The
Welcome Table
Text: Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
(Gary W. Charles, Cove Presbyterian Church, Covesville, VA,
9-4-2016)
Anne Lamott begins one of her essays with this
statement: “On my forty-ninth birthday, I decided that all of life was
hopeless, and I would eat myself to death.”[1]
When I first read Anne’s statement, I was struck by the image of eating myself
to death. As someone who loves to eat but cannot eat sugar, I have a vivid
image of what it would look like to eat myself to death. It would involve a
trip to dessert heaven in Little Italy in NYC., where I would consume lots of
pie, chocolate, coconut, cherry, apple, along with carrot cakes and German
Chocolate cakes, extra-large milkshakes of numerous flavors, custards, puddings,
along with a wide variety of exotic desserts found only in this tiny pastry
shop.
“I decided all of life was hopeless, and I
would eat myself to death.” Anne, of course, was using her unique, often
irreverent, humor to talk about something that is anything but funny. What do
we do when despair creeps into our bones or grief just will not go home? What
do we do when we are absolutely certain that we are alone in this world, surrounded
by people who wish we were not here or who never notice we are? What do we do
when the only thing that is clear is that all life is hopeless?
I have no idea what led the psalmist to compose
Psalm 139, but I am as thankful for this psalm as any in the Psalter. To anyone
who has ever battled or is battling despair and trying to climb out of the deep
well of grief, who is convinced that no one understands them, no one knows
them, no one cares if they live or they die, the psalmist sings: “O LORD, you
have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and rise up; you
discern my thoughts from far away.”
As a child and a teen, I found this psalm
creepy. It felt like God was being portrayed as the head of some secret
wiretapping organization and I ended up feeling guilty whenever my thoughts
strayed toward girls or skipping school, and well the list goes one.
As an adult, I find few psalms more comforting.
Eat enough of this psalm and it is the best antidote to the toxicity of despair
and the soul-numbing power of grief. It is a way out and a way forward for any
of us who decide, along with Anne, that that all of life is hopeless.
This table is set for all of us, but in
particular, it is set to lead to just the opposite conclusion than the one that
Anne reached on her forty-ninth birthday. This table is set for all who want to
eat themselves to life; who want to taste the promise of the psalmist, “O LORD,
you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and rise up.”
This table cannot be reserved for select,
exclusive parties. It will never be my table or yours or Cove’s. At this table,
the risen Christ is host, a host who invites us to meet the God who searches
out our paths and is acquainted with all our ways, whether we were raised Roman
Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, one of the countless denominations of Protestant,
or none of the above. At this table, we meet the God who searches us out, knows
us by name, and will not leave us to choke on the death-dealing fare of despair
or the life diminishing grub of grief.
Years ago I worked in migrant ministry for the
Virginia Council of Churches on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. When I went to
the fields, I would often hear these day laborers singing a song that was new
to me at the time. Even though picking vegetables all day, these migrants were chronically
hungry because they had little to live on and they were systematically cheated
of their limited funds by unscrupulous crew chiefs. Even when they could scrape
together enough change to walk across the street and buy a soda at the local
Stuckey’s, they encountered a handwritten sign prominently posted in the
window: “Migrants Not Welcome.”
The song that these migrant workers taught me in
the fields was actually a favorite freedom song of the Civil Rights Movement.
It sings: “We’re gonna sit at the Welcome Table. We’re gonna sit at the Welcome
Table one of these days, Hallelujah! No more hunger ‘round that table . . . all
God’s children ‘round that Table. We’re gonna sit at the Welcome Table one of
these days.”
Though denied welcome
everywhere from Woolworth’s to the voting booth,
these migrants sang about a table that no one could deny
them welcome, because it
belongs to the Lord of life who welcomes and does not deny
access. You and I are
about to sit at that Welcome Table.
This is the Welcome Table
where our host invites us to eat ourselves to life.
This table has no place set for despair and is just the
right meal to assuage our grief. It
is the table where the psalmist’s song is always playing: “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness
shall cover me, and the light around me become night’, even
the darkness is not dark
to you; the night is as bright as day, for darkness is as
light to you.” At this Welcome
Table, we taste the truth of the psalmist’s song that it
simply is never true that life is
hopeless, even when we find ourselves in the darkest and
most miry place.
None of the Gospel writers say, but I can imagine that
when Jesus sat down at
the original Welcome Table on that darkest of all nights, when betrayal was
guised as
a kiss, justice sprinted out of the city, and the sky went black, that he
sang the
psalmist’s song. And, later, when he kneeled in the Garden of Gethsemane to
pray
and walked the long path to Golgotha, he kept singing that song.
At this Welcome Table, we meet a God who not
only searches us out, but who
searches out every despairing soul on earth, even those like Judas, who gave
birth to despair. At this table, by God’s plentiful grace, you and I eat
ourselves to life, so that we can become the life-giving people of God’s
justice and mercy and love in a world too often choking on despair.
At this Welcome Table, we feast on the promise
that our God does not abandon us, even when we are feeling the most abandoned. We
eat the psalmist’s promise: “If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my
bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at
the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your
right hand shall hold me fast.”
So, come
to this Welcome Table singing the psalmist’s song. And, if you happen to be in
a place where you simply cannot sing, come anyway; we will sing for you.
Come to the Welcome Table and eat yourself to
life!
AMEN
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