6/1/25 Sermon
It’s funny the things that you remember that end up sticking out as being important when you get older. Sometimes what seems like ordinary, mundane life activities at the time - things that have no particular significance and meaning - turn out to be really pivotal and treasured memories…
Like, when I was a kid I remember sitting at the dinner table with my parents. And after dinner, my dad would grab a cup of coffee and an ashtray and he would smoke cigarettes and we would talk as a family or play games sometimes. He used that powdered creamer and smoked Winston lights. Funny the things you remember but I remember the way it made his breath smell - that combination of coffee with cream and cigarettes. He’s since quit both powdered creamer and cigarettes and to be honest, I have no idea and no desire to know how his breath smells these days.
My parents would talk a lot around our table catching up with one another, talking to my sister and I, or just talking about life. Sometimes they would talk about my dad’s business trips and how we was getting there. For a long time I thought they were saying Ralph 5 and ralph 20 or Ralph 79 and I was amazed at all the Ralphs my parents knew. The only Ralph I knew was our mailman Ralph. I couldn’t imagine knowing so many people named Ralph you had to number them. When I got older I realized they were saying Route 20 and route 5 and they were discussing the roads my dad was going to drive…
When I was in college and came home my dad and I would sometimes sit around that kitchen table late into the night arguing philosophy and theology and politics. I learned a lot about what it means to be a person of faith and a person of integrity and character sitting with him around that same wood laminate table that was at their house into my 40s. I learned that there are always consequences for how you choose to live your life - for both better and worse. And my father would sit there with me and help me process both my successes and failures in life and in being the kind of person that I wanted to be.
We spent a lot of time around that table. That was the table where we struggled together with my own addictions. That was the table where we sat and discussed what my future was when I left Marlboro after the first semester. And that was the table where we discussed whether or not I should go back and eventually made plans for after I graduated. It was the same table where I found my mother crying when I was 11 and her father had just passed away.
It was the same table I learned that I didn’t like chicken with mushroom soup poured over it or creamed chipped beef on toast but it’s also the same table where as an adult I’d still crave my mom’s salmon and London broil. It’s the same table I watch my mom do crafts with her grandchildren and watch Olivia’s eyes light up with her. It was at that table we met my sister’s future husband and it was at that table where we would eventually learn he’d be her ex-husband.
That table at my parents house has seen my family’s heartaches, our frustrations and mistakes. It’s seen our love, our laughter, our thoughts, our successes and failures together. We gathered there for our celebrations and our funerals. It’s had planks put in it to accommodate as many people as possible and it’s held each of us up individually through long nights of loneliness and struggle. There’s something special about that table.
It isn’t the table itself. Trust me. It was a crappy wood laminate table from the 70s that probably should have been replaced years ago. But what mattered is what happened around that table. It’s the role that it played in our lives that’s made it sacred to my family. My kids might not know or understand the importance that a table can take. We’ve moved too much and had several different tables. Now, the kitchen counter is more our table. In fact, I would say kitchens for my kids may replace the important centerpiece that the table in my parents kitchen has for me.
You know, it’s funny to me that I’ve spent over half my life studying my faith, trying to understand God, trying to make sense of the Bible, trying to figure out just what it means to be a Christian or even HOW to be a Christian. Lately, I’ve obsessively stayed up late into the night studying and struggling to find out just what exactly grace is. How does it change my life? Am I truly living for God? Am I being transformed into a deeper disciple of Christ? Am I helping you do the same?
What strikes me as I reread this passage—the one I’ve wrestled with since 2008, trying to preach it so it truly connects—is how simple its heart really is: it’s about gathering around a table, the kind of ordinary kitchen table we probably all have. And meeting people around a table like this one. And understanding that when we do that, when we allow ourselves to enter into relationships like that, where our guard is down, where we truly share who we are and where we are with each other- that Christ is present there. Christ joins us at the table.
One of the things that’s central to our faith, one of the things we find sacred is a table where we all come together to break bread. And we come as we are to this table. Some of us are broken. Some of us are celebrating. Some of us are struggling while others rejoice in good fortune. Some of us are lonely and some of us are so in love with the people we have in our lives it hurts. Some of us have absolute certainty in what we believe while others of us question even the smallest assumptions.
But we all come around this table and the truth of Scriptures like this one in Luke is that somehow when we gather here together around a table no matter who we are or what we are, when we break this bread together and eat, we enter into a deeper, a fuller, a more complete relationship with each other. One where in that relationship we begin to see Christ clearly even if it’s just for a second and then *POOF* he’s gone.
Whatever grace is, whatever faith is, whatever being a christian is, whatever being a church is, it more resembles a kitchen table than anything else. And sometimes we complicate the heck out of it trying to put words and explanations to things that are best told through stories like one where two guys are walking down a road trying to make sense of someone special’s death and they see him in a stranger that they share a meal with…
As I’ve tried to make a little space in my life lately to step back and reflect—not just on our life together as a church, but on my own journey—I’ve come to see just how central the table really is to our faith. I mean, not just this table, but all the tables we gather around.
When I think about the moments that have shaped me most—conversations with my dad, late-night meals, hard truths and unexpected grace—they all happened at a table. And the more I sit with that, the more I understand why someone like John Calvin believed so deeply that the table is where we most clearly experience God’s grace. Not in grand displays or perfect words, but in bread shared, stories told, and lives opened up to one another.
We need more of that. More time around tables. More space for real connection. Because it’s there—in the sharing, in the breaking, in the listening—that Christ shows up.
And so maybe this morning as we gather around this table together, as we break the bread and pour the cup, as we encounter Christ and one another, we can think of all the tables we’ve been around - with all the people we’ve been to the table with in our lives. And we can covenant together to spend more time around tables with each other.
To nurture and grow deeper in our relationships with each other. To invite others - even strangers- to gather with us around this table. Because at the heart of our faith, at the center of what we believe together is that it’s in deeper relationship, in accepting stranger and friend alike not as we would have them, but as they are. In relationship not just around THIS table but around all tables, in relationship when we see the WHO of a person rather than the WHAT, we encounter the true meaning of God’s grace and we see that we don’t dine alone but that Christ, the resurrected Lord sits in our midst.
