“A Family Table”

A Communion Meditation Preached by

The Rev. Jean Niven Lenk

First Congregational Church of Stoughton

United Church of Christ

A number of years ago, I was leafing through a furniture catalog I had received – unsolicited – in the mail.  I wasn’t in the market to buy anything, but was just whiling away a few rare idle moments. 

And then I saw it, right there on the page, staring back at me in beautiful, living color – the most gorgeous kitchen table I had ever laid eyes on.  Now, I am not one to get excited about furniture, or anything else in the way of “stuff” – unless, of course, it’s shoes.  But this kitchen table really caught my eye.  It was – to quote the catalog description – a table “…in the casual comfortable style of a 19^th century farmhouse where the kitchen was the center of family life.  The winter pine-stained tabletop features… a lustrous, hand-rubbed finish…”  WOW!!

Big enough to seat eight people, it was still small enough to fit into the dining area of my new home.  Even though it was elegant enough for a formal dinner, it would still look great in my decidedly unformal home.  I was smitten!  And then I saw the price.  And… then I turned the page.

But you know, I couldn’t get that table out of my mind.  For weeks, for months; in fact, a full year after first seeing it in that catalog, I was still thinking about that table.  And so there was only one sensible thing to do – I ordered it.  I called the company on a Monday, and by Thursday, it was in my home, looking every bit as beautiful as I had envisioned.

And it has indeed been a special table, but not because of its “Winter pine-stained tabletop features” or its “lustrous, hand-rubbed finish…” or even the price that stretched my pocketbook.  It is special because of the memories that have been made around it.

Members of my family have crowded around that table for turkey dinners on Thanksgiving and Christmas, for ham dinners on Easter, and for our annual lobster feast in the summer.  It has been the site of family meetings, birthday parties, school projects, etiquette lessons, and seemingly endless homework sessions.  Around that table we have shared laughter, tears, joys, fears; it is the family table – the place we share our lives – and it would not be an exaggeration to call it the central piece of furniture in our house, the one which, more than any other, says “family.”  As that catalog description so accurately said – “The center of family life.

You, too, probably have a table where you have gathered for meals, a table full of memories, a table where – by breaking bread together – the people around it have become a family.  Christians have one, too – it’s the communion table.  And no matter what the tradition, every Christian family table is a chip off that original table around which Jesus and his disciples gathered in that upper room on that long-ago Passover to share a meal celebrating the night that God freed Israel from Egyptian bondage.

On that last night of his earthly life, Jesus took the unleavened bread and said “Take, eat; this is my body.”  And then he took the cup and said, “This is my blood of the new covenant, poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.”  Jesus then asked his followers to eat the bread and drink of the cup “in remembrance of” him.  In doing so, he was not only asking them to recall the Passover supper, but he was also offering the gift of “re-membering,” the promise that whenever we gather to share the bread and the cup, we are reconnected once again with all the members of our Christian family.

In thousands of churches around the world – on this World Communion Sunday and throughout the year – Christians gather at tables like the one around which Christ and his disciples gathered.  We gather around them in remembrance of Christ and re-membered as the people of God sharing a family meal; and the head of our family told us that whenever we share the bread and the cup, he will be right there in the midst of us.

We are part of a family that stretches beyond this house, beyond Immaculate Conception and First Baptist and Trinity Episcopal and First United Methodist, beyond Stoughton, beyond all the boundaries of time and place, beyond all that separates us.  It is at the communion table where young and old; male and female; married and single; gay and straight; younger than one year and older than 100 years; black, white, Hispanic, Asian – it is at the communion table where we all come together into a Christian family – a family of many differences, for sure, but a family none the less.

Whether it is called call it Holy Communion, or the Lord’s Supper, or the Eucharist…  Whether we use wafers or pita bread or plain old white bread…  Whether we use wine or grape juice… Whether it is served by a pastor, a priest, a deacon, or layperson… Whether it is served in the pew, or received at a railing, or passed around in a circle…  Whether it is celebrated in a sanctuary, a home, a hut in the jungle, a clearing in the forest, or on a patch of desert...Whether the recipients believe it fully and actually becomes the body and blood of Christ, or understand Jesus as being spiritually present…

No matter how it is celebrated, when we come to the Christian family table, we are united in our common humanity.  Rich and poor and saint, sinner, gifted or not, when we come to the family table, we are reconnected – re-membered – to each other and to the loving God who created us and who, in Jesus Christ, redeems us from our broken, scattered, and fragmented lives.

Forgiveness, thanksgiving, celebration, fellowship, reconnection, remembrance and re-membering – these are what we experience in our own homes around our family tables, and it’s what we experience in our church homes at our communion table – the central piece of furniture in God’s house, the one which, more than any other, says “family.”  Amen