A CORE VALUE:  THE OPEN TABLE

“If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” --- Acts 11:17(NRSV)

 

          I attended a lecture on “Race Manners for the 21st Century” two weeks ago over lunch at the community college.  The speaker taught five outstanding principles that genuinely prove helpful in this age of prickly race relations.

 

          Such fine teaching, but I left profoundly disappointed.  Once the speaker departed from his notes & began interacting with the audience, his own prejudices & insensitivities were on full display.  After one well-mannered young man asked a challenging question, & was summarily put down, no other opposing voices came to the microphones.  The rebuttal had a chilling effect.   Only seconds after the speech, the lecturer had not practiced what he preached.

 

          Individuals can be wrong about a lot of things - errors that are often forgiven, if not entirely overlooked.  Saying one thing & doing the opposite, though, not only elicits charges of hypocrisy, but is especially offensive when those actions contradict a core value that the individual professes.

 

          The three biggest Christian denominations in the United States are the Roman Catholics (68 million), the Southern Baptists (16.2 million), & the United Methodists (7.8 million).[1]  However, UM’s have 15,000 more congre-gations than the Roman Catholics, although average membership is ten times smaller for us, than the typical RC parish.[2]  In 12 states, though, United Methodists have more local churches than any other denomina-tion (largely in a straight line stretching from Delaware to Nebraska).[3] And although United Methodism is rapidly declining in the increasingly liberal & Roman Catholic northeast, we are on the ascendancy in the conserva-tive southeast where the Southern Baptists are decreasing.

 

          And, did you know that outside of exclusively Black denominations, we have more Africans & African-Americans than any other Protestant denomination? Outside of Korean denominations, we have more Koreans & Korean-Americans than any other denomination.  Outside of Latino denominations, we have more Latinos & Latinas than any other….

 

          Another point of difference between denominations is how we handle the differences we have within us.  Roman Catholics excommuni-cate dissenters.  Southern Baptists purge them.  Episcopalians, Presbyte-rians, & American Baptists split from their opponents.  Amish shun them.  United Methodists don’t do any of those things.  John Wesley said, “As to that which does not strike at the heart of religion, we think & let think.” 

 

          That doesn’t mean that anything goes for us, but it does indicate why there is such breadth & diversity across our denomination.  I often say that individual congregations & their pastors aside, if you cannot find a home in United Methodism, it’s more of a statement about who you are, than about who we, UM’s, are.

 

          Amid such breadth, there are a few things that we do hold dear.  The one that I address today, as we celebrate communion, is our belief in the open table.  It’s a theology that welcomes everyone, exposing the foundation of our Christian identity.  Again as Father John (Wesley) is famously credited with teaching, “In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; in all things charity.”

 

          Let me talk about eating as detailed in the Bible.  From the earliest passages of scripture, what to eat & what not to eat were issues for God’s people.  Originally, humans were vegetarians, but after God’s covenant with Noah, God permitted the eating of meat.   The Hebrew teachings of what the Jews defined as kosher  – clean or unclean foods - eventually sprung from these early concepts.  (Muslims trace their similar dietary restrictions to these same passages.)  Only certain foods qualified as sacrifices with Jewish priests being first to consume the best burnt offerings brought by the people.  The biggest festival for Jews involved the Passover feast, celebrating freedom from Egyptian bondage. 

 

          In New Testament times, Jesus’ celebration of the Passover became known as the Last Supper & was the basis for our sacrament of holy com-munion.   Think about all of the gospel stories involving Jesus & food, from the feeding of the 5,000 to the fish fry on the beach.  He was often berated by his faith’s leaders for his table habits of “eating with tax collectors & sinners.”  The Apostle Paul, too, addressed problems arising among well-to-do & poor Christians dining together in Corinth.

 

          Eating is necessary for life & a big deal for “people of the Book.”  Although Jesus demonstrated that table fellowship can be a joyful occasion that unites diverse people, not everyone shared his theology.  Even his #1 disciple, Peter, needed to be convinced differently.

 

          That convincing took place in our lesson today, when Peter has a vision in which a sheet descends from heaven laden with a variety of animals.  A voice then tells Peter to “Kill & eat.” 

 

“No way!” he opposes.  “No such profane & unclean food has ever passed these lips.” 

 

“But what God has made clean, you must not define as unclean,” the voice clarifies. 

 

Three times this occurs before the sheet is pulled back skyward.

 

          Peter rightly identifies the event as a message from the Holy Spirit.

 

          After the encounter, the apostle is joined by six fellow Jews who accompany him to a Gentile man’s house.  This non-Jew reveals to them that an angel stood in his house & instructed him to send for Peter, which he did.  As he relates his story, the Holy Spirit falls on the entire lot of them.

 

          Peter puts all these events together, realizing that Christ does not discriminate when it comes to who will be saved.  Jesus didn’t come solely for the select few Jews, but for everyone.  The message for us, too, is that the kind of food we take in to our stomachs, represents the kind of persons we are to take into our lives & are called to love. 

 

          We see the gospel of Christ as being for everyone.  At least, Christ offers to everyone the opportunity for eternal life transformation.  Jesus gives his life, death, & resurrection for all humans.  If some persons refuse his gift, God is grieved (because He went to such great lengths for us all – to the point of death!), but accepts their decision.  It was God, after all, who gave us free will. 

 

          Our responsibility as Christians, then, is to offer God’s saving grace to others.  A sign of that grace – the sign par excellence, Wesley called it – is holy communion.  We invite everyone here to the altar-table.  Even for the non-believers who may be among us, we trust the Holy Spirit to work as unexpectedly in them now during worship, as that same Spirit worked in Peter’s day, as well as in our lives.  The Lord’s table is open to everyone who sincerely believes.

 

          We cannot judge what divine work God accomplishes in lives.  So, without that ability to see inside the heart of individuals, we will not be the communion police & presume evil things.  If someone partakes unworthily, that’s a matter between them & God (1st Cor. 11:27).  If I know, however, that a problem exists, then it is incumbent upon me to “speak the truth in love” to those individuals & help lead them to a transforming encounter with Christ (Eph. 4:15).[4]  The Lord’s Supper is not just tea & crumpets.

 

          As we preach that God’s grace is available to everyone, so we bring that doctrine to life by not fencing the communion table from them.  We sing in Charles Wesley’s communion hymn: “Come, sinners, to the gospel feast.  Let every soul be Jesus’ guest.  You need not one be left behind, for God has bid all humankind.”

 

          An anonymous pagan during the early centuries of Christianity once said, “Look at those Christians!  See how they love one another.”  A hallmark of the growth of the early church was how Christians welcomed society’s outcasts & loved them as their own family.  In Christ, they were made brothers & sisters.  They not only cared for others by establishing what we would call missions & outreach ministries, but invited those diverse & different peoples to eat at table together with them. 

 

          We must always  maintain a theology of the open table by being mindful of who is not at the table that should be.  Who in our community is not represented in our worship?  Who is not represented up front each week leading worship, among our elected officers, among our staff?  While we know we’re not perfect, we want Christ’s table to be complete.  The Lord’s Supper is, after all, a foretaste of the heavenly banquet  which we expect to enjoy some day.

 

Dining is such an intimate experience.   Most folks, though, don’t invite most anyone to eat with them.  Christians did.  We (UM’s) still do.    

In the Name….           Copyright 2010 by G.D.Knerr at Lansdale, Pa.  All rights reserved.

 

Meditation:  “If thy heart is as my heart, then come, take my hand.”


[1] 2010 Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches (based largely on 2008 data)

[2] 2005 Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches (based largely on 2003 data)

[3] Ibid. (includes Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, W. Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, & Kansas)

[4] One cannot prevent the “sinner” from partaking, as that would definitely not allow them to receive the grace availed to them in this converting ordinance.  Issues need to be addressed afterwards.