearing the holy scriptures read and preached, we are being formed into people whose ears are open and attentive to the voice of God. “Speak, Lord. Your servant hears.” The second aspect of that person, is a hospitable person. Holy communion, the supper, is forming us to a people whose homes and tables are open to others, like God’s is open to us.

That is the destination, but we need to start at the beginning. To understand the supper and not view it simply as a empty ritual or a religious tradition, we need to locate it in the larger story—that story is the story God’s gracious hospitality to the human race.

A Story of Hospitality

The story of God’s hospitality begins in creation. It begins by recognizing that God does not need anything, that he is perfectly self-sufficient in his own life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Nothing can add to him and nothing can be taken away from him. Thus when he creates, it is not receive something. It is not because he is needy and has some emotional lack to fill or that he is lonely and creates to have company.  Again, he is entirely self-sufficient, creation is not a benefit to him, giving him something he did not have before, meeting some need that had not been met.

When God finally answers Job’s desperate questioning, he turns the tables on him and asks him a question, saying, “Who has given to me that I should repay him? Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine” (Jb 41:11).  A creature cannot give to God anything that is not already his. All things come from him, are through him, and are to him. Paul asks the arrogant Corinthians, “What do you have that you did not receive” (1Co 4:7)? The question can be turned around and asked, “What can you give to God that he did not first give you?” The answer is: nothing.

Our point here is simple: God did not create the universe to receive anything from it, but rather to give. He created because he wanted to share his own life and glory. God is not “served by human hands, as though he needed anything,” the apostle says. There is no lack in him, no service that humans could perform to his benefit. Rather, he continues, “he himself gives to all people life and breath and all things” (Ac 17:25). We are here, not because we have something to give to God, but because he desires to give to us.

Creation is an act of hospitality. God did not have to create us, as though we deserved to exist. He was under no inner compulsion to create, as though he had to. Rather, God created something other than himself simply for the purpose of sharing. He created us from his own freewill to welcome us into his presence, to share communion with us. He created us to give and not take, to share and not demand. The human race and our entire universe is the product of an infinite hospitality. God wanted guests to share in his life, a people to feast at his table.

Perhaps the closest analogy to God’s hospitality is a couple’s decision to have children. Why do couples decide to have children? In a fallen world, there are many less than pure motives, and of course, there is a biological drive ingrained into our nature However, in best circumstances, a husband and wife decide to have children to share their love with another. “They… decide to share share something that they could have kept to themselves… Children… are born out of the loving communion between parents” (Hicks).

So God creates because he wants guests, others to share at his banquet table. But what happens? They refuse the invitation. In ingratitude, the guests spurn the host and the good things he offers. And in their contempt for the host, the guests are banished from his table. No longer will they eat the food, the tree of life, and the drink, the river of life, that he provided for them. Instead, they are sent out into dry and fruitless places, to scavenge in the wilderness. The story of creation is a story of hospitality and hospitality refused.

But in time, the host has pity on his guests. Though they have long forgotten him and his hospitality, he has not forgotten himself. “If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself” (2Ti 2:13). The same boundless hospitality that lead him to create the human race, leads him to redeem it. His generosity and determination to have us at his table outruns our contempt.

God’s plan begins with one people. He rescues them, redeems them, and prepares a table for them in the wilderness. God draws near to them in the tabernacle, welcoming them again into his presence, setting his food and drink before them once more.

What happens at the tabernacle—the animal sacrifices, the rituals, the altar—is a sacred barbecue. The worshipper offered an animal, with flour or cakes, on an altar. Leviticus calls the offerings of the tabernacle the “bread of God” (Lv 21:6) and Ezekiel says that the altar is God’s table (Ezek 44:16). The “peace offering” was a shared meal: the fat was burned as the God’s food, while the rest of the animal was divided between the worshipper and the priest.

In the scripture, there is no such thing as food-less worship. God renews his hospitality and recreates covenant fellowship and what that looks like is a meal, eating and drinking in his presence.Then God leads his people into a land flowing with milk and honey and establishes them there. And he sends them prophets, men and women who dream dreams and see visions. What do they see? A day and time when God’s hospitality reigns.

Isaiah sees “a lavish banquet for all peoples” that God has prepared upon a mountain top. He sees cups overflowing with “aged wine,” and a table decked with “choice pieces with marrow.” He sees God wiping “tears away from all faces” and swallowing “up death for all time.” Amos sees a time when “the mountains will drip with sweet wine,” when the hills will be dissolved in their flow. He sees the plowman overtaking the reaper, the sower of grapes overtaking the harvester.

In short, the prophets see God’s original intention for creation restored. They see a day when the guests’ ingratitude and contempt for the host will be reversed, when the entire creation becomes a table and a redeemed human race sits down to eat in gladness and simplicity of heart.

Then, in the fullness of time, the host comes to his guests. The Word, through whom all things we created, becomes flesh, a human. He comes “eating and drinking,” the scripture says, sharing a table with his people—prostitutes, publicans, and even Pharisees. As one author puts it, Jesus “did not come preaching an ideology, promoting ideas, or teaching moral maxims. He came [proclaiming] the feast of the kingdom, and he came feasting in the kingdom. Jesus did not go around merely talking about eating and drinking; he went around eating and drinking. A lot” (Leithart).

Jesus’ ministry was criticized by the religious establishment for a lot of reason, but there are two main ones: that he came eating and drinking, rather than fasting and praying, and that he ate and drank with all the wrong people. Jesus, it seems, did not fit the bill for what a prophet and a teacher should be. The establishment expected him and his disciples to be more buttoned-up and respectable than they were.

In one instance, the religious leaders confronted the disciples at a party. Levi, the tax-collector who became a disciple, hosted a big reception for Jesus at his house. “There was a great crowd of tax-collectors and other people who were… with them,” the scripture says. Quite offended, the Pharisees ask, “Why do you eat and drink with… sinners?” Jesus cuts in and answers, “I have not come to call the righteous but sinner to repentance.”

So they change the subject: “John’s disciples often fast and offers prayers, the Pharisee’s disciples do the same, but your disciples eat and drink.” Their questions amount to something like: “If you a prophet and a teacher, then why is your behavior not more sober and serious? Why are you and your disciples out eating and drinking and not praying and fasting like the rest of us? Moreover, why are you doing these things with sinners and dishonorable people?”   

Jesus responds to their questions by saying that he is more than a prophet or a teacher, he is the bridegroom. He asks them, “You cannot make the attendants of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you” (Lk 5:34)? In other words, the messianic age has dawned, the promised bridegroom has come, it is not time to mourn and feast but to celebrate and feast. It is not a funeral, it is a wedding.

God’s boundless hospitality has come to lost and broken humanity in Jesus. He plays the host wherever he goes and he welcome everyone at his table, especially the outcast and downtrodden, the sinner and the tax-collector.

On another occasion, Luke records that religious leaders grumbled at Jesus, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them” (Lk 15:2). Again, his indiscriminate hospitality is an offense to them. But rather than addressing them directly, Jesus tells three parables: each one about losing something—a sheep, a coin, a son—then finding it and rejoicing. The parables explain his practice of eating and drinking with sinners. It is what one must do—even what heaven does—when the lost are found.

Almost ten years ago now, a friend of mine lost his wedding ring at a rest stop. He took it off for some reason and placed it around the straw of his cup and tossed it in the trash without knowing. When we got the the hotel that night, he—and his wife—noticed. We did what we had to do and the next day returned to the rest stop. The trashes had been cleaned, but we saw a large dumpster in the distance. So we hopped the fence, climbed into the mess, and started digging. Mind you, this was a rest stop dumpster and we were in our church clothes. We must have dug for three hours, tossing bags out and tearing them apart to find nothing.

We got to the point quitting. He was nearly in tears, when he said, “One more bag.” We looked down and we happened to see a Starbucks cup peaking through a white bag. We both looked at each other and I jumped in and tossed it out. I sat on the edge of the dumpster as he frantically dug through it and started screaming, rejoicing. He found it—the last bag! We were jumping and shouting and running around in the middle of nowhere. If we could have had a feast by the dumpster, we would have.

Jesus’ table fellowship, eating and drinking with sinners, is God’s joyous welcome to the lost. In his infinite hospitality, God in Christ sets a lavish table for us, true food and true drink, in a world of sin and death.

All this hospitality is preparation for the cross, the ultimate act of hospitality. In Jesus’ death, God puts away the “enmity” once and for all. We “who formerly were far off have been brought near” by his blood. We “are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints” (Eph 2:19). Jesus’ death and resurrection removes our ingratitude and contempt, all the relational damage that we caused, and makes us to be guests again. Because of him, there is a place for us at God’s table.

And the great promise is: the bridegroom will return for his bride. He will finally deal with those who stubbornly refuse his invitation, too busy with other things, and then the festivities will commence, that which has been prepared since before the foundation of the world will begin. It is the wedding supper of the lamb, envisioned in Revelation 19. God will set the table of salvation before us and give us the best portions, to eat from the tree of life and drink from the river of living water. The former things will be forgotten and we will enjoy his welcome and hospitable kingdom for ages and ages to come. “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Re 19:19)!

The Lord’s Supper

Where does the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion, fit into this story? Right at the center, near the cross. It is easy when we come to communion, to get caught up in the controversy and debate. That ongoing conversation between the various branches of the faith is not unimportant, but sometimes it can keep us from experiencing the supper for what it is: God’s hospitality to us in Christ.

I prefer the name supper over communion or the eucharist simply because it preserves this element of hospitality, the image of the table. It keeps us connected to the larger story that runs from the creation of the world to its consummation. Chiefly, the supper tell us that God wants us at his table and that he has gone to extraordinary lengths to make it happen. It is a profound moment in the life of the church that teaches us what salvation is all about.

Interestingly, apart from a few cryptic statements, Jesus never explains the meaning of the cross. He warns his disciples that it is going to happen, but they do not understand. Once he even explains its meaning to them—“a ransom for many”—but it goes over their heads. Instead, when he wants to teach them what it is about, he gives them a meal not a sermon. In the upper room, the night before his crucifixion, he institutes the Lord’s Supper.

When we share the supper, it demonstrates the goal of salvation: communion or fellowship. It has become less obvious in our day, but a meal is always more than a meal. It is never simply about eating and drinking to sustain our lives. It is about relationship. It is a community-building, bond-forming event. That is why Jesus’ table habits, eating and drinking with sinners, were so scandalous. A meal was deeply symbolic of friendship, intimacy, and unity.  The goal of our salvation is a meal, that is, communion and relationship with the triune God. This all ends, no matter what happens, with us together at his table.

A meal is also about dependance. “We are eating creatures, who cannot live unless we take in something from outside of us” (Leithart). That is part of the reason why a meal is special, a set table is symbolic for life itself. When we come God’s table as dependent creatures, what does he feed us? Himself. We do not believe, as Catholics do, that the elements of the supper, the cup and the bread, are literally transformed into the blood and body of Jesus. That is called transubstantiation. But neither do we believe that the supper is a mere memorial, that is, a purely human act of remembrance.

Instead, we believe, as the scripture teaches, that “the cup of blessing which we bless [is] a sharing in the blood of Christ” and “the bread which we break [is] a sharing in the body of Christ” (1Co 10:16). It is not an empty sign nor is it transformed into body and blood, rather it the means by which we commune with the risen Christ. Our participation in supper is the moment when God in Christ graciously communes with us, when he gives himself to us as our bread and drink. His is our life.

So the supper reaches back and it reaches forward. It reaches back as a continuation of Jesus’ table fellowship, eating and drinking. What happens in the supper is no different from what happened when Jesus reclined at the table with tax-collectors and sinners. It also reaches back to the cross, as a continual proclamation of the gospel in the bread and the cup. Jesus gives us the elements as he gave us his own body in death and resurrection.

It reaches forward, too. It looks to and anticipates kingdom come, when “many will come from east and west, and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 8:11). It brings past and future into the present and preaches to us Jesus Christ and him crucified.

God’s Hospitality and Ours

The supper is about God’s hospitality to us in the death and resurrection of Christ. Our aim in this portion of the series is to connect our corporate worship with our lives, so what does the supper teach us? It teaches us be hospitable people, whose tables are open and generous like the one we are invited to everything time we gather. First, the supper makes us hospitable by being hospitable to us.

Do you know the story of Mephibosheth? After David assumed the throne, he asked his servants if any relatives of Saul remained—the previous king, who, in rage and jealously, tried to murder him. In those days, it was common for a new king to kill the rest of the royal family, so that no challenger remained. His servants found one remaining descendent, Mephibosheth, the grandson of the Saul and the son of Jonathan, David’s best friend, who was killed in war.

He was crippled and living in hiding because he was afraid that David would kill him. When he was presented before the king, Mephibosheth fell on the floor expecting to be killed. But David responded and said to him, “Do not fear, for I will surely show kindness to you for the sake of your father Jonathan, and will restore to you all the land of your grandfather Saul; and you shall eat at my table regularly” (2Sa 9:7).

We are Mephibosheth. We are summoned before Christ, expecting condemnation and death, only to be welcomed at his table, to eat and drink from his riches for the rest of our lives. When we recognize the unmerited welcome that has been given to us, it is very hard to withhold that from others. When God has opened his home and table to us in such lavish and extraordinary fashion, it is hard to be closed off and cold toward others.

This free and bountiful hospitality that we receive in the supper, cannot but make us similarly hospitable to others. God’s gracious welcome melts away everything that is miserly, begrudging, and self-righteous in our hearts. He turns enemies and strangers into guest, so that his guest might themselves become hosts.

God’s hospitality makes us hospitable. And that leads us to our second point: the supper teaches us how to be welcoming to one another. In Corinth, the celebration of the supper had been supremely botched. It was meant to be a demonstration of unity and fellowship and instead it had become an instrument of division, primarily along socio-economic lines.

Imagine you are a poor member of the Corinthian church. Later that evening, after the work day, the entire congregation is meeting at someone’s home to partake of the supper and share a meal together. Because you a poor, you can contribute little or nothing to the common meal. When you work day is over, likely as someone’s slave, you show up to the gathering and the food and drink are entirely consumed and some people are even drunk. The rich people in the church had been waiting too long and decided to get on with things, because it was their food anyway. You do what you can and try to strike up a conversation, but you are too embarrassed and shamed to continue. You and the other poor members of the church leave, while the others do not even seem to notice.

This was the situation in Corinth. Paul says though they call it the Lord’s Supper, it is not the Lord’s Supper at all. It is a shame and mockery. “What!” Paul rages. “Do you not have houses in which to eat and drink? Or do you despise the church of God and shame those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you? In this I will not praise you” (1Co 11:22). It is not the Lord’s Supper because there is no brotherhood or unity. If you want to partake rightly, he says, then “judge the body rightly” (1Co 11:29). Meaning, the church—the supper is a demonstration of the unity and peace the gospel brings and divided congregation preaches the exact opposite message.

The supper is not a private religious experience, it is communal demonstration of unity and fellowship. It reminds us that we are one body, that we are members of one another. It keeps our hearts tender and compassion to our brothers and sisters. It nudges us toward forgiveness and reconciliation. Above all, it preaches the gospel of peace to us, and says, “Accept one another, just as Christ also accepted [you] to the glory of God” (Ro 15:7). What does the acceptance look like? A meal. Our table at home is supposed to look like the Lord’s table in the assembly, where natural enemies are untied as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Lastly, the supper teaches us how to be hospitable to outsiders. How so? It gives us a lens through which to view other people, unbelievers. According to our natural vision, we see political enemies, we see those who oppose our values, we see those who undermine society, and etc. But the supper teaches us to see those same people as people wanted by God, as guests he desires to have at his table. God wants their company as well as ours. “How much simpler if God only wanted [our] company and that of those [we] decided to invite. But God does not play that particular game” (Williams).

That is not to say this issues that divide us are unimportant, often time they are major. Nor is it say that hospitality is anything-goes tolerance, it is not. Rather, it is to say that the gospel is greater than those divisions and difficulties. It has the power to transform enemies into friends, Sauls into Pauls.