One Lord, One
Faith, One Table
1 Corinthians
10: 16-17, 27-31
October 6,
2013, World Communion Sunday
First
Presbyterian Church, Sterling, IL
Christina
Berry
16
The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ?
The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?
17
Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of
the one bread.
27
If an unbeliever invites you to a meal and you are disposed to go, eat
whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of
conscience.
28 But if someone says to you, "This has been offered in
sacrifice," then do not eat it, out of consideration for the one who
informed you, and for the sake of conscience—
29 I mean the other's conscience,
not your own.
For
why should my liberty be subject to the judgment of someone else's conscience?
30 If I partake with thankfulness, why should I be denounced because of that
for which I give thanks?
31 So, whether you eat or drink, or
whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.
Maybe
I should have a name-that-sermon contest more often.
The
last time I did it, a few weeks back, several folks said that looking for a
title helped them listen better! You don’t have to come up with a title this
week, though you can if you want, but I do think that I have a better one than
the one in the bulletin: “Table Manners.” You see what you think.
As
you probably know by now, today is World Communion Sunday, a celebration that
originated at Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh way back in 1933. The
practice was adopted by what was then the United Presbyterian Church – the Northern
church at the time, in 1936, and was adopted by what is now the National
Council of Churches in 1940. So World Communion Sunday is in our Presbyterian
DNA, as it were. World Communion Sunday has been around for as long as our
building – ninety years, this year! -- and the practice of the Lord’s Supper has
been a part of the church for as long as there has been a church.
When
we celebrate this sacrament, we celebrate the essential joy of the Lord’s
Supper, the best symbol we have of God’s abundance, love, and grace. When we
celebrate this day, we celebrate the eternal unity of Christ’s church, the
community made one in Christ Jesus, just as many grains make one bread and many
grapes make one cup.
Jesus
talked about grains and grapes fairly often, and he was fond of using them as
metaphors for our lives. He said that he was the vine, and we are the branches.
He said that unless a grain falls to the ground and dies, it can’t become the
seed of new life and a bountiful harvest. There are so many layers of meaning
in communion, then, that we mostly just have to pick one to focus on, and
acknowledge that what we say is incomplete.
The
Apostle Paul, addressing table fellowship in this letter to the church at
Corinth, does just that. His attention is on our table manners. Many of us, if
not most of us, learned
manners at the family dinner table. The supper table was where we caught up on
the news of the day, shared information, tattled on each other, encountered new
foods, and had our behavior shaped as members of a family.
My
family was unique even in the sixties in that we had almost every meal together
at the kitchen table. Even then, the demands of work and multiple schedules were
changing the family. Dinner was no longer a gathering time – people began to eat different meals at
different times, when sports and jobs and plans permitted. Kids didn’t have to
learn to cook anymore, they only had to learn to work the microwave.
But
back then, in many good and important ways, families like ours did some of
their best work at the supper table. And we learned some important rules.
- Wash your hands before you come to the table.
- Pray before you eat.
- Break your bread before you eat it.
- Cut your meat – don’t stab the whole piece with your fork and eat like a caveman.
- Say please and thank you.
- Even if you do not like broccoli, you must take some and eat it.
- You cannot hide broccoli in a glass of milk.
- Broccoli drenched with milk tastes awful.
- Even the dog does not like broccoli.
- Don’t spit your broccoli out on your plate.
This
was all very important information, mother said, because someday you are going
to be at table with someone else, and you need to know how to behave properly, so
as not to offend them. If you are invited to a meal with a friend, you must eat
what is served. You may not turn up your nose, or ask “what IS that?” or
attempt to give your food to the dog, if there is one, or hide it under the rim
of your plate. You may not spit food out. Even if it is broccoli. Even if it is calves’
liver.
I
think I’ve shared with you before that one of the nicest things a little friend
ever did for me was to eat an entire slab of dry overcooked liver off my plate,
sneaking bite after bite when her mother wasn’t looking. Greater love has no
kid than this…
The
issue that Paul is addressing in the second part of our reading is similar, but
much more serious. Not unlike today, but for different reasons, people sitting
down at the dinner table wanted to know where the meat came from. Had it been
sacrificed to idols? Was
it offered up to pagan gods?
Paul
has spent a good bit of this letter describing Christian freedom – the truth
that just as God freed the people of Israel from slavery to Egypt, God in
Christ has freed us from slavery to sin. Because we have this freedom, lots of
things that used to be forbidden are no longer any big deal – like meat offered
to idols. BUT our freedom has its limits!
This
was serious business then, and may be even more serious now. Our freedom is
limited by conscience – the conscience of others. This is not political,
constitutionally guaranteed freedom, not the freedom of worldly governments and
powers. As Christians, when our exercise of freedom infringes on the conscience
of another, when our free expression wounds the body, we are called to limit
that freedom, so as not to offend, so as not to create an embarrassing moral
dilemma for a brother or sister!
Paul
is saying that there is no problem of conscience with eating meat sacrificed to
idols, unless doing so offends those
at the table with you. And if you are offended by the prospect of eating that
meat, and the person serving you is not, it is like that darn calves’ liver – you are supposed to politely take it and eat
it and NOT SAY ANYTHING!
So
we come to this table, this bountiful, generous table, spilling over with good
things, with foods from every place, bread from every land, foods both familiar
and strange, comforting and challenging. We come to this table to receive the
bread and the cup, but also to be received as a member of Christ’s body, the
church. We come to remember and also to be re-membered – to be put back
together.
It
is no accident that our Peacemaking Offering is brought to the table on this
Sunday when we envision all the world coming to the feast. The heart of
peacemaking is that our first concern is for the other, that our actions and
words are focused on loving our neighbor, and that our faith in Jesus Christ,
the host at this table, commands us not only to love our neighbor, but to love
our enemies. In a time when people are divided over politics and policy, when
conversations disintegrate into rhetoric and sound bites, when positions are
taken and compromise is seen as capitulation, when individuals suffer loss
because of a group’s desire to WIN, we as Christians are called to a higher
charge:
To
love as Christ loved, in order to bring glory to God.
So
this feast Christ has spread for us is both a gift and a challenge.
We
gather symbolically at this table with the great communion of saints.
We
gather symbolically at this table with all of our ecumenical partners.
We
gather symbolically at this table even with those who do not welcome us!
And
here there is plenty for all, and everyone is bid a welcome, even if they
disagree with us, even if they do not like us, even if we do not like them, even
if we think they are dead wrong.
Because
the driving force of our lives, the purpose of our community, the most powerful
law we have been given, and the widest freedom we can imagine all spring from
one source: Jesus Christ. In him we are commanded to love and to live for God’s
glory. We obey that commandment when we love one another, when we love our
neighbors, when we love even our enemies, and we fulfill that purpose when we
gather at the bountiful and varied feast given to us by the love of God in
Christ Jesus, welcoming all who would come and blessing even those who do not
partake.
So
whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of
God.
It
is just good table manners.
Thanks
be to God!
Amen.
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