A Crowded Table

Sermon

Every so often I look at our dining room table and let out a big sigh. I do not think it will ever get cleaned off. It’s the place where we eat most of our meals. It’s also the biggest horizontal space in the house, so the mail and the newspaper and backpacks and stuff get put there. Usually the centerpiece is a cribbage board, as Gregg and I are locked in tight race for who is ahead by the most games so far this year. I would tell you, but I don’t want Gregg to feel bad about himself.

Sometimes our tables are filled with joy or love, and sometimes we have our worst fights at the table, or worse, sometimes our tables are filled with people and silence.

The gospel writer Luke was big on the image of the table, so it’s no wonder the gospel crescendos with the appearance and recognition of the risen Jesus at a table. There is much to be said about this story we call the road to Emmaus, but for today, I want us to get to that table again.

For reasons I can and cannot articulate, this is one of my favorite stories in the Bible. For fans of literature, it has a touch of magical realism—the extraordinary and unexpected breaking into the normalness of everyday life. As we talked about the scripture in our staff meeting, somebody said they love this trickster, jokester Jesus who can walk through walls and disguise himself and then say, “Boo!” to his disciples.

In some ways, the story is grounded in reality, at least in terms of its emotional depth. It’s been three days since Jesus died. These two followers of Jesus, Cleopas and the other guy, are described as standing and looking sad. The stranger we know to be Jesus asks them why, and they have to relive the trauma all over again. They have to remember. They grieve as they tell the story.

Maybe it’s no wonder they don’t recognize Jesus. Maybe they have dust in their eyes from walking those seven miles on a dusty road from Jerusalem to Emmaus. Maybe they have tears in their eyes. Or maybe they’re looking ahead and not at the person who has joined them.

They walk and they talk about unjust events and unmet hopes. They make their way to a village for the night, presumably to eat and rest. And this stranger—unknown to them but well known to us—stays with them. They have been walking and talking for hours, but it’s not until Jesus breaks the bread that they finally realize who he is.

New Testament scholar Eric Barreto invites us to see the table ministry described throughout Luke’s gospel as a way of understanding and living out a call to belonging. He says the stories of people sitting at table with Jesus and breaking bread with him aren’t so much prescriptive—this is how we offer godly hospitality—but as visionary of what belonging to the community might look like.

About the moment of the disciples’ recognition of Jesus in the Emmaus story, Barreto writes, “…they recognize Jesus at the very moment he does that which most characterizes his life and ministry: he breaks bread and shares it with his friends (vv.30-31). Notice that it is not Jesus’ voice, his face, or even his teaching that sparks their memory and clarifies their vision. Instead, it is the [every day] activity of breaking bread. This narrative conclusion suggests that this kind of eating activity is the very embodiment of everything Jesus did and taught in the Gospel. Eating is not just an activity of taking in nutrition; eating is an act of belonging that embodies a radical trust in God and one another.”

“The table is not just a place to eat but a symbolic center of belonging. Who is invited? Who is excluded? The table in Luke is a welcoming space where stranger and familiar alike seek sustenance from God, and sometimes recognize the Son of God in their midst. At Jesus’s table, food is abundant; there is more than enough for everyone. At Jesus’s table, there is always one more spot for another guest.” (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0020964317749544; “A Gospel on the Move: Practice, Proclamation, and Place in Luke-Acts” by Eric D. Barreto)

What is your table like? Or maybe a better question is this: what do you dream of your table looking like? I don’t mean what kind of wood or glass it’s made of or what kind of linens or silverware or dishware you use. When you dream of your perfect table, a table that reflects not so much your goals or your idea of success but a table that reflects your faith, what does it look like?

I am now going to do something every preaching professor tells you not to do, which is to take a hard turn and introduce another image. But I will work to get us back to the table.

It’s taken me a while, but I have finally become a member of the Louise Penny fan club. I am on book number thirteen of her Inspector Gamache/Three Pines mystery novels and I am totally hooked. In the last book I finished, I was introduced to the practice of orienteering. As a character in the novel explains, orienteering, “…is like a scavenger hunt. But instead of written clues and puzzles to solve, we have a compass and a map. Certain spots are marked and we have to get to them as fast as we can. We call them controls. …What makes it fun is that the fastest way between the controls isn’t always the shortest. We have to figure out the best route.” (The Great Reckoning, p. 213)

What if this story of meeting Jesus on the road to Emmaus is like an orienteering map for us as we live out our faith? The compass, the thing that orients no matter where we are, is love. And then the elements of the story form a sort of map.

On that map we find the reality of what our hearts are carrying—in this case, grief and disappointment and despair. The map of this story includes a road, a way to get from one place to another, a way to leave the place of trauma and go somewhere else. The friendship of the two disciples is on the map, as is conversation, communication.

Teaching is on the map, remembering the faith, interpreting the law and prophets. Hospitality is all over the map—in the disciples’ welcome of the stranger to walk with them, in the invitation to join them for supper, and in Jesus assuming the role of host as he picks up the bread. And in this story, the finish line, the end, the destination, is the table, the place where their eyes were opened and they recognized him.

Earlier I asked you what you dream of your table looking like. I’d love for you to carry that question with you this week, but since I asked the question and have had time to think about it, I’ll share with you what I’m thinking.

Being a pastor, I think theologically all the time, sometimes to the point of ridiculousness. Really. I can turn anything into a sermon. (It won’t be very good, but that’s beside the point.) So when I dream of my table—our table—I use the map of the story of the road to Emmaus as a guide.

I dream that our table can hold all the things in our heart—grief and despair and joy and hope. The table will help us get from one place—a place of sadness or loneliness or anger—to a better, calmer, happier place. I dream of friendship and conversation at the table.

Because my faith informs the dream of my table, I need to learn again and again the teachings of my faith tradition. And hospitality will infuse every single detail at my table.

There’s a great song by the country group The Highwomen, and the first line of refrain is “I want a house with a crowded table.” I want a crowded table. I want mismatched chairs. I want room for everyone. Of course the food will be good—maybe not elegant, but good, and conversation will flow and there will be laughter.

But there’s one more thing about this table. Eric Barreto talks about our tables having an empty chair—not because someone isn’t there, but because we live out the idea that there is always room for one more, even at our crowded table. We might remember the image from our Jewish kin’s Passover Seder, where there is an empty chair for Elijah, just in case.

At church, we have a literal table. In our Presbyterian tradition, we call it a table and not an altar, but that’s an entirely different sermon. We have this table where we put bread and juice for our sacred meal, and it is good.

This morning I invite you to think of the whole church as a table, though not necessarily a physical table or a place you can find on a map. What would it mean for Westminster to have a crowded table, a place for everyone?

Our table would be big enough to hold whatever is in people’s hearts—the unspeakable traumas, the inarticulate prayers, the hopes and dreams, the mistakes, the sin. Big enough for all of that.

We get to our table by practicing friendship, and learning, and by admitting that we want to walk away from those things that cause harm and move to a place of healing. And we practice such hospitality at our table.

Some of us practice hospitality by wearing our nametags. I know that sounds either silly or opportunistic, but really, it’s wonderful to call someone by name and to be called by name.

Some practice hospitality by going out of their way to sit in with someone alone in their pew, or by striking up a conversation with someone standing there looking lost during fellowship time.

Some practice hospitality by making food for another, by praying for another, by inviting another to something—a hike or a concert or a book group.

Some practice hospitality by working hard for justice so that those without a home, or those in danger of losing their home, can have a home—and maybe even a table where they break bread with others.

In the past few weeks we have heard too many stories of people going to the wrong place and getting shot. It’s fear of the stranger writ large, and the antidote to that is hospitality. It’s hard, to want a crowded table, to leave an empty chair. Fear tells us that the wrong kind of person, a dangerous stranger, might show up. Love tells us that by inviting the stranger, we might welcome angels, or even the Christ himself.

I want a church with a crowded table. Don’t you?