Reaching Across the Table

1 Kings 19:11-13

Luke 9:10-17

When I was a kid, my folks tried to teach me manners. Two of them were “Don't put your elbows on the table” and “Don't reach across the table. Ask for what you need.” I've been struggling to remember them ever since. Hence the title of this sermon.

I'd like to tell you a story about Heaven and Hell. This guy dies and St. Peter takes him around to look in on Heaven and Hell so he can decide where he wants to spend all eternity. First they open the door on Hell. There is this great banquet table with all this heavenly food on it, and all these people sitting on either side of the table. But they are all desperate and starving. They can see the food. They can smell the food. They can touch the food. But they don't have elbows. So they can't eat the food, no matter how hard they try. And try they do, for all eternity. Then St. Peter closes the door on Hell, goes next door, and opens the door on Heaven.

Here is the same set up: this huge banquet table covered with the same heavenly food. There are all these people on either side of the table who don't have elbows either. But they are having a wonderful time. What's the difference? In Heaven, of course, they are reaching across the table and feeding each other.

God is found in relationship: “Where two or more of you are gathered in my name, I am there in your midst.” (Matthew 18: 19-20) Now let's go with St. Peter back over to Hell again to see a surprising transformation. Looking in, we see this guy, Slim, who has been trying to feed himself for all eternity. After an eternity of trying, he comes to the miserable conclusion that he's never going to be able to feed himself, no matter how hard he tries. So he stops trying and settled back into quiet despair. Having stopped exhausting himself by trying so hard, Slim has enough energy left over to become aware of this woman across the table from him. Sally has been striving to feed herself for all eternity as well. Slim notices that Sally looks just as hungry as he feels. He thinks to himself, “I may be miserable and will always be miserable, but I guess I could give Sally a bite. Then at least somebody will be feeling better.”

So Slim breaks with tradition, reaches across the table, and gives Sally some food. Sally is taken totally by surprise, since she has never been given anything before. Suddenly, for no reason that she can understand, she is enjoying a bite of Mary Emma Johnson's delicious super-chocolate layer cake. Sally looks across the table and sees that the surprise had come from this guy sitting across from her. She might go on trying to feed just herself, but her reality has been forever changed. Someone else has entered her lonely world, modeling a radically new way of being. Sally responds to Slim's gift by reaching across the table in return, and gives Slim a bite of Irena McCormick's string beans with country ham.

Well, Slim is taken totally surprise as well. Here, he's been trying to feed himself all this time and never has gotten anywhere. And this one time that he gives food away, he suddenly gets fed wonderful food. It doesn't make sense to him, but he can see it works. So he gives Sally another bite and she returns the favor again. Their eyes meet in mutual understanding and miraculously, in that instant, they find themselves transferred to the banquet in heaven.

What did it take for them to make the change? They had to put their own self-serving efforts and desires on hold, in order to consider someone else's needs and make the effort to reach across the table to meet those needs. Suddenly there was room for God to stop by in unexpected places.

Now I'd like to tell you about something that happened to me a few years back. In the fall of 1968, while John McCain was in the Hanoi Hilton being tortured by the Vietcong, I was hitchhiking across the country from California to Williamsburg to start my final year of college. The little commune I had been hanging out with in Arcata, California had passed the hat and collected $6 to get me back across the country. So I'd said a prayer and stuck out my thumb. The country was even more polarized then than it is now: soldiers, cops and the government on one side; Blacks, hippies, and college kids on the other. I'd been tear gassed and called names at protest marches against the war, but otherwise, hadn't been personally impacted by the conflict.

By the time I got to Wheeling, West Virginia, the $6 was long gone, I was tired and dirty, and hadn't eaten in two days. I wasn't a prepossessing sight and rides were hard to come by. Evening was coming on when a beat up '56 Chevy pulls over. I gratefully open the door, and see a military style haircut. I hesitate...and get in.

The angel is in the form of a former marine, Vietnam vet, off-duty cop. I give him my patter about getting back to college and he tells me he's heading to Virginia to deal with a car accident he'd been in. He doesn't comment on the dirt, longhair, beaded necklace, or tie-dyed Tshirt I'm wearing. But after a while, he gives me a poem to read that he'd written while serving in Vietnam. The poem is about how hard it was to be out there with his buddies fighting for their country, while back at home others like me were pushing against what he and his friends were risking their lives for.

As the evening wears on, he gets us a place to stay for the night. Unasked, he buys me a huge cheeseburger with everything on it. He didn't change my opinion of the war, but he sure changed my opinion of the men fighting it. He'd reached across the table to me. How could I not respond? Suddenly, there was room for God to stop by in unexpected places.

Christ made a habit of reaching across the table when he saw people in need. There is the story of the Samaritan woman shunned by the Jews. Christ breaks the silence by asking her for water and then offers her spiritual living water in return. He reaches across the table when, as evening fell, he gave thanks for the little food he had and offered it to 5000 people who had come for his help. How could they not respond to his example? All were fed, with food left over. God had stopped by in unexpected places.

We reach across the table here at Cove Church too. I think about the food bank, onions, Habitat for Humanity volunteers, Ixtatan, Building Goodness, Reynosa mission trips, wine, church flowers and homemade communion bread. Tommy's incredible, freely given knowledge about the workings of any appliance you have ever encountered. John's free book, The Tumor; after church socials, newsletters, Rachel's poems: Everyone contributes somehow. It is quite a banquet! It seems to me, God stops by frequently. But then, I sort of expect that here.

To add a practical edge to this sermon, since Christ said our job here is to love God with our heart, mind, and strength and our neighbor as ourselves, I thought I'd share a simple gift any of us can offer to open healing connections with any lonely or suffering person that we may encounter, or to open connections with God for that matter. Often people try to connect with others by asking them questions.

Unfortunately, questions often make people feel uncomfortable and on the spot, so hurting people may just say “Everything is fine.” and hope we will quit probing. Instead of asking questions, we can connect more effectively if we make a special kind of guess. This guess is a tentative statement that contains two parts: The first part is a name for a feeling or emotion that we think the person might be carrying. The second part is to offer a logical reason recognizing why the person might be feeling that way. Then we wait and listen.

When we offer those two aspects of their internal experience, it makes it easy for people to respond either in agreement with us or, if they think we are mistaken, to correct us. In either case, we then have additional information with which to connect. So we can repeat the strategy and begin to create in the person a sense of being heard and cared for. Even though this may not fix the problem, at least we can share their burden.

I saw someone use the skill to warm up a grumpy intake woman at the hospital during the ice storm last week. The person waiting next to me said to her, “You must be tired. I bet you've been here all night.” He had named her feeling: tired, and a reason: perhaps the woman had been up all night. The intake woman responded, “No, but I did have to get up at 4 AM to get here. The guy managed to squeeze a smile out of her before we left. God had stopped by and left the woman an unexpected little blessing

It occurs to me we may be able to use the same strategy to reach across the table in our love for God. 

I've noticed God expresses a lot of emotions in the Bible: anger, love, satisfaction, frustration, patience, faith, pain, suffering, and forgiveness. So, as an experiment, we might try using the same communication skill in our quiet time with God and see what happens.

So, rather than asking God questions, or telling God what we want, or just sitting there and hoping that God will somehow get through our usual preoccupations, instead, we might try telling God what we think he is pleased about concerning our lives and why he might be feeling that way. Then wait and listen for God's quiet reply.

If we are brave, we might also try telling God how we think he might be disappointed in our efforts, and why - and what might bring an improvement. And then, again, listen for His still small voice. God just might stop by for you.

A similar metaphor to “reaching across the table” is “priming the pump.” In both cases, we Christians are asked to give first. To “cast our bread upon the waters.” Our reward comes later. When I was a kid there were neighbors on the farm who didn't have running water. Instead there was a pump out back with a pipe descending down a well to their drinking water. But when you pumped the handle up-and-down nothing whatever would come out of the spigot. The pump had a stiff old leather washer inside that wouldn't hold enough suction to pull the water up from 15 feet below. 

First you had to prime the pump. They kept a Mason jar full of water handy which you would pour into the top of the pump before you started pumping. The wet leather would then create a good seal and up cold fresh water would come. There is this little song about priming a pump written by Billy Ed Wheeler called “Desert Pete”. The Kingston Trio made a hit of it on the Folk Song circuit back in 1963. I suspect not all of you remember it, so I thought I would end on that note for our final Hymn.

It's just about some thirsty guy who encounters an unlikely water pump in the middle of the desert, with some instructions on how to work the thing. He follows them and gets a nice drink. The song doesn't sound especially religious. But then, God stops by in unexpected places. The chorus for the song is in your bulletin and I hope you will sing along. That primes my pump. Like anything else, the more you put into something, the more will return to you.

And the people said: Amen

preached February 28 by Walter Mehring III