A Place at the Table. Peace
Montavilla United Methodist
December 15, 2024
Rev Heather Riggs
You can hear in my voice that I am still recovering from the flu!
I am so grateful for every single one of you who have pulled together to handle all the things while I was sick last week!
I’m so grateful for the time to be able to rest and heal that I’m going to echo Paul, and scholars do believe this letter to the Christians in Philippi was written by the actual Paul in the mid-50s, so like Paul…
I thank God for you in my prayers.
I’m so thankful for all of you. You have brought joy back into ministry for me.
I love the way you have been real partners in ministry!
My crystal ball is broken, I don’t understand what’s going on in the world, or how exactly we’re going to get through all of this…
But I’m sure about this:
God is at work within us and God will stay with us in this work through the beginning of whatever it is that God is doing next in God’s Church.
You are all my partners in God’s grace, both while I was out sick, and while I am present.
The way you showed up, signed up, said yes, AND said no when you needed to instead of doing too much and becoming resentful, means a lot to me.
This is my prayer for you: that your love might become even more and more rich with knowledge and all kinds of insight. I pray this so that you will be able to decide what really matters, because, boy howdy, do we have some decisions to make!
I pray that your choices will lead to you being filled with the fruit of righteousness, which comes from Jesus Christ, in order to give glory and praise to God.
Paul wrote this letter to the Philippians while he was in prison in Ephesus, knowing that his appeal as a Roman citizen was most likely going to lead to his execution for treason, because he refused to worship the Emperor. So Paul had no right to be this happy! Paul should have been scared out of his mind, and there were probably times that he was overcome with fear. But in the moments that he was writing this letter, Paul was at peace with his future, because he trusted that God would continue to be at work in the lives of the people whom Paul was in ministry with, long after Paul was gone.
Christ came into the world during tumultuous times.
49 years before the first Christmas Julius Caesar ended the Roman Republic by declaring himself Emperor. The transition from Republic to Empire eroded the civil rights of the citizens and non-citizens of Rome, increased taxes on the poor to fund the excesses of the Emperor, and set off an endless cycle of wars of expansion that in in the time of Christ they had the sheer gall to call the Pax Romana — that is, the Roman Peace.
Into this Empire, in the days of Caesar Augustus, the Emperor sent out a command to all the people to return to the city of their birth to be counted in a census, so that he would know how many people he had available to tax.
And because in the Roman Empire, women didn’t really count as people, Joseph and Mary had to travel to Bethlehem, Joseph’s hometown.
And maybe they delayed their departure because it looked like Mary was ready to pop any day and they hoped to travel after the baby was born. But Jesus didn’t cooperate with that plan, so by the time Joseph and Mary made it to Bethlehem, Joseph’s family were all packed into every conceivable space. So all they had left was the barn.
But when you’re family, it doesn’t matter how small the house is or how small the table is, or if all the chairs are already filled. You find a way to make room. You get out the card table. You pull the sawhorses out of the garage and lay a tablecloth over a piece of plywood. You turn over a bucket and put a pillow on it to make a chair.
Love will find a way to make another place at the table.
Love will find a way to make sure that there is enough on the table for everyone.
There’s no such thing as a table that is too small.
There’s only hearts that are too small.
But we live in a Western Culture that was shaped by the Roman Empire. A culture that tells us that there is never enough. A Culture that tells us that there are only so many seats at the table.
A culture that the original Paul challenged. The original Paul, not the authors of the pseudo-pauline letters who told us that women should be submissive to their husbands, but the Paul who left women in charge of local churches.
The Paul who in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 verses 17-33 gave us some instructions on how to share God’s Table.
Paul was mad at the Corinthians because they were acting like Romans of Empire at God’s table. The rich, who didn’t need to work late and could show up early for their gatherings of the Lord’s Supper would bring food and wine and they would often eat and drink till stuffed and drunk and leave nothing for the poor members of the Church who had nothing to bring to the Lord’s Table.
They had this attitude that those who donate the most should get the most out of the church. But Paul told them that this is not the way of the Body of Christ.
Paul told them that at God’s table, we wait for one another. At God’s table there are no factions. Or as the authentic Paul said in Galatians 3:28:
There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
This is why we are sharing our Advent Offering with Rahab’s Sisters and why we will give away 100% of our Christmas Eve offering to Family Promise, even though our 2025 budget plan is still substantially in the red! We’re working on it, but it’s going to take God’s abundance to make this work!
Choosing to share is a choice.
It’s a choice to trust in God’s Empire of abundance, rather than the Roman Empires tradition of grasping scarcity.
Sharing our building and our resources is like sharing a table.
It’s saying that there is room in this building.
There is room in our hearts.
There is room at this table, because it is God’s Table.
When we are grounded in God’s abundance there is more than enough at the Table.
More than enough space.
More than enough resources.
More than enough love to go around.
It’s when we get stuck in thinking that there isn’t enough to go around.
When we forget that this is God’s Table…God’s building…God’s Beloved Community.
When we start thinking that this is our Table, our building, our resources, our money, our little group of friends.. That’s when we start to think that we don’t have a big enough table to share and we’re right!
If the table is my table, there isn’t enough, because my resources are limited!
I’m limited!
God is not limited.
And there is peace and joy and hope in placing our trust in God’s unlimited grace.
A peace and joy and hope that is far bigger than our circumstances.
God’s grace invites us through the Prophet Baruch, to find joy, peace and hope in the midst of the worst of times.
Baruch was a secretary of the leaders who had been carried away to be held captive in the Babylonian court. He was a nobody, who wrote a couple of things and sent them to his friend, Jeremiah in Jerusalem. He’s such a nobody that his writings are not included in the official Bible, but we still have them in the apocrypha, along with the story of Hannuka.
Baruch reminds us to rejoice in the face of hard times.
To take off our mourning clothes and refuse to be oppressed.
To dress ourselves in the dignity of God.
To wrap ourselves in justice.
To trust God to shine through us in our darkest hours.
To remember that peace comes from justice.
And respect comes not from the wealth of Empires, but from the Grace of God.
So get up, church!
Be on the lookout for what God is doing!
See the people gathered at God’s table, and rejoice that God is still with us all.
