A Seat at the Table

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
September 2, 2007

A Seat at the Table
Jeremiah 2:4-13
Luke 14: 1, 7-14

Have you ever thought about just how radical
what we are going to do in a few minutes really is?
The Lord’s Supper seems so simple:
we take a loaf or two of bread,
cut the bread into pieces,
and put the pieces on trays;
and then we take a bottle or two of grape juice,
fill tiny cups with the juice,
put the cups on trays,
and then ask Elders and Deacons
to pass the trays among the congregation
as we share a meal together.

Here’s where it’s radical:
The Lord’s Supper is a table to which everyone is invited,
everyone-
regardless of how much or how little money the person has,
how big or how little the house they live in,
how long or how short they have lived here,
how much or how little education they have,
how long or how short a time
they’ve been a part of this community of faith;
Position, prestige, prominence,
even politics in this Washington suburb
are all irrelevant;
country of origin is irrelevant,
accent: irrelevant,
skin color: irrelevant,
age: irrelevant,
sexual orientation: irrelevant --
none of these things matter.

This is the Lord’s Table,
and all who profess faith in Jesus Christ are invited,
every one of us is an honored guest;
no seat more important,
no seat less important.
All of us invited by the grace of God that is Jesus Christ;
the love of God that is ours through Jesus Christ.
How radical is that?

Think about a dinner party you might have at your home.
Who would you invite?
Your friends of course, people you know, people you like.
Think about a dinner part to which you’ve been invited:
you probably hope you’ll be seated next to someone you know,
someone with whom you get along,
a friend with whom you can talk.
That’s just human nature.

But that’s not how Jesus invites guests to his table.
He invites everyone,
and gives everyone a seat of honor,
including the lame, the poor, the outcasts,
in a display of hospitality that is radical, even extreme,
in its outpouring of love and grace.
There is no greater act of hospitality
than an invitation to this meal,
an invitation to this table.

We may well be seated next to someone we know,
someone we like,
but it is just as likely
that we may be seated next to someone
we don’t know,
even someone we don’t like all that much.

In a book I read not long ago (If God is Love)
authors Philip Gulley and James Mulholland
pondered the interesting question
of how we will be seated
at the heavenly table in God’s Kingdom,
following the end of mortal life.
We tend to think that we will rejoin family and friends,
but the authors wonder whether God may not choose first
to seat us next to someone we did not like in life,
someone with whom we did not get along,
someone we may have even considered an enemy,
and leave the us seated next to that person
for whatever part of eternity it takes
until we two are reconciled.
And then God would repeat the process
one person at a time
for as long as it took
until all God’s children were reconciled,
reconciled at God’s heavenly table.

The hospitality that God offers us at this table,
where we have a foretaste of what awaits us,
is a hospitality where all are welcome,
where there are no cliques, no little groups,
no VIP sections, no box seats,
no right, no left,
no conservatives, no liberals –
as unhelpful as those terms are –
but simply one table set with
grace and love for all
A table that enrourages us
to take that hospitality out into the world,
to be so filled with it that it overcomes our fear of others,
our obsession with security
that builds walls to keep out the unfamiliar,
the different, the stranger.

In 1993 I spent two weeks traveling in Russia on business.
I had traveled extensively before,
but never to a place that was so different, so foreign.
Each night I had dinner with Russian men and women,
who overwhelmed me with their hospitality.
During the day we were all business,
but at the table we shared conversation,
laughter, and stories,
as we shared our lives with one another.

The wonderful God-filled irony in those meals
was that I am part of a generation that grew up
taught to fear Russians,
a generation taught to think of the Russian as our enemy
viewed in much the same way we view the Islamic world now.
We were taught to think of them as godless communists,
murderous thugs every one of them, j
ust waiting for an opportunity to attack us,
to kill us.
Back in the early 1960s when I was in elementary school
a regular part of our routine every month
was the “duck-and-cover” drill,
when teachers led children into the hall
where we sat on the floor against an inside wall,
covering our heads, learning to prepare ourselves
for that attack we knew, we just knew,
the Russians were planning.
What we didn’t know at the time, of course,
was that Russian children were doing the same thing,
fearful of an attack by “murderous Americans”.

How quickly fears melt away when we come to a table
to share a meal, to share hopes and dreams,
when we extend hospitality to one another,
leaving security where it belongs: in the hands of God.

Could it be that someday we will sit in harmony and reconciliation
with the Muslim,
the immigrant,
the same-sex couple:
all those we consider different,
all those we fear?

The path to that day begins with hospitality,
hospitality grounded in, yes, some naivety,
naivety that is grounded in faith,
faith so strong that it overcomes our fear,
faith so strong that we remember the promise
that God is with us even in the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

The path to hospitality in the world outside
begins here in this church.
Unless we practice hospitality ceaselessly, in every setting
here in this church, how can we hope to practice it outside?
Hospitality in meetings of the Session and Board of Deacons;
Hospitality in the work of ministry teams;
hospitality in Sunday School classrooms, children and adult;
hospitality in Youth Groups;
hospitality in which welcoming the stranger
is only the beginning.

The priest Henri Nouwen wrote
“The movement…to hospitality is hard and full of difficulties.
Our society seems to be increasingly full of fearful,
defensive, aggressive people,
anxiously clinging to their property
and inclined to look at their surrounding world with suspicion,
always expecting an enemy to appear, intrude, and do harm.
But still – that is our vocation:
to convert the …enemy into a guest,
and to create the free and fearless space
where brotherhood and sisterhood
can be formed and fully experienced.”
(Reaching Out, 65)

Hospitality is our vocation,
not to convert pagan to believer,
but enemy to guest.
In this day of mega-churches,
with so many proclaiming depth and breadth of their programs,
wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Manassas Presbyterian Church
was known as the church of mega-hospitality?

Come take your seat at this table
your seat among all the honored guests,
each of us bathed in the hospitality that comes from grace,
that comes from love,
that is given so freely to us by God
through Jesus Christ.
Come and share in the hospitality that our Lord offers.
And then, nourished and renewed by this meal
we are about to share,
take that hospitality out into the world,
to share with all God’s children:
grace received, and so grace given,
in the name of the one who is grace:
our Lord Jesus Christ.
AMEN