Bring Them to the Table

Bring them to the Table.

A friend of ours in Indiana is a passionate advocate for the poor.  She's worked in a wide variety of volunteer and paid positions trying to make a difference.  One of the projects she worked on was a documentary titled “Leading the Way Out of Poverty.”  It followed five different families as they moved out of poverty and into self-sustenance.  The common thread among them?  Personal relationships.  They all had someone who came alongside them, encouraging them, helping them find resources, change bad habits, and get used to the benefits and demands of a new way of life.  You help the poor by talking, walking with them, by eating with them.  You “sit at table” with them.

In Matthew we read “Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's.”  Three chapters later we read Jesus commanding us to give food and drink to the hungry and thirsty, to invite the stranger, to visit the prisoner.  If God has given to us the responsibility to eat and build relationships with the hungry, the thirsty, the law-breakers and the unknown, then (as Tim reminded us a few weeks ago) we cannot hand that responsibility over to Caesar.  Caesar can demand his taxes, but he cannot revoke God's command.  The responsibility is ours to bring them to our own table.

Befriending those who lack what we have can be messy.  It is demanding, at times maddeningly frustrating, to reach out to someone who doesn't see the world the same way you do, who may be the victim of prejudice, ignorance, and social inertia that you've never seen before, or who may have brought their distressed circumstances on themselves by their own choices.  But as complex and draining as it can be, it can also be more rewarding than just about anything else.  What God calls us to, He enables us for.  The table is big enough.

I've joked before that Christianity is a food-based religion.  We connect with each other, in part, over shared meals, both in the fellowship hall and in each others' homes.  It only follows that He would call us to reach out to those who don't have enough food.  While food is a central element in the life of the Body of Christ outside this room, Christ also chose the consumption of food, this food, as the center of our regular, repeated remembrance of Him.  We would not be the Body of Christ without the Body of Christ.

What do we need to do?  Reach out to the poor, just as God commanded.  Befriend the stranger.  Bring them to your own table in your own home.  Learn what's really happening in their mind, heart, and life.  Help them share the burdens they have.  And then, because no one can live by bread alone, lead them to the Bread of Life, the One who gives us more true life than we know what to do with.  Bring them to this Table.

For this is what the Lord himself said, and I pass it on to you just as I received it. On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me."  In the same way, he took the cup of wine after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant between God and you, sealed by the shedding of my blood. Do this in remembrance of me as often as you drink it."  For every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you are announcing the Lord's death until he comes again.

[Offering meditation]
“To God what is God's; to Caesar what is Caesar's.”  This week we get a new Caesar.  Or, as The Who might say, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”  For all the talk about Hope and Change, it's still Caesar we're talking about.  He still doesn't deserve our hearts.  Jesus says “Wherever your treasure is, there your heart will also be.”  And yet, and yet, unless you're way more generous than me, Caesar gets more of your money than God does.  In a state with 9.5% sales tax, with payroll taxes, property taxes, income taxes, and only an IRS agent knows what other taxes, Caesar sets the bar pretty high.  We can't do much to change what Caesar demands of our checkbook.  So unless your heart is happier in D.C. and Nashville than it is with God and His people, I guess we have to give more to the church.