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Sermon June 17, 2007 |
A Sermon Preached at
Our Gospel this morning is one of the many Bible passages that remind us of the importance of table fellowship in Jesus’ life. It also reminds us that Jesus welcomed into this fellowship all sorts of people—including those excluded from most households. It is the sort of event from which his enemies got their principle complaint: “What sort of man is this?” they said, “He even eats with sinners!” It is the sort of event which defines us who would follow Jesus. Our hallmark as a people is our table fellowship and our radical inclusion of all people—all races, cultures, sexual orientations, ages, and any other mark of diversity you can think of. Everyone is welcome at this table. We don’t know much about God, but this we do know. God feeds us all and welcomes us all to this table.
I learned the importance of having a place at the table very early. The rectory we lived in when I was in grade school was an old-fashioned house with a breakfast nook between the kitchen and the dining room. I remember it as the center of human warmth in that house. Mealtimes tended to be chaotic at best when I was a child. Both my parents worked and you never knew exactly who was going to eat when. I remember a lot of lonely nights with TV trays. Breakfasts were worst of all—usually a bowl of cereal eaten at the kitchen counter—often standing up because there wasn’t time to sit down. But Sunday mornings were different. My dad was up early on Sundays and off to do an early service. So the household was stirring early, and there was a team effort to make breakfast. Often it was the great luxury of pancakes or waffles, but whatever it was, it wasn’t cold cereal eaten standing up. And we always, on that one day of the week, ate it in the breakfast nook when by dad came home between services. I’m not sure how it was for the adults, but I know that for me as a kid it was ideal. I was the smallest and therefore the only one who fit on the bench along the far wall of the nook. I had a place. I was fed. And there was intellectual stimulation of the sort you can only get on Sunday mornings—a discussion of the Sunday morning comics. That Sunday morning breakfast nook defined me. I knew I belonged and that I had a center from which to grow.
There probably is nothing more important that ever happens at St. Stephen’s than our own Sunday morning breakfast nook. Families with very little children gather here week after week and come to this altar rail. What happens there is important. People of all ages and all descriptions come to the same place—some move slowly with the stiffness of age, some come up on crutches, some dash up, darting by taller people. All are fed. Every person has a place at the table. The message is powerful: there is at least one place on the face of this planet in which you always belong. There is nothing you can do, no one you can be, that will exclude you. Wherever you go from here, you grow from this center: you are a child of God.
Thank God the old gender-role stereotypes are breaking down. Dads and Moms both nurture. Moms and Dads are both strong providers and role models. Some households only have Moms, others have only Dads. It makes clearer and clearer that God as parent holds us close, teaches us, nurtures us, encourages us to be strong and independent, comforts us when we’re down, and cheers for us when we need encouragement. It makes clearer and clearer that all of us in the image of God also parent in many ways. And perhaps no way of parenting is more important than this: that we are given a place to belong and a center from which to grow.
AMEN