Creekside Church Sermon of August 1, 2004 "A Bountiful Table " Luke 22:14-20	Rev. David Bibbee
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I like to eat. I believe that a person should eat what is put before them, whether they think they'll like it or not, even if just a taste. Do you remember the old Alka-Seltzer commercial with the tagline, "Try it. You'll like it."? Sometimes you don't like it, and that's okay, provided you handle it in a mannerly manner.

Shortly after coming to Crest Manor I was invited to a member's home for dinner. The vegetable was carrots. I took a heaping spoonful, thinking they were "buttered" carrots. Instead, they were orange-glazed. The glaze tasted like it had ground-up, orange-flavored children's aspirin in it. I ate all the carrots, but it required a lot of hard swallowing. The hostess said, "Well, David, I can tell by your heaping helping that you really like the carrots." I then did what any savvy pastor would have done in that situation… I lied. "Oh yes. They're delicious."

A year later I was invited back. The aroma beef roast filled the house. A lovely table was spread, and on it was a big, steaming bowl of orange-glazed carrots. "I remember how much you enjoyed the carrots the last time," the hostess said. "Oh my…. you shouldn't have." I really meant it. And God whispered in my ear, "That'll teach you."

I like to eat, and in generous portions. I love gourmet foods, but the portions are never big enough. What the menu calls a "five course meal," I call an appetizer. The entrees are so small I think they are put on the plate with tweezers. With the entrée comes five green beans stacked in a geometric design with a flower on top, a side of Peruvian potatoes as big as jellybeans, and for dessert, a tiny scoop of sorbet barely big enough to feed a bird.

When I eat a meal, I want to know I've eaten. I want to get up from the table filled and satisfied. The meal served at the table of the Lord is no exception. It is asking a lot from a morsel of bread and just enough grape juice to wet your whistle-this food and drink we consume in remembrance of him. The Lord's Supper isn't much as suppers go, nor is the Love Feast we enact every year a feast by culinary standards.

Familiarity blinds us to something profound about communion. Just a little sand was left in the hourglass. He had just enough to impress upon his disciples what the past three years were all about. Jesus had a way with words, but even he lacked the words necessary to help his slow to comprehend disciples get it.

He didn't have one last lecture about the meaning of salvation, forgiveness, or grace. There wasn't much left to SAY, but there was something to SHOW. How could Jesus possibly sum up the significance of their life together? He sat them down to a meal. He took bread and wine. He said, "This is my body. This is my blood."

So many stories of Jesus relate to food and feasting. Jesus wasn't picky about who he ate with, be they Pharisees, tax collectors, saints, or prostitutes. Jesus was accused of being a glutton and a drunkard. This accusation implies that more was served at the gatherings he attended than tea and crumpets.

Jesus fed 5,000 with a boy's lunch. He said that one day there would be a great banquet where all kinds of people, especially the world's outsiders, would be seated at a great, bountiful table extending as far as the eye could see. In his most beloved parable, he told about a restored relationship between a father and son that was celebrated with a great feast and the sounds of laughter and dancing. When his last living chance to tell the disciples what life was all about came, they ate together. In the gospel of John, the first time they met Jesus after the resurrection, he was on a beach and served them a fish breakfast.

The reformer John Calvin tried to answer the question of how Jesus was present in the Eucharist. Calvin concluded, "I would rather experience it than understand it." How DO you explain Jesus' presence in communion? We let the bread and cup do the talking. But the way many Christians take communion doesn't reflect the significance of the sacrament.

Someone said this about communion in his denomination: "I have been nurtured on a lifetime of Welch's grape-juice holy communions, having gone to the Lord's table only to find a meager stamped wafer, compressed cubes, or dried pellets. I know what it is to hunger and thirst and yet be sent away empty."

I don't know about you, but sometimes I sense that we are closer to the spirit of communion during fellowship time than we are in worship. Cookies and coffee are the body and blood. We hug. We talk. We listen. Steve DePue rings the call to Sunday school bell and no one responds. At times we realize there is no basis for us to love each other, let alone be together if not for the Bread of Life on whom we feed. Whether we've had seconds on cookies or not, there is a sense that when we are together, somehow, in ways we can't fathom, we are filled.

Open your pew Bible to Acts 2, the story of Pentecost. Where is the miracle in this story? I could point to the tongues of fire dancing over the disciple's heads, or the disciples fluently speaking in other languages as the Spirit directed. The church growing by 3,000 people in a single day. But the real deal miracle is at the end of the chapter… Day by day they attended temple…together. They broke bread in their homes…. together. They partook of food with glad and generous hearts, and praised God… together.

Picture strangers seated at the same table. People who could have cared less about each other sat down and did an extraordinarily ordinary thing. They ate… together. They didn't cluster in a corner with their own kind. They didn't get "take-out" orders so they could go home and eat alone on a TV tray and watch Jeopardy. Every day, with glad and generous hearts, they worshipped and broke bread… together, each time growing closer to Christ and each other.

Can you recall meals you have eaten which turned into communion? Whether eaten in an elegant café with linen napkins, at a party, a family reunion, in the church basement, your dining room, or around a campfire, can you recall a time you realized that something deeper was going on?

On our recent fishing trip in Canada, we picked an island where we met each day for lunch. Just ordinary food. Sandwiches, chips, cheese, pickles, cookies, cold drinks. An added treat was wild blueberries growing around us. We sat on rocks and fallen tree trunks with a carpet of moss and wildflowers beneath our feet. Eagles and pelicans flew above. We talked. We were silent, absorbing the blue skies, the cry of loons, the water, and wilderness. Good Christian friends.

"This is good," I thought. "Thank you, God-this is SO good. For creation, for life, for food, for hands that planted it, and harvested it, prepared it, and for those with whom I share it, thank you!" There was no bread or wine. We had salami and Pepsi. It was still communion because like the sacrament we are about to share, it reminded me that it has no significance apart from a relationship to Jesus.

We can use bread and wine and people in ways that only appease ourselves. The problem is, we aren't satisfied. We hunger for more-always. This is why Jesus invites us to his bountiful table.

In some churches, it is common practice after communion to give the extra bread to the children. As the bread was handed out, one boy misunderstood how the word communion was pronounced. He called it, "communyum." His mispronunciation was understandable. He heard the pastor say, "Taste and see that the Lord is good." He thought the bread was pretty good, too, which is why he called it, commun-yummmm!

A piece of bread and taste of juice isn't much, but it is good and filling. When Jesus the host, when he is Lord of our lives, we'll know exactly what he means when he says, "Eat this bread. Drink this cup. Come to me and never be hungry. Eat this bread. Drink this cup. Trust in me and you will not thirst."

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