Text used – 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

• Let me ask you a question this morning: How would you tell a story without words? 
  • Images → e.g. – graphic novels
  • Music → e.g. – symphony (think The Magic Flute)
  • Actions → e.g.s – games (charades) and more communicative actions like American Sign Language
  • Other sounds → [PLAY E.G.]

• • Or think about the silent films of the late 19^th and early 20^th → used a combination of actions, facial expressions, costumes, and props but almost no words (save for a few well-placed placards) to tell stories that spanned everything from the simple to the elaborate
  • I was thinking a lot about telling stories without words this week as I was thinking about our Scripture passage because in essence, that’s exactly what it is: a call to tell your faith story … without words.
• Context – 1 Thess
  • One of the letters scholars are nearly 100% certain was actually written by Paul
  • Letter that speaks not to problems the Thess church is experiencing because of challenges from within (members behaving badly) but challenges from without
    • Scholar: Both 1 and 2 Thessalonians are powerful witnesses to the early church’s struggles with the suffering of its members. The Thessalonian letters make it clear that separation from leaders, alienation from former friends, and perennial threats of persecution and even death were [felt across a wide swath of the early church].[1]
  • City of Thessalonike
    • Part of the Roman empire
    • Key trading center in the region = commercial and cultural center
      • Port city located on a bay that led into the Aegean Sea
      • Located on the border of Macedonia and Achaia
      • City included lots of different cultic practitioners of the day
        • Various Macedonian cults (Cabirus and Dionysus)
        • Foreign cults (Egyptians pantheon among others)
        • Roman imperial cult (lifted up emperor as deity) → potent mixture of politics and religion
          • Scholar: It is not difficult to understand why some Thessalonians (those not accepting Paul’s teachings) would castigate Paul’s salvific assembly, which viewed Jesus (not Augustus) as the benefactor and inaugurator of a new age. In the eyes of the Thessalonians, support for Jesus weakened support for the Romans, who had brought tangible benefits to the city. It is important to note, moreover, that criticism of the Pauline believers would have been severely hostile because most Gentiles vehemently opposed Christianity’s exclusivistic claims on hits adherents’ lives.[2] → You see, the Christians were devoted solely to God and to one another above all else … not to the prevailing cult-of-the-moment, not to the city leadership or their fellow citizens, not to the emperor. And this divided loyalty was seen as an unwelcome, even threatening chink in the armor of the Roman empire. So those who were part of the Christian community in Thessalonike suffered ridicule, threats, and persecution.
• So now understanding the backstory better, let’s turn to today’s text – Paul’s opening to his first letter to those Christians in Thessalonike.
  • Begins with Paul’s regular greeting
    • Names himself and those with him at the time (Silvanus and Timothy, in this case)
    • Names his recipients
    • Words of greeting (“grace and peace”)
    • Paul’s expression of gratitude: We always thank God for all of you when we mention you constantly in our prayers. This is because we remember your work that comes from faith, your effort that comes from love, and your perseverance that comes from hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of God our Father.[3] → Before we start talking about non-verbal faith, let’s talk about these words for a minute. I want you imagine with me (close your eyes if you want to) what our world would be like if we greeted one another with a greeting like that on the regular – a greeting that not only affirms that we thank God for whomever we’re greeting but then goes on to name the things we appreciate about that person.
      • Imagine the goodwill that would spread
      • Imagine the bridges that would be built
      • Imagine the days that would be brightened
      • Imagine the lives that would be lifted up
      • And would it really be so hard? In the checkout line at Target to say, “You know what? I thank God for you, Glenn, because you always greet me with a smile, and you remember me, and you take the time out of your day to acknowledge me.” Hmmm. Life goals, I think … to greet people like Paul did.
    • Also need to point out that in Paul’s greeting, we already get an inkling to the suffering that the Thessalonian Christians are undergoing
      • Our transl: We always thank God because we remember “your effort that comes from love” → Gr. “effort” = word that encompasses trouble, difficulty, toil → Paul isn’t trying to whitewash anything or minimize the Thessalonians’ struggle. He’s naming it right off the bat. It’s a part of their faith journey – a crucial, inescapable, unignorable part – and Paul names it. Essentially, he’s saying, “I see you.” You know, often Paul gets a bad rap … and while it’s not entirely unearned (Paul has lots of challenging words, lots of challenging grammatical ministrations, and lots of fallible humanness that he’s wrapped up in), I like this letter to the Thessalonians because it’s one of the moments we get to see the pastoral side of Paul – the compassionate, encouraging side of Paul.
  • Moves from there into the body of the letter → And this is where the “story without words” part comes in. Everything that Paul is talking about is faith enacted, not necessarily faith voiced.
    • Paul’s own words: Brothers and sisters, you are loved by God, and we know that he has chosen you. We know this because our good news didn’t come to you just in speech but also with power and the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction.[4]
    • Paul speaks of his own enacted example: You know as well as we do what kind of people we were when we were with you, which was for your sake.[5]
    • Paul speaks of the enacted faith of the Thessalonian Christians
      • “You became imitators of us and of the Lord …”[6]
      • “You became an example to all believer in Macedonia and Achaia.”[7]
      • Speaks of the welcome others have received from the Thessalonian Christians and “how [they] turned to God from idols”[8]
      • One of Paul’s highest accolades: As a result, you are serving the living and true God, and you are waiting for his Son from heaven.[9]
      • All of these things that Paul is talking about are actions. They’re ways that the Thessalonian Christians were living their faith out loud.
        • Favorite line in this whole passage: The message about the Lord rang out from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia but in every place. The news about your faithfulness to God has spread so that we don’t even need to mention it.[10]
        • I want you to hear this portion of the text from Eugene Peterson’s translation known as The Message: Do you know that all over the provinces of both Macedonia and Achaia believers look up to you? The word has gotten around. Your lives are echoing the Master’s Word, not only in the provinces but all over the place. The news of your faith in God is out. We don’t even have to say anything anymore—you’re the message! People come up and tell us how you received us with open arms, how you deserted the dead idols of your old life so you could embrace and serve God, the true God.[11] → “Your lives are echoing the Master’s Word … you’re the message!” To Paul, faith is about more than just talking the talk. It’s about walking the walk. It’s about putting feet and hands and a heart and a life on the faith that lives inside your heart.
• We’ve spent a good amount of time talking about testimony in this congregation. We spent Lent a few years ago preparing our own faith stories with preparatory prayers and prompting questions, with dedicated notebooks and time in worship to ponder the various chapters of our faith stories. And we practice putting our faith into words every Sunday morning with both our Glimpses of God time at the beginning of the service and our Exploring the Word Together time after the sermon. But the truth is words can only go so far. Our faith should be about more than just words.
  • Think about your relationships with the people closes to you (family, friends, even coworkers sometimes) → relationships full of …
    • Small, meaningful gestures (story of Darrin/“honey, what’s this?”)

• • • Glances that say more than your words can 
    • Actions that have meant to world to one of you (or maybe both of you) → actions/images that didn’t even require words
    • Sign that I held up when Peter got off the plane at Camp Douglas after his deployment = just an enlarged image of Calvin and Hobbes hugging (no words)
    • If the relationships that fill up our lives and our hearts are built on more than just words, why should our relationship with the God who created us and loves us, the God-With-Us who took on the cumbersome and inadequate nature of human flesh just to put actual flesh and blood and actions on that Amazing Love, the God who continues to move in and through humanity despite our imperfections and our brokenness … why should our relationship with God be relegated to just words?
  • Francis of Assisi: “Preach the gospel at all times and if necessary, use words.”
  • Late and incredibly influential American author Octavia Butler: “All you touch, you change, and all you change changes you.” → Sort of sounds like Paul’s words, doesn’t it? “The message of the Lord rang out from you” … “All you touch, you change, and all you change changes you.” So the ultimate question, friends, is what does your life say about your faith? Not your words. Your Your actions. Your movements. Your priorities. Does the message of the Lord ring out from your life?
    • Leads right into our “Exploring the Word” question this morning: What’s one thing you can change that lets God’s good news ring out through your life?

[1] Abraham Smith, “The First Letter to the Thessalonians: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary series, vol. 11. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000), 673.

[2] Ibid, 677-8.

[3] 1 Thess 1:2-3.

[4] 1 Thess 1:4-5a.

[5] 1 Thess 1:5b.

[6] 1 Thess 1:6.

[7] 1 Thess 1:7.

[8] 1 Thess 1:9a.

[9] 1 Thess 1:9b-10a.

[10] 1 Thess 1:8 (emphasis added).

[11] 1 Thess 1:7-9 (The Message).

Text used – Isaiah 5:1-7

• Maybe you can tell me what these species have in common: garlic mustard … common carp … zebra mussels … common buckthorn … Asian beetles … poison hemlock … Oriental bittersweet … wild parsnip … emerald ash borer. [PAUSE] They’re all invasive species that have made their home here in Minnesota.
  • Definition of an invasive species (from the National Invasive Species Information Center, part of the USDA)[1]: a species that is:
    • Non-native (or alien) to the ecosystem under consideration and,
    • Whose introduction causes or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health
      • Certainly seen the effects of that harm ourselves → multiple ash trees that we recently had to take down because of emerald ash borers
      • My kids can tell you all about the dangers of wild parsnip as they’ve been thoroughly and dutifully warned about it by my in-laws’ before they head out to adventure in the woods around their property in WI. → just brushing against the plant (let alone breaking the stem) releases sap à sap + sunlight = severe burn within 24-48 hrs. → sensitivity to sunlight for exposed/affected skin can last for years
    • If you spend time in any of Minnesota’s state parks, you’ll find information about identifying invasive species and how to let the MN DNR know what particular invasive species you found and where you found it.
• Invasive species = one of the major issues propelling the effort of reclaiming prairieland across the U.S. → Through our own human intervention – fueled by greed, apathy, entitlement, and hubris – we have become our own invasive species, damaging and even obliterating lands and waterways and all the species that God created specifically for those particular parts of creation. Only in the past few decades have people really begun to recognize just how crucial reclaiming natural habitats like the prairies of the upper Midwest is and will continue to be to the health of our world and everything that lives on it … ourselves included.
  • May sound odd, but I hear the idea of reclaiming natural space in our Scripture reading this morning → So as we dig into it more, I want you to keep that idea of reclaiming space for what God intended in your mind.
• First, an admission: This is a daunting When I was doing my sermon planning a few months ago and I read the passages for today, at first, I discounted this one right off the bat.
  • Way that I plan sermons: RCL = 6 different passages designated for each Sunday → I read through each passage in turn, maybe take a few notes on each, then decide which passage to choose
    • First Testament passages = always first on the list → So for this Sunday, this Isaiah passage was the first one I read, and my initial thought was, “Now how in the heck would I preach that?” But the more I sat with the passages for the day, the more I felt drawn to this one. That being said, I want to acknowledge straight out of the gate that this is not an easy passage. On the other hand, if God didn’t want us to wrestle with hard things, they wouldn’t be a part of the Bible. So onward we go.
• Context reminder: Is = prophet during the Babylonian exile
  • Isaiah himself = part of the exiled population → those forcibly removed from their homeland in Judah and taken on a roughly 900-mi. journey across deserts, rivers, and even mountains (Zagros and Elburz Mountains in modern-day Iran) to a land and a culture and a life completely foreign to them
    • So Isaiah is delivering these words to a people who have been utterly devastated. They’ve been through the pain and trauma of being conquered by an invading army. They’ve been marched away from everything sacred and familiar to them. They’ve had to leave not only familiarity but even sometimes family And they’re just trying to make it in a wholly new and overwhelmingly unknown.
• And yet into this chaos of uncertainty and undesired circumstances, Isaiah speaks these words from God – words about a vineyard tended and cared for … a vineyard that goes horribly wrong.
  • Begins in a way that seems to speak to goodness and care: loved one putting vast amounts of time and effort into creating this vineyard
    • Found not just any parcel of land but a “fertile hillside” = perfect environment for growing grape vines
    • Dug out the land (pre-rototillers, all, so this was no small feat!) and cleared away all the stones → making the already fertile soil even more perfect for nurturing plants
    • Planted “excellent vines” → Heb. indicates the choicest species
    • Also provided for the safety/production of the vineyard
      • Built a tower (watchtower)
      • Dug out a wine vat
      • (Presumably) built a stone wall around the vineyard
    • What Scripture doesn’t indicate = time! – from presentation from the Univ. of California Cooperative Extension “Establishing a Vineyard”[2]:
      • No crop production the first few years, not until Year 4 or 5
      • At least another year is required to produce the first vintage
      • And that’s with modern technology and understandings of how to maximize growth and yields and whatnot! At least 5-6 years before you even begin to see any kind of production from the vineyard. So if our Scripture this morning said the vineyard grew nothing but “rotten grapes,” those plants had to have taken the time to grow and begin producing before the owner even realized just how tragic his situation was.
  • Tell-tale line in the middle of today’s text sheds light on what Is is really talking about: So now, you who live in Jerusalem, you people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard: What more was there to do for my vineyard that I haven’t done for it? When I expected it to grow good grapes, why did it grow rotten grapes?[3] → Remember that these are God’s words conveyed through Isaiah to the people … the exiled people of Jerusalem and Judah. God is speaking to those recently removed from those very places.
    • Now we need to remember what was happening in Judah just before Babylonian exile
      • Kings of Judah had become corrupt and even evil
        • Violent
        • Greedy
        • Most egregious: they had turned not only their own hearts and their own households away from God and to the worship of other gods à they drew the worship of the nation away from God and to those other, pagan gods as well → Through the account of Scripture itself, we know that there is not a single commandment of the 10 that God gave Moses generations earlier that the kings of Judah had not broken.
      • So through Isaiah and through this parable of the carefully, lovingly-attended vineyard gone awry, God is saying to the people, “I cared for you. I worked for you. I tended you and laid down preparations for your best life. And yet despite my best efforts, you have become rotten grapes.
        • Heb. “rotten grapes” = wild, sour, unripe grapes à another transl. = “worthless ones”
• And here is where the reclaiming of the natural space comes in: Now let me tell you what I’m doing to my vineyard. I’m removing its hedge, so it will be destroyed. I’m breaking down its walls, so it will be trampled. I’ll turn it into a ruin; it won’t be pruned or hoed, and thorns and thistles will grow up. I will command the clouds not to rain on it.[4] → Now as a girl who grew up on a farm and spent plenty of my summertime walking beans – putting my own blood, sweat, and tears (literally) into eradicating the fields of those horrible, pernicious, insidious weeds – this sounds awful! “It won’t be pruned or hoed, and thorns and thistles will grow up.” Every farmer and gardener’s nightmare! But if we shift our perspective for a moment, we might actually find both admonition and hope in this.
  • What God isn’t saying
    • The land will be salted so nothing can grow → no mention of that fertile land being damaged to prevent future cultivation
    • The land will be wiped from the face of the earth
    • The land will be taken over by another vigneron (vineyard owner/farmer) can grow crop there instead
    • Even after all that they have put God through, God is refusing to abandon the people! God isn’t calling them hopeless or a lost cause or a mistake. God isn’t even giving them up to the false gods to which they had been led. True, they may not be a vineyard, but there is natural reclaiming that needs to happen in this space – a dramatic return to the way that God intended for the land to be, a dramatic return to the way that God intended for the people to be.
      • Scholar: The truth is clear: the Holy One who planted the vineyard “looked for justice but saw bloodshed; for righteousness but heard cries of distress” (verse 7). This truth-telling is the fulcrum upon which transformation rests. These truths may be hard to hear, yet set the foundation for the flourishing of all. Naming how things really are, not sugar-coating it or pretending maybe things are ok, is necessary. Glossing over reality does not transform it but simply covers it up, making it unavailable for transformation. The vineyard owner is clear-eyed and unapologetic about speaking the truth. Truth-telling is the first, hard, powerful step toward change. But this truth is really hard to hear! We much prefer to be the ones speaking truth to power, power that is elsewhere. But what happens when we are the power? When God speaks truth to power and that power is us?[5]
• You see, in order for that reclaiming to happen, the wall has to come down – the wall that has been built around the vineyard to protect it has to come down. And in the world of the Church, we have built a lot. of. walls. Around ourselves. Within ourselves. Cutting ourselves off from the world around us and from one another. But those walls haven’t kept us safe. They’ve kept us isolated. They’ve kept others out, not to the benefit of the Church but to its utter and undeniable detriment.
  • Virtual Synod mtg. this past week → educational piece from Dr. Corey Schlosser-Hall, Deputy Executive Director for Vision, Innovation and Rebuilding at the Presbyterian Mission Agency
    • Corey’s story about going back to Univ. of Oregon campus
      • Hayward Field → MASSIVE change: bigger, more accessible, able to accommodate more events and better serve both the athletes and the public
      • Koinonia Center → MASSIVE change: bigger, more accessible, included housing (filling a deep need within campus community)
      • Local Presbyterian church in Eugene, OR → no change
    • Discussion of change asked 3 difficult but essential questions in the life of the Church (all on a 1-10 scale):
      • When you think about the next 10 years, do you think things will mostly stay the same and go on as normal? Or do you expect that most of us will dramatically rethink and reinvent how we do things?
      • When you think about how the world and your life will change over the next ten years, are you mostly worried or mostly optimistic?
      • How much influence do you feel you personally have in shaping how the world and your life change over the next 10 years?
        • My addition: the church
  • Reclaiming the prairie can be (and unfortunately is) looked at by some as a destruction, as a backsliding, as the opposite of innovation. But would it really be so terrible to stop preventing the land from returning to its natural state – the way in which God created it to be? As the Church, are we protecting a legacy that has been handed down to us … or are we in fact preventing the wild, diverse, breathtaking, unbounded flourishing of the Holy Spirit in our midst? Amen.

[1] https://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/what-are-invasive-species.

[2] https://ucanr.edu/sites/sdviticulture/files/281943.pdf.

[3] Is 5:3-4.

[4] Is 5:5-6.

[5] Amy G. Oden. “Commentary on Isaiah 5:1-7” from Working Preacher, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-27/commentary-on-isaiah-51-7-11.

Text used – 1 Corinthians 11:17-26

• We believe that Christ’s work of reconciliation is made manifest in the church as the community of believers who have been reconciled with God and with one another; [we believe] that unity is, therefore, both a gift and an obligation for the church of Jesus Christ; that through the working of God’s Spirit it is a binding force, yet simultaneously a reality which much be earnestly pursued and sought: one which the people of God much continually be built up to attain; [we believe] that this unity must become visible so that the world may believe that separation, enmity and hatred between people and groups is sin which Christ has already conquered, and accordingly that anything which threatens this unity may have no place in the church and must be resisted; [we believe] that this unity of the people of God must be manifested and be active a variety of ways: in that we love one another; that we experience, practice and pursue community with one another; that we are obligated to give ourselves willingly and joyfully to be of benefit and blessing to one another; that we share one faith, have one calling, are of one soul and one mind; have one God and Father, are filled with one Spirit, are baptized with one baptism, eat of one bread and drink of one cup, confess one name, are obedient to one Lord, work for one cause, and share one hope; together come to know the height and the breadth and the depth of the love of Christ; together are built up to the stature of Christ, to have new humanity.[1] → This is a portion of the Belhar Confession.
  • About Belhar
    • Document that was penned through the Dutch Reformed Mission Church in South Africa in the early 1980s
    • Response to the sin and Gospel distortion that was apartheid
    • From intro to Confession of Belhar in our Book of Confessions: How should the church respond when sin disrupts the church’s unity, creates division among the children of God, and constructs unjust systems that steal life from God’s creation? … Apartheid formed a racially stratified society. Those with the lightest skin tones were offered the greatest protection and opportunity. Non-“white” persons were separated into three categories; each skin tone step away from the “white” category represented a decrease in governmental protections and opportunities. Racial separation was established by law and enforced through violence. Nonwhite citizens lived with constant and intrusive police presence and interference in the daily functions of life. Those who protested risked punishment, imprisonment, and even death.[2]
    • Belhar = adopted as a confession of the PC(USA) in 2016 by the General Assembly “because it believed the clarity of Belhar’s witness to unity, reconciliation, and justice might help the PC(USA) speak and act with similar clarity at a time when it faces division, racism, and injustice.”[3] → And yet here we are 7 years later … dealing with more “division, racism, and injustice” than we did when we adopted Belhar … dealing with more division, racism, and injustice than we have in decades, at least on an out-in-the-open scale … dealing with more division, racism, and injustice not only on the streets and out in the wider world but even spewing from pulpits who declare words of hate and separation and even violence and call them the word of God. And yet here we are. And it’s World Communion Sunday … a day for the whole world to celebrate coming together at God’s table in unity, in peace, in Christian love and forgiveness and acceptance. [PAUSE]
• There are a lot of different texts that I could have chosen today – lots of beautiful descriptions that intertwine faith and breaking bread and encounters with God and Jesus sprinkled throughout the whole Bible. But I picked this one for today because I feel like as the Church … as siblings in Christ … and human together, we are in a tough spot.
  • Today’s Scripture = reminder/reassurance that the Church has always been imperfect – Paul to Corinthian church: Now I don’t praise you as I give the following instruction because when you meet together, it does more harm than good. First of all, when you meet together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and I partly believe it.[4] → Never one to mince words, Paul is characteristically frank here.
    • Wants to make sure Corinthians understand he’s not praising them
    • Wants to make sure the Corinthians understand they’re doing more harm than good
      • Gr. is particularly striking here → Paul’s exact wording = Corinthians gatherings are inferior
    • Wants to make sure Corinthians understand that he can believe these rumors about interior divisions that have reached him
  • Goes on to detail these divisions: When you get together in one place, it isn’t to eat the Lord’s meal. Each of you goes ahead and eats a private meal. One person goes hungry while another is drunk. Don’t you have houses to eat and drink it? Or do you look down on God’s churches and humiliate those who have nothing? What can I say to you? Will I praise you? No, I don’t praise you in this.[5]
    • Scholar sheds some light on this situation: One finds an indication that wealth and its associated status played a part in some of the struggles between Corinthian believers. … only wealthy persons had homes and staff large enough to host the church and provide for its celebration of the Lord’s supper; and only the wealthy could arrive at the dinners early enough to eat the best food and get drunk before the other, less fortunate ones would arrive. … The Corinthians who are abusing the Lord’s supper have minimized or lost the basic Pauline sense that the life of faith is a life of community. The abusers have privatized their faith and their worship in a way that Paul finds totally unacceptable; they have lost any sense that love as the right relation to others is the proper and necessary expression of their faith as the right relation to God.[6] → Considering the church gatherings that Paul had experienced back in Acts – “All the believers were united and shared everything. They would sell pieces of property and possessions and distribute the proceeds to everyone who needed them.”[7] – we can understand Paul’s apparent sense of both disbelief and disgust at the behavior of the Corinthians. “What can I say to you? Will I praise you? No, I don’t praise you in this!”
• And I have to ask, friends: Are we so different today? Have we come such a long way from that long-ago Corinthian church? Or are we stuck in the same cycle 2000 years later?
  • Christian pastor, author, speaker, and modern-day prophet John Pavlovitz lays it out pretty clearly in A Bigger Table: Building Messy, Authentic, and Hopeful Spiritual Community: We’ve lived so long in an Internet culture of drive-by analysis that we’ve forgotten that this isn’t normal, that our faith demands a deeper investment of time, of ourselves. We never even make it to the table with many people because we’ve evaluated and judged them from a mile away. As a result, local churches so often become segregated, conditional communities of life-minded culture-warring Christians who believe they have God on their side. These faith communities rarely operate as one big table, just a series of smaller ones. Despite all our talk of a gospel for everyone, despite our effusive language about diversity and inclusion and grace for all – we ultimately just want to know what people think about gays or guns or maybe hell, and we either align ourselves with or distance ourselves from them depending on their answer. In this way, theology becomes an easy, efficient barrier between ourselves and those we believe to be less enlightened than we are. Our believe system becomes a wall.[8]
    • Brings to mind the ancient allegorical story known as the Parable of the Spoons
      • Attributed to Rabbi Haim of Romshishok (Lithuanian village)
      • First, the rabbi travelled to Hell and saw a terrible sight. There were rows and rows of tables piled high with food and sat near to them were rows of starving, emaciated people trying to eat. The people were all strapped to their benches too far from the food to reach it, but with a spoon long enough to scoop some up. This didn’t help them to feed themselves though, because the long spoons and their strappings meant they could not get the food they had picked up near their mouths. The poor souls were doomed to forever sit looking at heaps of delicious food, able to pick it up, but never able to eat it. Next, the rabbi travelled to Heaven and was surprised to see a scene almost identical but with one important difference. The rows of food-laden tables were the same, as were the people and the long spoons. However, where in Hell there had been sadness and starvation, here in Heaven there was joy and satisfaction. One long party. He realized why this was when he watched one of the occupants of the benches reach to the tables with his spoon, pick up some food and navigate it to the mouth of a person near him, rather than his own. She then reciprocated. This mutual satisfaction was happening everywhere in Heaven and it was this that separated it from Hell.[9]
  • Paul reiterates the important part of the gathering at the end of today’s Scripture reading – portion that we hear every time we gather together around that table: I received a tradition from the Lord, which I also handed on to you: on the night on which he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread. After giving thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this to remember me.” He did the same thing with the cup, after they had eaten, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Every time you drink it, do this to remember me.” Every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you broadcast the death of the Lord until he comes.[10] → The importance is in the coming together – in the setting aside of all the things that are supposed to pull us apart … in actively, intentionally, even forcefully putting those dividing elements away – turning our backs on them – to turn our faces toward one another. We gather together not because we find ourselves to be worthy but because, at this table, through these simple elements of bread and wine/juice, God makes us worthy.
    • Not because of who we are
    • Not because of what we’ve done
    • Not because of anything that we bring with us
    • Not because we’ve said or learned or done or been the right thing
    • Book of Order: The Lord’s Supper enacts and seals what the Word proclaims: God’s sustaining grace offered to all people. The Lord’s Supper is at once God’s gift of grace, God’s means of grace, and God’s call to respond to that grace. Through the Lord’s Supper, Jesus Christ nourishes us in righteousness, faithfulness, and discipleship. Through the Lord’s Supper, the Holy Spirit renews the Church in its identity and sends the Church to mission in the world. … The opportunity to eat and drink with Christ is not a right bestowed upon the worthy, but a privilege given to the undeserving who come in faith, repentance, and love. All who come to the table are offered the bread and cup, regardless of their age or understanding.[11]
      • Rachel Held Evans: 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. → Thanks be to God. Amen.

[1] From the “Confession of Belhar, September 1986” from The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA), Part 1: Book of Confessions. (Louisville: The Office of the General Assembly, 2016), 10.3.

[2] Ibid, 300.

[3] Ibid.

[4] 1 Cor 11:17-18.

[5] 1 Cor 11:20-22.

[6] J. Paul Sampley. “The First Letter to the Corinthians: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 10. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002), 777, 934.

[7] Acts 2:44-45.

[8] John Pavlovitz. A Bigger Table: Building Messy, Authentic, and Hopeful Spiritual Community. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017), 113-114.

[9] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/story-long-spoons-lessons-mutual-support-hard-times-jamie-smith.

[10] 1 Cor 11:23-26

[11] From The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA), Part 2: Book of Order. (Louisville: The Office of the General Assembly, 2019), W-3.0409.