Together at Table

Tenth after Pentecost - Year A

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the thoughts and actions of all our hearts and minds be acceptable to you, O God and may they tell of you. Amen.

If I were to summarise the accessibility of today’s scripture readings, I would have to say that two of them - the first and last are very easily grasped, offering a picture to the mind’s eye of the message that the writer wished to convey. Meanwhile, as is often the case with Paul’s writings, the middle passage is quite a bit more obscure. You might think, then, given a choice between two beautifully descriptive readings and one that is hard to understand, that a good summertime choice would be one of the easier ones. It appears however, that the muse, which in my mind is just another way of describing the Holy Spirit had other things in mind.

Of course, as is always the case, you cannot take the context away. There are reasons to choose the passage from Romans as the text for today, but before I am completely done with the other two, let me just say a few words about them.

Both the reading from Genesis and the reading from Matthew’s gospel, as I mentioned are wonderfully descriptive. Each of them offers an easily visualised portrait of what was happening and what we should take from them. First the dream of Jacob and the image of a stairway to heaven, and the way in which the dream impressed itself on Jacob such that he ended up setting up a memorial of the nighttime vision which reminded him of the presence of God. We can imagine that this was a message much needed by Jacob as he reflected on his own recent history of deceit which had resulted for him in a type of banishment, as directed by his father Isaac. In fact, the dream and resulting devotion of Jacob could easily be interpreted as the result of his own reflection on past events, resulting in a recommitment to follow God’s way. More about that in a moment.

The gospel passage, notwithstanding Matthew’s need to give us an explanation, also paints a pretty clear picture - as is usually the case with Jesus’ parables. In fact, the very point of the parables was to clarify - using imagery and examples from everyday life to teach a lesson. Having said that, I will also say that there is an enigmatic aspect to most of the parables. In one sense they are very clear, but in another sense they leave lots of room for interpretation - which of course makes Matthew’s need to explain the parable even more annoying, for in so doing he removes some of the possibility for taking several different levels of meaning from this farming story about weeds and wheat together. It’s kind of a curious fact that a parable unexplained has more meaning than it does when there is an explanation.

However, as I said, the spirit was calling me to use the Romans passage today. Paul’s purpose in this part of his letter to the Romans is to paint a hopeful picture for the members of the Christian community in Rome. They are a relatively young community of faith, no doubt beset by issues that come up with the birth of any new movement and also probably growing a bit anxious as they awaited the coming of Jesus again. This expected coming of Jesus is a regular theme in Paul’s writings - and was thus a likely important element of early Christian communities. They were convinced that Jesus was to come again in their time. As time went on however and the expected coming didn’t happen, we can see how Paul’s writing about it changed. In his later writings, the expected and real second coming of Jesus changes into something a bit more ephemeral. Perhaps the second coming won’t be as physical and imminent as they first thought. Perhaps it might take longer, or perhaps it might not come in quite the way they imagined. What they thought would be a physical revisiting might come in the form of a spiritual awakening or understanding.

Well, you probably know that there are some branches of the Christian family that are still waiting for that second coming in almost the same way that the early Christian communities were expecting it. Others have come to discern it in the second, more spiritual way of understanding.

I would count myself among the second group. Christ is with us and among us in much the same way that God is described in our psalm reading today. Christ is here now and yet to come. Using Paul’s own imagery of the body of Christ - we know that we are all called to be the Christ together - each of us with our own parts to play, each of us with our own skills and abilities. Christ is also with us in the sacraments which we celebrate today. Baptism is a marking of the presence of God and Christ in the life of Corwin - a presence that has been there since his birth, a presence that will continue as he grows in size and years, a presence which he has been invited to explore as part of a community of faith. I mentioned a few moments ago that Jacob’s dream might be understood from Jacob’s perspective as a reminder to him to recommit his life as a follower of God’s way. It is entirely possible that Jacob reflecting on recent events in his life was dealing with some remorse with regard to his actions. Perhaps the directive from his father to seek a wife in another land had given him some time to think about all that he had done. I can certainly see how some of that might have resulted in the kind of dream that Jacob had.

Baptism is like that. For everyone involved, congregation and parents alike, it is a time for recommitment to live in God’s way. It is a reminder of who and whose we are.

And just in case we needed further reminder - God has also invited us to share a meal at table. The physical and the spiritual are joined together in this community feast. Our bodies and our spirits are nourished when we gather at table together. We find strength not only for ourselves, but also as a community of God’s people, as the body of Christ in this place.

There’s an ancient communion liturgy from the Didache which brings to mind the parable of weeds and wheat that we heard today. A paraphrase of it goes like this: As the grain once scattered in the fields and the grapes once dispersed on the hillside are now reunited on this table in bread and wine, so, Holy God, may your whole Church soon be gathered together from the corners of the earth as a community of your people.

May it be so, O God, let it be so. Amen.