A Table Prepared

Psalm 23; Revelation 7:9-17

May 12, 2019

Who are all these folks who’ve come from everywhere to gather at this feast and celebration? That seems to be the heart of the question the elder is asking in John’s eschatological vision. I read this scene from Revelation and I imagine it like this:

A very proper maître de standing at the main entrance to a grand ballroom. Very proper Renaissance art hangs from the wall. Why there’s a Leonardo … and over there, a Madonna by Raphael. A very proper chamber orchestra is playing very proper chamber music. Is that Mozart I hear drifting out from the great hall?

But the line of folks heading in? Why they don’t look all that proper at all. In fact, they’re a rather scruffy lot who look like they just come through a great ordeal. Look closely: there’s a family of immigrants; there’s an Uber driver; there’s a solar panel installer; there’s a house-cleaner; a union organizer; teachers, tech workers, street sweepers, and folks living on those streets; folks struggling with addictions, people suffering the strains of broken families; a panoply of powerlessness. The line in looks a whole lot more like a line up, more bread line than rope line.

Last week, after her incredibly sad and untimely death, a lot of quotes from the writings of Rachel Held Evans were floating around social media. This one just jumped out at me as I pondered our text from Revelation:

“This is what God’s kingdom is like: a bunch of outcasts and oddballs gathered at a table, not because they are rich or worthy or good, but because they are hungry, because they said yes. And there’s always room for more.”

What if that really is what faith is all about? “A great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” gathered because when the invitation to the great banquet came they said “yes” … and there’s always room for more.

What if that really is what faith is all about? A feast prepared in the midst of the brokenness of the world, in the presence even of those opposed to such feasting, a banquet of love that outshines and outlasts all the hatred in the world. What if that really is what our faith is all about?

I think we make a huge, fundamental, and fundamentally theological error when we think of faith first and foremost as having to do with salvation – at least, that is, insofar as we think of “salvation” as “salvation from.” That is to say, if we think about faith in response to God’s grace as saving us from some fearful fate, then we are motivated by fear.

And, to go back to where we left off last week – with the theological insight of Yoda – fear is the path to the dark side. Most fear is about scarcity – scarcity of stuff, scarcity of safety, scarcity of security, scarcity of love.

On the other hand, the images of Psalm 23, like the images in this passage from Revelation, are all about abundance: green pastures, still waters, overflowing cups; great multitudes with abundant food and drink.

The power beyond such provision is simple: love. For God so loves the whole of the cosmos that there will be enough … if we but accept the invitation to live into this love.

Sometimes it is hard to perceive this, and some days it is profoundly difficult to proclaim it. All too often the world seems bent on testifying against it.

Last week there was another school shooting. In the 20 years since the Columbine shooting there have been more than 230 school shootings in the United States. Last week another child died while in custody of federal immigration officials. More than 20 people have died in such detention in the past two years.

Meanwhile, the list of nations with ongoing armed conflict is so long that the Wikipedia page listing them all seems like it has run out of colors for its charts of deaths. Let’s just sum up: last year more than 125,000 people were killed in the 17 deadliest countries. Most of the folks who wind up on our southern border are fleeing some part of that violence.

Oh, and last week the United Nations issued a report warning that more than a million species face extinction due to human activity in the world – much of that due to climate change. Many of the folks who wind up on our southern border who are not fleeing violence are fleeing food insecurity due to climate change.

Most of this stuff is related – bound up in a tangled web of insufficiency, insecurity, and fearfulness.

It’s hard to see how love wins.

I’ve had a notecard on my desk since sometime in early March. It’s from one of the prayer stations from Lent. It reads, simply,

“We are …

            God’s love in the world.

            God’s light in the world.

            God’s hope in the world.

            God’s peace in the world.”

It’s a song waiting to be finished, and some day I’m going to find the rest of it. In the meanwhile, as I was feeling bound up on the web of insufficiency and insecurity and fearfulness this week, I looked at that notecard and I thought:

I think of God’s love in the world when I think of all the kids – including my own – who I’ve seen grow in love through the ministry at Camp Hanover over all the years we’ve supported that ministry.

And I think of God’s light in the world when I think of the ways we have worked in recent years to support immigrants and asylum seekers, and, of course, they ways we’ve been light and more light for a couple of generations of GLBTQIA folks in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and across the Commonwealth of Virginia.

And I think of God’s hope in the world when I think of the Young Adult Volunteers – including our own Christina Hogan – giving a year or two of their lives learning the deep lessons of simple life in community while sharing their gifts with folks whose lives often seem devoid of hope. And I think of the work that we’ve done and continue to do in disaster relief assistance with Presbyterian Disaster Assistance – whose motto, after all, is “out of chaos, hope.”

And I think of God’s peace in the world when I think of the work I’ve been privileged to do over the years with the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, helping to reshape the church around the gospel of Matthew 25, and working to reduce gun violence, and supporting our Presbyterian siblings in Colombia through the accompaniment program, and so many other efforts to bring wholeness to a broken world.

And I know that there are so many other ways that we have, together, been love, light, hope, and peace in the world, and that we have witnessed to all of that and so much more over the many decades at CPC. Even now, we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses – all the saints who have gone before us, doing what they could, where they were, with what they had at hand.

None of these things are huge, and maybe they don’t even add up to much. But they are, at the very least, seeds. As Thoreau said, “though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.”

Expect wonders!

This morning, as we sing our closing hymn – For All the Saints – and we remember the witness and worshipful work of those who have gone before us, I invite you to come up to the table and take away a seed bomb. Go out and plant. Bring something beautiful into the world. “Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders!”

That’s what happens when we come to a table prepared for us – we can be filled with wonder, and sent out into the world to share it with the world. Amen.