Community Church Sermons
April 6, 2008
Third
Sunday of Easter
Luke 24:13-35
Listen to this Sermon!
“He was made known to them in
the breaking of the bread.”
In a certain town, there were three churches – a Methodist Church, a Congregational Church, and a Baptist Church. These three churches decided to set up a competition to see which of them had the better message for attracting new converts. The only limitations placed upon the contest were that each church had to set up a booth in front of it, and the only communication that could come out of that booth had to be non-verbal. No one could say anything, but they could print out a message and pass it out as strangers walked by. So the competition began, and a month later, the results were tallied.
The three churches got together to find out the winner.
The Methodist minister said, “We received three new members by passing out a flyer that said, ‘Come to our church, and we’ll help you get to heaven!’” All the Methodists cheered.
The Congregational minister said, “We got ten new members with this flyer that said, ‘Come to our church, and we’ll help keep you out of hell!’” The Congregationalists, of course, did not cheer over this good news because they are God’s frozen people and would not want to be confused with Methodists. But one of them was seen to almost crack a smile.
Then the Baptist preacher got up. “How many new members did you get?” the others asked.
“495!” said the preacher.
Both the Methodists and Congregationalists gasped! “Four-hundred and ninety-five? How in the world did you get 495 new members?”
The Baptist minister replied, “We passed out a flyer
that said, ‘Free Ham and Bean Supper Tonight!’ and they just came”
Baptists are known for their church suppers! Maybe that’s why there are more Baptists than there are people!
And maybe they learned something important from Jesus.
There are many essential elements in the Christian Faith – worship, prayer, evangelism, missions, being good people, loving God and loving neighbor – but all these and other roadways of our religion end up at one place.
A supper table.
Faith – at its core – is about eating together!
Does anybody here like to eat?
Then you’ll love being a Christian!
In fact, long before there even was a Christian movement, our ancient Jewish forbears found their very identity as God’s chosen people in the experience of the Passover, which is a supper! And the Psalmist, in one of the most famous psalms of all says that God, “preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.” Imagine that? As we face the advancing enemies of our lives, God sets a table for us and says, “I know you got trouble, but first, come have something to eat!”
When Jesus came, much of his ministry was spent eating – with all sorts of people from all different walks of life. In fact, some of his enemies complained that Jesus was nothing but a drunkard and a glutton, and that he ate with tax collectors and sinners besides!
Everybody likes to eat! Jesus was no exception and he knew the power of a common meal.
And then, of course, there was the Last Supper that Jesus shared with his friends the night before he died, and after he was raised from the dead there was the breakfast he cooked on a charcoal fire for the fishermen by the Sea of Galilee.
And let us not forget what Jesus told us we’ll do when we all get to heaven.
We’ll gather for a banquet, and eat to our heart’s content!
That’s what people do in heaven! They eat!
And that future time of breaking bread together in the kingdom of God is what Jesus was talking about when he taught us to pray and said, “Give us this day our daily bread” which is more accurately translated, “Give us tomorrow’s bread today” – a prayer that God’s promised kingdom will come today – not tomorrow, and so we will break tomorrow’s bread today with the Lord.
Oh, the Baptists have it so right! The most important thing that goes on in the life of the church is not the preaching, not the singing, not the testifying – but the eating!
And even today, two-thousand years later, at the very center of Christian worship is a table where we break bread together and drink wine, and share Communion with the Lord and each other.
So it should not surprise us to read that when the two disciples on the road to Emmaus sat down to eat with the stranger they had met along the way, something miraculous happened in the breaking of the bread!
“Their eyes were opened, and they recognized him…”
What is it about this eating business that makes it so central to the Judeo-Christian tradition, even to the point of making a supper one of Judaism’s most important Festivals, and one of Christianity’s most significant Sacraments?
We may think that the elements of bread and wine represent the most basic foods of nature’s nourishment, and so we are getting back to the humility of our humanity when we prayerfully consume them. Some traditions teach that the bread and wine are miraculously transformed into the actual body and blood of Jesus, so we are receiving the Lord Himself into us when we take the Holy Eucharist.
These thoughts are good thoughts, but I think there’s something more. And it has to do not with WHAT we eat at the table of the Lord, but rather WITH WHOM WE EAT.
Almost all the Bible stories about eating meals together include the presence of strangers! Jewish people are required to invite to the Passover meal migrant workers and aliens. No one is to be left out! When Jesus fed the five-thousand, the disciples thought he was nuts to include so many people when there was so little food, but Jesus invited them all to sit down and eat. No one was to be left out!
And, of course, when Jesus went to supper at the homes of upstanding religious people, the unclean folks always showed up – prostitutes, criminals, lepers, the demon-possessed, tax collectors. And Jesus welcomed them all to the table. No one was to be left out! Even at the Last Supper, Jesus sat with one who would betray him, another who would deny him, and all but one who would run away when push came to shove. But still, no one was left out.
Maybe the breaking of bread and drinking of wine is less about WHAT we eat and more about WITH WHOM WE EAT.
“He was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.”
The two disciples at Emmaus thought he was just a stranger. But at table, in the breaking of the bread, they saw Christ.
Have you seen Christ in the breaking of the bread?
I saw him – last week – at a Cracker Barrel in South Carolina.
Sandy and I were seated at a table next to three – how shall I say – rather frumpy people. There was a very ancient woman in wrinkled clothes, a man with long white hair covered by a beret that had seen better days, and another older man with long dirty hair pulled back into a pony tail and with a scruffy unkempt gray beard. When their breakfast came, it arrived on several big trays lugged by two waitresses, and the amount of food was unbelievable. There were piles of sausages and eggs of every description. There were stacks and stacks of pancakes and French toast, and bowls of fruit, and a ton of grits. And these three frumpy people sort of hovered over all that food like a flight of turkey vultures about to dive after a dead skunk on Tellico Parkway.
And I sat there in my chair, kind of looking at them through the corner of my eye, and thinking Cracker Barrel needs to get themselves a better clientele.
And then, all of a sudden, the older man with the dirty pony tail and the scruffy gray beard extended both arms out across the table and took the hands of his companions. And then he began to pray.
“We thank thee, Lord, for the gift of today, and for each other, and for the food Thou hast provided…”
And all of a sudden, I no longer heard the words because my eyes were opened and I recognized him.
It was Jesus.
He was made known to me in the breaking of the bread at a Cracker Barrel in South Carolina.
The late Mother Theresa once said of the people among whom
she ministered on the streets of Calcutta, “Each one of them is Jesus in
disguise.”
Maybe when we sit down and eat with each other, we learn that great truth about those we would otherwise know only as strangers, as aliens, as enemies. Jesus in disguise. Maybe God knows that what we really need in our world is not a religion that judges people, but rather a table around which we gather to eat, and get to know each other for who we are, and Whose we are. Maybe when we eat together, we learn about each other, and so strangers become friends. Maybe when we break bread and drink wine together, all pretense fades away, and we attain the ability to see the image of God in each other.
We see Jesus…in the breaking of the bread.
So today I want to challenge us as a church to pay attention to those gathered about the table, and especially to the strangers among us. Before you leave today, ask someone their name, invite someone to lunch, find out why they left ten-inches of snow up north to come be with us today. Ask them about their kids, and grandkids. Be sensitive to what looks like their hurt. Remember what it is like to be a new person in a room full of strangers, and roll out the red carpet.
See Jesus in them.
There is an ancient rulebook that was once used to guide bishops in the conduct of worship. One of the rules had to do with what to do when strangers show up at the Lord’s Table. It goes something like this, “Make room for the stranger at the Table of the Lord, and if there is no room, you – O bishop – go and sit on the floor and give the stranger your seat.”
That stranger just may turn out to be…