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Around God's Table, September 2, 2007 |
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Written by Jeanne Knepper
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Saturday, 08 September 2007 |
AROUND GOD’S TABLE
Deuteronomy 25:4; Jeremiah 22:13-16; Luke 14:1, 7-14
September 2, 2007
Children’s time: talk about family tables. What do we do around them? [eat, do home work, prepare meals, play together, do projects]. Tables are important for families. Can you see the table near where we are? Do you see the white cloths covering dishes? What is under there?
That food is part of a meal we eat together every month. That meal is called communion. And eating it together is so important that we put the table right up here at the front of the church.
Today, we are going to do things differently. You won’t go to Sunday School time. Instead, you get to stay here for the worship service. Later in the worship service, I am going to ask you to come up to this row, to sit right here in front while I tell you the story of communion and why we do it.
Once upon a time, about 2000 years ago, there was a man named Jesus. Jesus was a very good man and he had a very important thing to do. God sent him to tell all the people how much God loved them. You see, the people couldn’t see God, or touch him, or sit on her lap, and sometimes, the people would start to forget that God loved them. So God sent a special person, Jesus, to show people of God’s love.
Jesus went everywhere to tell people that God loved them. Sometimes, he said it in church. Sometimes, he said it while he was walking down the road with people. Sometimes he said it when he sat down on the top of a hill and people gathered around to hear what he had to say. Sometimes, he told people about God’s love while he was in a boat at the edge of a very big lake, called the Sea of Galilee. Everywhere he went, he told people that God loved them. And people were glad to hear that. They wanted to know that God loved them, that they were special to God. It felt good to them, just as it feels good to us to have someone tell us that they love us.
But then, Jesus did something that made a lot of the people not so happy with him. Besides telling them that God loved them, which they all wanted to hear, he told them that God loved the people who were different from them, that God loved the people they didn’t like. Jesus taught the people that he had come to tell them about God’s love for everybody. He taught them that God loved children and old people. The children loved to hear that God loved them. Some of the older people thought Jesus should tell the children to be quiet or go away. Jesus taught them that God loved women and men. Some of the people thought Jesus shouldn’t talk that way about women. They thought that God loved men best.
Jesus taught the people that God loved people from different countries. At that time, soldiers from
Rome had conquered Jesus’ country, and lots of people hated the Roman soldiers. But Jesus healed the servant of a Roman soldier and said that the Roman soldier was a good man. He said that God loved people from all countries. That made some people mad at him.
Jesus taught the people that God loved people who were healthy and people who were sick. He said that God loved people who had problems, like not being able to walk, or not being able to see. Many of the people thought that people couldn’t walk or see because God was mad at them, but Jesus said that wasn’t so. He told the people who were blind or lame that God loved them. Some people didn’t like it that he said that.
Jesus taught the people that God loved people who were poor, who didn’t have enough to eat, who didn’t have money or warm homes. The people who were poor loved hearing that, because most of the people didn’t like them very much. But then, Jesus made them angry by saying that God also loved people who were rich, although he also told the people who were rich that God didn’t love them because they were rich. God just loved them, the same as everyone.
Now, all the people who heard Jesus liked some of what he was saying, but not other parts. The rich people were glad that he would come to their houses to eat with them; but they thought he was stupid to eat with poor people. The people who went to church were glad that he came to church with them, but they thought he was wasting his time to hang out with people who didn’t go to church. The people who hated the Romans were very glad that Jesus didn’t like Roman rule either, but they got very angry when he was nice to Roman soldiers.
And so, Jesus had a problem. It was easy to teach people that God loved them; but much harder to teach people that God loved the other people too. And, he had a second problem, one that was even bigger than the first one. Some people were so angry about the parts of what Jesus was teaching that they didn’t like that they had decided that he was a very dangerous man. They had decided to have him killed. And he knew it.
Well, Jesus could have said, “Oops, God, I guess you didn’t know that it would make people angry if I told people that you love everyone. I think I have to stop doing that now. “ But, Jesus knew God very well, and he knew that God really did want him to keep teaching the people that God loves everyone. And he knew that God would want the people to remember this, even if Jesus was killed. So, Jesus started to teach some of his closest friends all about how important it was to God that they keep telling everyone that God loves all the people.
His friends were good people, but sometimes they didn’t understand it all. Sometimes they would even quarrel with each other about who God loved best. Even though Jesus told them and told them, it wasn’t really sinking in. They seemed a bit like children, wanting to believe that Mom really likes me better than you. Have you ever felt that way? Well, Jesus could see that even the people closest to him wanted to believe that they were God’s favorites.
So Jesus thought and thought. What could he do? If he died, who would teach the people that God loved them all? How could he show his best friends, the ones who would have to keep telling about God’s love when he died, that God loved them all, everyone of them, everyone in the whole world.
Now, it happened that, in the country where Jesus loved, people never ate food with strangers. There were rules about what kinds of foods you could eat, and who could prepare it, and how you had to wash your hands, all kinds of rules, so people only ate with people who did things just the same ways as their own families. Sometimes, in fact, people were mad at Jesus because he didn’t follow those rules. He ate with everyone, even if they didn’t follow the same rules as his mom had taught him.
And then Jesus had a great idea. He would help the people see that they were all one family by asking them to eat together. He would say that God’s rules of love were more important for bringing people together that any of the other rules they had learned. And so, not long before Jesus was captured and killed—he was right, some people were so angry about his teachings of God’s love for everyone that they decided that he had to be killed—Jesus ate his last meal with his friends.
He had them all gather around a big table. They talked about all kinds of things at first, but then Jesus asked for them to pay attention. He took the loaf of bread, a big loaf, and he said grace over it, and then he started to break it into pieces to give some to everyone. He told them, “I am going to die soon. But from here on out, every time you eat bread, think of me and what I taught you. Remember, God loves everyone.” And as they took the bread, they remembered that bread was the most common part of a meal in those days, and that everyone could eat the bread.
At the end of the meal, Jesus took the pitcher of grape juice that had been made into wine and he passed it around, telling them that he would die soon, but that he would be back among them every time they gathered to eat and drink around the same table. He said it was important, most important, that they eat this meal with each other, over and over, and with everyone else who believed in him and what he was teaching about God’s love. He told them that the bread they would eat together was the bread of life, and that the cup they would drink together was the cup of his promise for their lives, his promise that God would always love them. He told them that eating this meal together was very, very important, and that they must keep doing it and teaching all of the people who cam e to them to eat the same meal together.
Jesus started this meal, which we call communion, almost 2000 years ago. We eat it together every month, and sometimes more than once a month. Every time we eat it, we remind ourselves that we eat this meal to teach us about God’s love for us and for everyone. Every time we eat it, we believe again what Jesus said about God’s promise for our lives and for the lives of all people. This meal is very simple—only bread and juice, and just a taste of each of them—but it is very important. For this is the meal that reminds us, just like your own kitchen tables remind you, that we are all part of one big family, the children of God, everyone of us. When you take the bread and dip it in the juice, you will hear us saying words like, “This is the bread of life and the cup of God’s promise for your life and for all.” When we eat the bread, when we taste the bread and juice on our tongues, we hope that we will understand that God’s love, for everyone, is as real as this food.
Do you remember, I told you that Jesus said that we should remember him when we eat this meal. Now I’m going to ask you to go back to sit with your families, and to look at the words in The Faith We Sing while we all sing the song, “In Remembrance of Me.” And then, when it is time, come forward with your families to share in the meal that Jesus has made for all of us.
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