Embrace Your Brother (Luke 15:24-32)

 

Watch it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agV4MNLLIc4

Sunday, October 25, 2020

 

            From the Bureau of Justice Statistics: one third of violent defendants, 33%, were charged with domestic violence.[i]  If 10,000 acts of violent felonies are committed in the U.S. next month, 3,333 will happen in the home.  That’s what ‘domestic’ means, people who live with each other, doing such violent things to each other, it’s a felony. 

            How many of these violent encounters end in death?  Homicide?  How many aren’t felonies by law, but are psychologically and emotionally damaging?  How can we be so rough and cruel with our own families?  Why?

            We open spaces in ourselves to welcome others.  We enter the space they open to us.   Theologian Miroslav Volf calls this ‘embrace.’ I call it living out Jesus’ most important commandments: we love the Lord our God with all heart, soul, mind, and strength; and, we love our neighbors as ourselves. 

            Jesus shows us this way of living and loving in his parable of the Prodigal Son.  A man had two sons.  The younger asked for all the property he would inherit upon his father’s death.  When his father unexpectedly granted this insensitive request, the young man left his home and life behind.  He squandered all that he had and then, when he was starving because of famine, he came crawling back, offering to serve as a worker on his father’s land. 

            Demonstrating grace and deep love, this unpredictable father ran to meet his wayward child and held a great feast to celebrate his return home.  This is embrace.  At this point, we remember the man had two sons.  The older son was not happy. 

            He was living a life of domestic violence.  It was not felonious.  He didn’t kill his brother or father.  As far as we can tell, he didn’t even bully his younger brother or disrespect his father.  He points out that all his life he has obeyed the father.  So, what wrong did the older brother do?  While managing the father’s business shrewdly, and remaining a hard-working, dutiful, he ignored his father’s top value: a relationship of mutual delight between father and son.  The older brother has attempted to kill this relationship: death by a lifetime of neglect.

            Wait!  Am I claiming that the older brother is as guilty as the younger?  The younger declared the father dead, turned his back on his identity, left home in scandalous fashion, and then squandered everything by living recklessly.  The older brother lived the right way.  He just didn’t have a close relationship with the father.  Is that as bad as the scandal?  From Jesus’ standpoint, yes, it is. 

            He imagines love much deeper than just getting along with a neighbor.  The United States and Canada get along.  North Carolina and Virginia get along.  My neighbors and I get along.  God loves us with a go-the-extra-mile, die-on-the-cross-for-you kind of love.  It’s one thing to say ‘we didn’t kill each other.’  Jesus wants to see us delight in one another.  Instead of tolerating each other, Jesus invites us to long for embracing one another. 

Is Christian living simply paying taxes, helping the poor, exercising good environmental stewardship, avoiding abortions, and waiting until you’re married to have sex?  All are Biblically-motivated decisions, but to really walk in the way of Jesus, we have to embrace each other.  This love is displayed in the father’s welcome to his lost son.  Compare the attitudes of the older brother and the attitude of the father.

Start with location.  A party was going on in the house.  The older son was out in the field.  He’s the #2 man in a family operation large enough to have servants (plural).  He should know what’s going on.  No party should start until he is present.  Yet somehow, he and his father had settled into this uneasy distance.  He was always, metaphorically out in the field.  When a party started, he was the last one to know. 

Consider priority.  Maybe this elder son had become a numbers cruncher committed to growing the business, all work and no play.  What matters more than the bottom-line?  Nothing!  If that’s who he is, how did it happen?  His father runs around hugging and kissing and throwing parties spontaneously.  How did the older brother come to see life so differently than his joyful, spontaneous, partying father?

Location; priorities; now note the pronouns.  The servant tells the older brother, “Your brother has come home.”  Having completely written this brother off, the older brother is filled with resentment.  Father’s throwing a party for this loser? The older brother stays outside, boiling with anger. 

As he did when the younger son prematurely requested his inheritances, the father again ignored his own power and position.  He appealed to his older son’s heart.  He pleaded with him to come in.  He’s the owner of the estate, but he’s begging, not commanding, but begging his son to come in. 

That’s when the older brother starts his speech.  Remember the younger brother’s speech?  “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.  I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”  As he spoke those words, his father hugged him, placed a robe on his shoulders – the best robe, and again named him: son! 

Now, the older brother gives an even longer, lamer speech.  “All these years I have worked like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so I might celebrate with my friends.  But when this son of yours comes back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!”

He told his father he had worked like a slave for him.  The father thought they were partners, his son working with him.  The son talked about obedience.  The father preferred creative collaboration.  The son griped that the father never gave him a goat for a meal with friends.  This confused the father most of all.  Gave you goat?  Son, you are always with me.  All that I have is yours.  All the way back to the beginning of the story, we remember Jesus said that when the father gave the younger son his share, he actually divided everything between both sons.  The younger would receive 1/3 of the wealth, the older, 2/3.  This older brother never needed to ask for a goat to celebrate with his friends.  All the goats were already his. You don’t have to ask for permission to use your own things. 

The pronouns and prepositions tell the story.  The father calls the younger son ‘your brother.’  The older brother refers to the younger ‘this son of yours,’ not my brother.  The older brother wants to hang out with his friends.  The father wants both sons with him.  ‘Son, you are always with me.’

However, in his mind, he was not.  In fact, the older brother was as far away from the father as the younger.  It worse though because he left emotionally, b ut stayed physically.  He left without actually leaving.  Everyday he broke his father’s heart by rejecting his father’s embrace and then holding that rejection before him. 

Deuteronomy 21:18-21 tells what should happen to a rebellious child who rejects his parents’ authority.  “The men of the town shall stone him to death.”  That was law, Torah!  The older brother wanted to enforce the rules, Moses handed down.

The father knew the rules, but he loved his sons.  He respected the rules.  God is author of justice, including punishment for violations.  God’s justice is perfect.  But he loves us.  When love and justice collide, God stays true to his own character.  Do you know the Bible verse that says, “God is justice?”  Me neither.  I know in John’s gospel and in 1 John, the Bible say “God is love.”  That’s dividing line between father and older brother, between exclusion and embrace.  Moving from location (field v. house & party) to life priorities (bottom line v. valuing people) to grammar (‘this son of yours’ v. your brother), we finally arrive at what drives us.  For the older brother it was unfeeling adherence to the rules; for the father it was love that transforms. 

The older brother thought he wanted what his younger brother got in his wild living.  He didn’t taste of the forbidden fruit, but he was resentful of what he missed by staying at home.  In truth he didn’t realize that was he missed was not the party life in the far country.  What he missed was the beauty of relationship his father offered to him every day.

In church, in God’s new order, call it the way of Jesus, or the Kingdom of God, the Father extends this kind of relationship to us, every day.  Are we living in it?  Do we accept our inheritance?  Do we, deep down, think we constantly have to earn it?  Will we accept that God has adopted us, and live as His daughters and sons?

Jesus doesn’t tell us if the older brother ever dropped his grudge and entered the party.  He wants us to finish the story.    Are you holding onto grudges, still committed to exclusion?  In Christ you are a new creation.  All God’s love is yours.  Receive it. 

The differences between us and our neighbors, need not divide us.  Stop trying to earn God’s love.  Receive it.  Then, open your arms to embrace others, and see them as you see yourself: forgiven sinners Jesus died for, people he calls you to love.  See them as your brothers and sisters in God’s family.

AMEN

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[i] https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=235

"Embraced and Named" (Luke 15:11-24)

 

watch it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9Kgg1VawWE

Sunday, October 18, 2020

 

            What’s your favorite story about Jesus?  If I just said, what’s your favorite Bible story, you might say, Noah and the Ark, or, David and Goliath, or Paul on the Damascus Road.  These are excellent stories, but for this morning, let’s narrow it down.  What’s your favorite Jesus story? If you’re watching on Facebook Live, type your favorite Jesus story into the comments.  If you’re here in person, just shout out your favorite Jesus story. 

            When I was starting out in ministry, I heard a professor of preaching say the passage from the Bible preached more than any other is Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son.  The professor did not offer data to support this claim, so I don’t know if what he said is accurate.

            I do know that the story is extremely popular, even among people who have never read the Bible.  Some might know the story and not even know it’s in the Bible.  It is!  And Miroslav Volf, the theology professor from Yale Divinity School I mentioned last week, cites the Prodigal Son in his explanation of his idea of Exclusion and Embrace.

            Volf uses the term ‘exclusion’ to encompass all the ways human beings hurt and objectify each other.  Racism; genocide; betrayal; unfaithfulness; deception; bullying; in countless we dehumanize our neighbors and ourselves.  We offend God with each injury we cause, including injuries to ourselves, because each person is made in God’s image and is loved by God.

            If ‘exclusion’ is the summation of humanity’s sin against itself and individuals’ sins against one another, ‘embrace’ is the posture of love.  Embrace is when we make space in ourselves for the other, and we simultaneously enter the space the other opens in themselves for us.  It is a literal hug; it is also more than that.  Embrace means, ‘I see you.’ ‘I care for you.’  ‘I love you’; and, ‘I receive the love and care you extend me.  In embrace, we obey what Jesus calls the greatest commandment – to love our neighbor.  In loving our neighbors, we love God. 

            Take a close look at Jesus’ story, the Prodigal son.  First, we see exclusion.

            The son requests his portion of inheritance, normally to be received upon the Father’s death.  In the ancient near east, this young man’s identity would be tied to his family; he was known by whose son he was.  “Younger brother;” that title told us part of his story.  He severed this identity, turning his back on his family. 

            A father receiving such an audacious and disrespectful request would have been in his rights to offer his son a backhanded slap.  But in Jesus’ story the father simply complies.  Where discipline might be called for, he just goes along with the younger sons’s outlandish plan.  What kind of father it this? 

            The son then earns his name, ‘prodigal.’  He goes to a distant country where he has no support system.  Sometimes people, especially during the season of young adulthood, can be a little irresponsible with money; or a lot irresponsible.  I know I was at times.  This young man spent everything.  His savings were gone when the famine hit. 

            A famine hits everyone, like a hurricane striking all residents on the coast, or a wildfire consuming all in its path, or a global pandemic with a virus anyone can catch.  This young man, with no savings and no support system wasn’t ready.  Verse 16 says no one helped him.

            We have seen, in the current crisis, the Coronavirus pandemic, the layered, devastating effects.  First of course is health and possibly even death if you contract the disease.  Second, fear of spread has closed down the economy and cost people jobs.  If someone was barely making it before they lost their job, they’d be like this young man, hungry and desperate.  A lot of people find themselves in this situation. 

            The catastrophes humans face are worsened by our tendency to cut ourselves off.  Famines were common in ancient life, something to prepare for.  And that preparation is communal.  You don’t prepare by yourself but as a part of a community.  The same is true today.  We know hurricanes hit the Gulf Coast where millions and millions of people live.  When they come, if we prepare and cooperate with one another as neighbors who care about one another, even the worst storms aren’t as bad as those we try to face on our own.  The lost son’s fall was directly tied to his cutting himself off from his foundation.

            He excluded himself from the family that gave him name, identity, and wealth.  Volf says he “un-sonned” himself. [i] If you read the genealogies in the Bible, you see people are named by who their family is.  Luke 3:23 tells us Jesus was (as was thought) the son of Joseph, son of Heli, son of Matthat,” on the genealogy goes all the way back to “Enos, son of Seth, son of Adam, son of God” (v.38).  How do we know who Joseph was?  He was the son of Heli? 

            We do it differently, but we do this too.  How do you know who I__ is?  He’s a Tennant.  And H__, what of him?  He’s a Tennant.  Who is this young woman, M__?  She’s a Tennant.  Much more could be said of each of us, but we start with a name.  The name says we are part of a family.  We belong.  The Prodigal cut himself off.  He un-sonned himself.

            Where in life have we seen this, or ourselves, done it?  Where have we been cut off, or intentionally cut ourselves off from God, friends, and family?  And having been cut-off, have you faced the desperation he faced, or desperation within your own experience?  Do you know what it’s like to take stock of your own life and feel like all is lost?  What do you do?  He remembered the character of his father.

            Jesus says he “came to himself” (v.17).  Despairing, starving, longing to eat pig slop – the refuse humans reject and feed to animals who will literally eat anything, he remembered.  My father.  My father’s heart is so big, his servants eat and live well.  Embarrassing as it will be, serving there will be better than dying here.

            In his mind, he’s still excluded.  He remembers his father, but only now will he understand the depth of grace, the fullness of embrace.   He thought his name, ‘son’ was done.  He had ‘un-sonned’ himself.  But, with the true father, we don’t choose our name.  We don’t tell God who we are.  He tells us who we are.

            Think about someone you know who is deeply wounded.  It might be you, or someone close to you, or someone you’ve observed.  Maybe the injury is the person’s own fault.  The injury results from a series of mistakes that beget more mistakes.  Maybe the injury is something that happened to the person.  He’s a victim of terrible acts.  Most of time, it’s a combination.  The longer he has lived as one injured, lived in a far country away from support with savings gone and disasters piling up, the harder it is to remember.  ‘Broken,’ becomes his name, ‘lost’ his identity. 

This is why hurt people cause so much pain and why it is so hard to come back.  It’s a failure of memory.  We forget who tells who we are.  We forget our names: ‘son;’ ‘daughter;’ ‘beloved.’

What happened when he went back?  While he was still far off, the father who never accepted exclusion and never believed his son was completely lost, saw him.  He saw him because he never stopped looking.  He saw him and ran to him and then the literal embrace enveloped the one not worthy of it. 

Give me inheritance; you are dead to me.  Embrace!

I am no longer worthy to be called your son.  Embrace!

No longer worthy?  It was never a question of worthiness.  The day we look into the loving eyes of Jesus, the Holy Spirit awakening our hearts, we are called ‘son’ and ‘daughter’ not for our worthiness but out of God’s grace and love. 

“He ran and put his arms around him and kissed him” (v.20).  As the Father is pouring his love onto the son, the prodigal is stumbling through his lame exclusion speech.  The father doesn’t even acknowledge the young man’s words.  “Quickly, bring out a robe – the best one!  Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.  Kill the fatted calf.  We must celebrate.” 

It’s not that the father ignore the son so much as they are telling and living two different stories.  The father determines his story of embrace is the one that will win out.  The son, ‘un-sonned,’ comes with a story of a desperate man willing to live as a servant, even a slave, but the father reconstructs his identity. 

Do actions speak louder than words?  The son is delivering his prepared remarks.  The father is weeping, hugging, kissing, robing, instructing, and celebrating.  The identity he gave that this son rejected, is still there, given again, with even more love and passion.

As we walk through Jesus’ well-known story and see what embrace looks like, I have to ask.  Have you experienced embrace?  It’s as wonderful as Jesus depicts it.

Do you need to experience it?  Do you need Jesus to reconstruct your identity?  Do you need help remembering that you are loved?  You are made in the image of God?  You are a blessed child of God.  There’s no country so far that God will stop looking, ready to run to you kissing, hugging, robing, celebrating, and naming. 

Bask in the joy, remembering a time you received God’s embrace.

Or, are you hurting, and in that far country?  Turn to God now, confessing your sins with bare naked honesty; turn into the arms of the loving God.

Or, you’re walking with God, you know your name, but you also see into the world.  With patience and an abundance of grace, help a lost soul find her way to the arms of the father.

Jesus began the parable saying, “There was a man who had two sons.”  We will look at the older brother as we continue learning about embrace next week.

AMEN

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[i] M.Volf (2019), Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation: Revised and Update, Abingdon Press (Nashville), p.164.

"The Posture of Embrace" (Mark 10:32-45)

 

Sunday, October 11, 2020

watch it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym4Bstl_aMo  

 

            The truth is I want to be great.  I want to be seen as great what I do, a person of exemplary character, a great man.  This is very important, and I really want it to be important to you too.  I want my exaltation, the recognition of my greatness to be your top priority so that you’ll be working nonstop to promote my greatness. 

            How does that sound?  If I were sitting where you are and heard a preacher spew such self-serving nonsense, I’d turn off the livestream or maybe walk out of the building.  It’s self-promotion on steroids, the very opposite of what Jesus says makes a person great.  We see pastors, politicians, and people in other arenas talk themselves up.  Has anyone ready Mark chapter 10?  To promote one’s self and seek one’s own glory is the opposite of what Jesus says makes a person great.  Do we want to go in the exact opposite direction of Jesus?

            As Hillside Church, we follow Jesus, love others, and share hope.  The following and the loving parts demand that we reject promoting ourselves and instead seek to give of ourselves and even give sacrificially to serve people.

            In Mark 10, Jesus told the disciples something they could not hear.  “We are going to Jerusalem and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again” (10:33-34). 

            Immediately after hearing Jesus say this, the brothers James and John, say, “Teacher … grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory” (10:35, 37).  They blindly skip right over the mocking, spitting, flogging, and killing Jesus has just described.  As if he never said it and it will never happen, they jump right to glory.   Three crosses?  They see three thrones, James, Jesus, and John. 

            The other 10 disciples get angry at the request from Zebedee’s sons.  I get angry at it too.  Every time I read this, I am appalled.  I imagine approaching these guys in Heaven someday and asking, “James!  John!  What were you thinking?” 

            The idea of sitting thrones on either side of Jesus is exclusionary.  If James and John get those seats next to Jesus, no one else does.  They’re fine with that.  Jesus predicts his death for all people, his giving of himself for everyone.  These two seek what they can get for themselves at the expense of everyone else.   Jesus wants to share himself with the world; they want to keep him to themselves, to keep him from everyone else. 

            Jesus sees their folly, and he sees the misplaced anger in the other ten disciples – and in me.  My self-righteous fury at James and John masks something ugly.  I’d want one of those seats next to Jesus.  I want to be his right-hand man and I’d want everyone to see it.  Hey!  There’s Rob and he’s so important, Jesus needs him right there, close. 

            Jesus speaks to his disciples and to us, his church.  “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant.”  The one who shovels the snow, delivers the food to the sick, eats last, comes in early and stays late, and never once seeks recognition.  “Whoever wishes to be first,” Jesus says, “must be slave of all.”  That word, ‘slave,’ is loaded and dangerous in the tension-packed black/white world of America.  Yet that’s the word Jesus says.  Whoever wishes to be first must be so committed to serving his brothers and sisters and fellow humans, he slaves away at it.

            In his book Exclusion and Embrace, Yale theologian Miroslav Volf, a Croatian who saw his home country endure one of the worst wars of the 1990’s explores the dynamic of self-giving Jesus teaches in Mark 10.  Serbians who are Orthodox Christian, Croatians who are Catholic, and Bosnians who are Muslim were the groups that fought the ethnic, religious war in the former Yugoslavia.  The powerful Serbians committed genocide against their countrymen.  In that environment of seething hate, Volf, following, Jesus, developed his imagery of embrace.

            The request of James and John was an exercise in exclusion.  They wanted to be close to the victorious, glorified Jesus who sat on a king’s throne.  They wanted no part of suffering. Turn to Mark 14 and read of Jesus’ arrest at Gethsemane.  Verse 50 tells us all his disciples fled.  James and John wanted thrones for themselves, but they left Jesus to deal with the trouble himself.  When what he predicted would happen actually happened, they weren’t ready because they hadn’t been listening.  They wanted to be close to Jesus, but they bailed out when the going got tough. 

We’re just as guilty any time we seek our advance at the expense of others.  We are James and John asking for our own thrones.  When we turn a deaf ear to the cries of the hungry and a cold shoulder to those who have suffered injustice, we become the excluders. 

Volf uses ‘embrace’ as a metaphor for the serving, self-sacrificing love Jesus demonstrates and expects from his followers.[i]   Clearly, we miss literal hugs in this season of worldwide pandemic that requires that we socially distance.  However, following his prompts, we can adopt the emotional posture of embrace in the way we relate to others.  We can show relational hospitality to our neighbors.

First, we open the arms.  This is a gesture of reaching for the other in a way that express desire for the other’s presence and closeness.  “Open arms are a sign that I have created space in myself for the other to come in” (p.144).  And, I enter the space the other has created for me.  Jesus did this with fishermen, tax collectors, and revolutionaries.  He did it with respectable council members like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea.  And he made space for the lowest of people. 

In the next passage, after this talk about service, he is walking toward Jericho when he meets blind Bartimaeus who loudly, desperately calls out to him.  The crowd sternly tells the poor beggar to “hush” (10:48)!  Stop bothering Jesus!  But Jesus steps to the poor man in a posture of embrace.  He’s going to Jerusalem to die for the sins of the world, but that doesn’t mean he can’t stop his journey to show God’s love to a blind man.  He restores his sight.

The second movement of embrace is waiting.  I am standing here, arms wide open, and at that point, in self-giving service, I must wait for the other’s reaction.  This is not an invasion.  We cannot force the other to receive the love we offer.  This is where embrace feels risky.  Maybe we get rejected.  So crushing!  But, we step out with our arms open, and then we wait.  We do this again and again, no matter how many rejections come because our self-giving is not dependent upon the other’s reaction.  Completing the embrace is dependent on the other.  Adopting a posture of embrace is not.  We open our arms because we follow Jesus, the one who died on the cross for us.  He has made space for us and we want to live like him.

Third is the closing of the arms.  Our gesture of embrace has been received and we have received the neighbor’s gesture of open arms.  Volf writes that in a true embrace, a host is a guest, and a guest is a host.  If everyone in Jesus’ circle did what he said when he was chiding the 12 for their self-promotion, the love would overflow, and all needs would be met with extravagant abundance.  “Whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave to all,” Jesus said.  When everyone stands ready to embrace, everyone is welcomed, and everyone is held, then all are included, served, and loved.  We give of ourselves and receive the other.

Finally, the fourth step is opening the arms again; release.  The embrace is entered voluntarily.  The embrace is given and received.  In the embrace the other becomes a part of me and I of him or her, but I do not lose myself.  She does not lose herself.  Our joining does not obliterate our individuality or negate all the ways we are different. When we let go, our arms are still open, ready for another embrace and ready to embrace additional people. 

Christ models this posture when he goes to the cross.  Hanging there, he shows he wants us.  He wants us – he wants me – with him so badly, he’ll die for it.  He’ll die for you.  He’ll die for me.

The Holy Spirit, dwells in us, prompting in us God thoughts and God longings.  We choose to follow Christ, the Holy Spirit takes us residence us, and when we live in active, attentive responsiveness to the Spirit within us, we are constantly ready to give ourselves for the sake of others.  We are always ready for embrace. 

You and I – we’re no better than James or John were when they asked that terrible question about sitting next to Jesus’ throne.  If we follow the shameful path these disciples trod abandoning Jesus, we see the horror of crucifixion.  We have to look, but we don’t stay there.  We move to the new day of resurrection.  James and John did not remain set in that self-aggrandizing posture.  From their master, the crucified, risen Lord Jesus, they learned to serve.   They became ready to embrace.

We can learn that too.  We look to Jesus.  We open our hearts to the Spirit.  We decide we will be the servants Jesus describes.  And then we open our arms to one another, and then, to the hurting people of the world God puts in our path.  We serve them because we know Jesus has died that we might have life.

AMEN

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[i] Volf, M. (2019), Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation: Revised and Updated, Abingdon Press (Nashville), p.143-146.

"Everybody Drink" (Matthew 26:26-39)

 

October 4, 2020

 Watch here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0DPHMCqOq8

            I hate the sound of silence at the dinner table.  Several people sit together, but the only sounds are the clinking of silverware and the crunching of croutons and lettuce.  No one talks.  In this tension-filled quiet, you can hear someone’ gulping throat as they swallow their drink.  Much more pleasant is the loud intimacy of us chatting as we eat.  We talk, maybe about important things, maybe about nothing.  Either way, the meal is sacred time we share with one another. 

            “Drink with me.”  It could be a coke, a coffee, a beer; “with me” is the important part.  “I want you with me.”

            “While they were eating,” we read in Matthew 26.  The “we” is Jesus and the 12 disciples.  Having stayed with Matthew for 26 chapters, we know something important is coming.  Jesus has spent three years showing that the Kingdom of God is breaking into this present reality. 

            At the end of Matthew’s Gospel, in chapter 28, the resurrected Jesus instructs the disciples he has trained to go to all nations.  Last week, we stressed, from John 3:16, that God loves the world; that’s all people.  Now, we see, as Matthew closes, Jesus send his hand-picked disciples to all nations. 

            In this supper, where he breaks bread, “while they were eating,” he indicates what the disciples will do when they go to the nations.  They will grow communities of disciples.  Across the globe, they will multiply what Jesus has built because God so loves the world.

            He broke the bread and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.”  They could see him, the bread in his hands.  They weren’t eating his actual body.  He did not say he would turn himself into bread which they would eat.  Yet, somehow in future meals, when they ate bread, they would remember that he lived in them and they in Him. 

            A mystery, to be sure; these disciples would always be individuals made in the image of God.  Yet in Christ, they and we become one.  We talk about dying to self, dying in sin, being born again, becoming new creations; we pray that others would see Christ in us.  Eating that bread, we remember.  We are a part of Christ.  We affirm that He is in us and we are in him. 

            Next, he pours that dark red wine.  He calls it his blood, and he mentions covenant and forgiveness.  God made covenants with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, and David.  Each covenant affirms that God is the Lord and that humans are invited into relationship with God; God is master, Lord, Father, Savior; we are sons and daughters, forgiven and redeemed, new creations. 

            Jesus’ blood, the “blood of the covenant” as he calls it, is “poured out for the forgiveness of sins.”  To sin means to miss the mark.  When we sin, we reject God as Lord of our lives.  We put ourselves in God’s place.  We declare ourselves to be masters of our own destiny.  We hurt others because we see our own desires as more important than another’s wellbeing.  Sin takes countless forms, but generally speaking our sins can be categorized.  In some way, we violate one of the 10 commandments.  When we sin, we fail to love God and love neighbor.  It is a disruption in relationship. 

Forgiveness acknowledges that the relationship has been disrupted, but the acts of disruption, the sins, will no longer be held against us.  Forgiveness means relationship has been restored.  Our sins no longer count against us and community is possible once again.

Jesus then makes the point that the promised harmony is eternal.  “I tell you, I will never again drink of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s Kingdom” (26:29).  They watch him die on the cross, remember his words, and all seems lost.  But then, he comes to them, resurrected, and breaks bread with them, and drinks wine with them.  The risen Lord is with them in a tangible body, takes in food, and touches them.  His resurrection is the sign!  The eternal kingdom is inevitable and imminent. 

The promised unity of “while they were eating;” the removal of sin and restoration of relationship; the new era where death is defeated; it all comes to this.   Jesus dies out of faithfulness to God and our of love for us.  He is raised in the power of God.  And we know we can count on him.  What he promised will come to pass.  We will eat and drink with Him in the Kingdom.  He says to us, “I want you with me.”

Take another look at verse 27.  Jesus says, “Drink from it all of you.”  We hold these words from the Bible in our hands and in our hearts.  “All of you” meant the disciples.  “All of you” includes the people the disciples would meet when they went out into the world.  They made disciples who in turn passed the faith on to the next generation and then the next, continuing on down to us.  “All of you” includes all of us and all the people who will come to faith in Jesus through our witness.

The Lord’s table summarizes the entirety of the Gospel and encapsulates the narrative of salvation, yours and mine.  The Lord’s table is an instrument of unity.  Every person sins, causing a rip in the relationship with God and with neighbor.  The Lord’s table holds the promise of forgiveness and new life.  The Lord’s table is open to everyone.  “Drink from it all of you.”  Humanity comes together in Jesus. 

I don’t know if you watched the presidential debate this past Tuesday.  I don’t know if you read the reporting or commentary following the debate.  One conclusion I take from it is an image of a hard, unmovable line drawn right down the middle of America, and you have to fall on one side or the other.  You have to be red or blue.  Moreover, you have to demonize those opposite you.  This hard line dictates that we hate all those not on our side.

The air we Americans breathe fills us with tension and anxiety.  We’re set on edge, pushed into conflict.  Nothing could be further from Jesus’ command to love our neighbor than the current political climate in America.  We’re defined by what we’re against.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ offers another way of seeing and another way of living.  We are invited to take our seat at the Lord’s table and to love whomever sits down next to us.  Whoever it is, we have the freedom to say to that person, “I want you here with me.  Drink with me.”  There’s no enmity at this table; that which disrupts relationship – sin – has been forgiven.  Jesus said so.  There’s no exclusion at this table.  God so loved the world.  Drink from it all of you.  All are made in God’s image, all are welcomed, and all are loved. 

At this table, it’s not my job to judge anyone else.  It’s not for me to even judge myself.   We come to the table receiving from God.  We sit as forgiven sinners among forgiven sinners, and we are invited to love those on our left and right.  I believe Jesus offers the solution to every human problem, relief for every struggle.  More specifically, I believe a dangerous threat faces America right now: political polarization.  It is tearing us apart.  Jesus brings us back together.  Jesus unites us.  The only thing Jesus destroys is death.

“While they were eating;” you are invited to the Lord’s table.  “Drink from it, all of you.”  You are invited into the covenant, to be the people of God, sons and daughters of God living in relationships of peace and good will with God and with your neighbor; your Asian neighbor and Arabic neighbor, black and white; Latinx and Native American; red and blue. 

When the anxiety and tension of our times start to engulf you like choking smoke, and you feel your heart tremble and your courage fail, remember.  You are God’s child.  God’s got you.  God’s makes you new.  Our Lord Jesus tells us who we are.  He wants us at his table.  He says to us, “Drink with me, sit, laugh, talk.  I want you.”

We know God wins.  So, have hope and good cheer.  At this table, you have a place and nothing gets in the way of peace.

AMEN