Expanding the Table
Matthew 22: 36-40
Rev. Patrick Streeter
At my home, I have a beautiful farmhouse table that serves as our dining table. I saw it at an antique store on the parkway a few years ago. It was $300, which was above my price range at the time. I kept going back to the store in hopes that the price would drop. A few months later I walked into the store and he had dropped the price to $250. I thought I would take a shot and make an offer. I offered $200 but my offer was rejected. Over that next year I would return from time to time to the store. It sat there and dropped to $200 and then to $175. After a year, I walked back in and offered $150 and my offer was accepted.
The table has made a beautiful addition to our home and it can seat 8 people at a time. At this table, over 22 foster children have come through my home and eaten a meal at this table. This table has hosted children and youth from church. We have gathered around this table for many church committee meetings. This table has been a gathering place for my family and friends as we gather together for parties and lunches. I love this table because it is a symbol in our home that all are welcome, regardless of where you come from or who you are. We all come from different walks of life, but we find commonality around the table together.
Many of you gather together over the holidays around a table. You have place to gather together when friends and guests stop by. You have shared many meals and good conversation with friends and family. Take a moment to consider those whom you gathered with. Friends? Family? Those you shared common interests with? Those with different opinions? We live in a divisive world that is too often teaching us to stand our ground and hold true to our convictions. Maybe even seeking out the battles and arguments. I have been contemplating this idea of expanding the table. Expanding our table. What does that look like in our own lives?
Our text this morning is familiar one. It is one I love for many reasons. There are lots of ways we can get hung up on our ability to love, to show grace and mercy to one another. Let me love others Lord, but don’t let it come with too great a sacrifice. I want to love this person Lord, but they have hurt me so much. I want to seek grace and mercy in this situation Lord but I have been burned one too many times. I won’t be taken for a fool again. The command to love your neighbor as yourself cuts through every one of those excuses.
My thought for us this morning is simple. We are called to expand our table. It is very easy for us to surround ourselves with those who we like, those who we get along with or those who we share common interests. It is more difficult to reach out to those on the “other side” or to those who is is uncomfortable for us to associate with. But the command to love your neighbor as yourself is without condition.
Expanding the table requires sacrifice and a step out of comfort zone. Loving others requires us to go to difficult and uncomfortable places. Loving others sometimes requires us to take risks. To think differently, to see differently. In the fall of 2016 I began to take classes to become a licensed foster parent for Madison County DHR. Since February of 2017, I have welcomed over 22 children into my home. For some, their stay was short and for others much longer. Some have returned home to parents, some may never and some will eventually live with relatives. Doing this has been the most rewarding thing I have done in my life but also the most difficult. How do you love a child that wants to be loved but continues to push you away? How do you pick up the broken pieces of a child's life who has been shattered by years of abuse and neglect? I don’t always get it right, my five children here today will be more than happy to tell you that, but I try and I hope that they see that I try and that they are encouraged to try too. Loving is hard. Loving is difficult. But when we allow ourselves to love others there are great opportunities that lie in front of us. To expand our table requires times where we may feel uncomfortable or out of our element. It requires us to take what we have come to know and expect and turn it upside down or change it. It requires us to be open to new possibilities and ideas.
Expanding the table means that we don’t have to change our position on what we believe. What are the divisive discussions within our circles? Same sex marriage? Abortion? Immigration? Politics? We don’t have to change our political or social views to welcome others to our table. When we focus less on trying to change someone else beliefs or hardening down on our own then we open ourselves up to the opportunities to focus on something greater. We are able to put our common bond in Christ above all else. To expand our table we must put our common bond in Christ above all else.
We don’t have to change our position, but we must also not find ourselves too far in our own corner that we are unable to listen to the other side or find common ground. In our quest to be inclusive, do we become exclusive by standing too strongly in our corner? My church, Weatherly Heights Baptist Church, has a mission statement that reads, an inclusive, discovering fellowship. We have folks from all spectrums of the political, and social scale from very conservative to very liberal to many in the middle. One of the things I observe as their minister is how we all gather together as a community of believers with one common bond in Christ, even though we differ in other ways. We aren’t perfect in our quest to be inclusive, but we do strive to be better and love each other through our common bond. I notice from time to time we get too far in our own corner and that it keeps us from being inclusive. Have you ever found yourself in that position before? It’s my way or the highway. If others can’t get on board, they can be left behind. Christ’s model for us is different. He didn’t leave people behind, He met them where they were and invited them on a journey. Do you have a meeting place for people to come to your church. If they want to get on board with what you are doing, meet here? Or do you go to where people are to meet them where they are? The church must stop expecting people to come to them. We as the church must go to where the people are. It is then that we will find opportunities to be the hands and feet of Christ.
A few years ago, we went through a season of life in our church where we faced a divisive issue. When we were faced with expulsion from our local denominational association, our Pastor kept using the phrase, “Our tent is enough for others”. To this day that thought has stuck in my mind to this day. Is our tent big enough to be inclusive of all? Is our table long enough to welcome all?
To answer this question, we must answer this one: What does it look like in our own lives to expand our table.
To welcome someone regardless of their political affiliation.
To welcome someone regardless of their sexual orientation
To welcome someone regardless of their legal status
To welcome someone regardless of their race.
To welcome someone closest to us who has hurt us.
To welcome those we consider our enemies.
To do this means we must put our own positions aside, to consider the “other side”, and to welcome with a warm embrace as Christ does. We don’t have to change from republican to democrat. We don’t have to affirm same sex marriage. We can expand our table without changing what we believe about immigration and abortion. Why is it that we are quick to offer mercy and grace to a total stranger, but to those closest to us, who have hurt us deeply, they are the last to be forgiven?
Let me read our text for us one more time. Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest? He said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind”. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and prophets”. Before we seek to expand our table, we must ask ourselves, are we loving the Lord our God with all our heart? We must also ask how we love ourselves. Do we have a healthy view of how God sees and loves us?
Do you know that you are loved, chosen and wonderfully made by God? Do you really believe that in your heart of hearts? There is nothing that you can do that God will not forgive you or love you any less that God already does. How we accept and receive love directly relates to how we show love to others. So many of the children that have come through my home have been abused. Their outlook on how they love others is tainted because their experiences of how they have received loved have so badly scarred them. As we seek to love others, we must also remember that how our love is received may be difficult for that person because of their own experiences.
How big is your table? How many seats does your table hold? Is there more room at your table? Is your table inclusive and diverse? One of the books I have been reading, is by John Pavlovitz, entitled A Bigger Table: Building Messy, Authentic, and Hopeful Spiritual Community. A must read for all. Here these thoughts from John:
“One of the biggest, most damaging mistakes too many Christians so willingly make is assuming that God is as much of a judgmental jerk as we are. But what if we could make room for difference and space for disagreement in our spiritual communities? What if we could give permission for moral failure and freedom to not be certain, and the chance to gloriously fail without needing those things to become black marks against people or death-penalty offenses? What if we made space for people who are as messed up as we are?” Let’s focus on make our circle bigger, not smaller. Let’s be inclusive and not exclusive. Let us love our neighbor as we are loved by God, without condition. Let us love those different from us just as we love those closest to us. May we come to realize that there is room at our table. May we seek a diverse table that inclusive for all. May Your love for us be enough. Amen.
