Aug 6, 2000
COME TO
SUPPER, BOBBY GENE!
It's been fifty-five years or so
since I last heard my mother cry out: COME TO SUPPER,
BOBBY GENE! That was her every evening ritual to summon
me, her hard-at-play boy to the dinner table.
As we lived in a small town in
Oklahoma, all the neighbors had their own house,
surrounded by their own yard, so there was plenty of room
for kids to roam and play in the pre-supper dusk. Also
in Oklahoma many kids were called by a name other than
their given names: I am GENE ROBERT but I was always
BOBBY GENE to my mom.
Though I hated to quit my play,
a mother's voice has undeniable authority: COME TO
SUPPER, BOBBY GENE! was a summons both imperative and
welcoming.
God gives us a similarly
authoritative and welcoming summons to Holy Communion:
Jesus said: I STAND AT THE DOOR AND KNOCK; IF YOU HEAR MY
VOICE AND RESPOND I WILL COME IN AND HAVE SUPPER WITH
YOU. (Revelations 3:20)
My mother had a few rules before
I could sit down to a nice, home cooked meal of chicken,
collard greens, and peach cobbler - my favorites. These
rules can serve as guidelines for us as we approach
supper with Jesus.
FIRST, I NEEDED TO GIVE UP WHAT
I WAS DOING AND RESPOND TO HER CALL. Play is wonderful
for a child and hard to quit. But I had to hear and then
obey. Similarly, in order to receive what God offers to
us we have to step away from other entertaining
activities and listen and respond to his call. The
quality of our response makes all the
difference.
One of Germany's greatest sons,
the poet and philosopher Goethe, said this: "There is one
elementary TRUTH - the ignorance of which kills countless
ideas and splendid plans: The moment one definitely
commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of
things occur to help one that never otherwise would have
occurred…
We answer the call: we need to
give up our play, our personal indulgences, and decide to
listen to the call to come in for supper or all those
other things that ensue in the faith adventure will not
happen. Jesus said: I STAND AT THE DOOR AND KNOCK. IF
ANYONE HEARS MY VOICE AND OPENS THE DOOR I WILL COME IN
AND DINE WITH HIM.
We can easily ignore God's call
inviting us to his bountiful provisioning of all that we
need. We think or pretend that we really aren't hungry;
we just want to play on. We may not yearn for the bread
of heaven which Jesus promised in our Gospel of
today.
Often we may labor under the
deterrent of guilt. The late American baseball legend Gil
Hodges told this story. Once, when he was managing the
Washington Senators team, he discovered four of his
players had broken curfew the previous night.
Immediately, he called the whole team together and said,
"I know who you are but I do not wish to embarrass you.
You know the rules; you will each be fined $l00. I have
placed a cigar box on my desk. I expect the four of you
who broke curfew to put your money in the box by 3:00PM"
At the end of the day, Hodges found $1700 in his cigar
box!
A lot more people are struggling
with guilt than fines and rules and even confessions can
deal with. And bringing our guilt to God, who like the
all-knowing team manager, knows precisely who we are, can
be very off-putting. We, understandably, might like to
play games by giving a qualified and conditioned
response to God.
The tax authorities in the US
once received a letter from an anonymous taxpayer. It
read, "I have cheated on my income tax for the past seven
years and tonight my conscience is troubling me to the
point that I cannot sleep. I have enclosed $500 as my way
of saying "I am sorry." If I find that I still can't
sleep, I will send the rest of what I owe." Guilt and
equivocation about our guilt has been our companion from
the beginning.
Whatever the cause of our
reserve toward God, the first rule is we have to be
willing to listen and respond without rationalizing, and
without denial.
*******
The event known as Holy
Communion, or the Eucharist, is founded on the Christian
doctrine that Jesus is the one whom God has consecrated
to give food that endures for eternal life. Jesus is the
bread of God, the true "manna" who comes down from heaven
and gives life to the world. Jesus is both the giver of
bread and the bread itself.
But while we have to use
symbols like bread we are not talking only in symbols.
To say that Jesus is the bread we need is not like
showing the drawing of food to a starving person and
pronouncing that he should be filled up.
We need to envisage the Christ
as more than symbolic bread. We have to begin to
understand that the figurative use of bread in so many
references to Christ is meant to convey not sentiment
through symbolism, but an actuality behind the symbol.
Christ is God's bread who can be verified because we can
experience a fullness which takes away the pain of our
hunger. And at the same time Christ as the bread we
receive at communion conveys supernatural significance,
a divine mystery.
We need to open the door to this
Jesus, to invite him to be with us. And when we allow
God somehow to come to us through someone or something,
we will experience not just the idea of the Risen Christ
but the presence of that Christ. We will be included in
a love which will never let us go. We will each hear our
names called and in a loving way that assures us that we
and our names are safe with the one who calls us to his
supper. John Coombs the other night gave me this quote
from the writer Eugene O'Neill: "We are born broken and
spend our lives getting mended." Christ is the great
mender of us all.
******
Before I could sit down at the
kitchen table, my mother would say: BOBBY GENE, HAVE YOU
WASHED YOUR HANDS? Of course I sometimes was so hungry
as to be tempted to lie about the hand washing, but I
didn't dare lie to mom. And, besides, her insistence was
simple and obviously hygienic.
Before coming to the Lord's
Table we are asked to wash our hands. Jesus is not
requiring breast beating and self-oblations in which we
roll around in the dirt to demonstrate our piety and
sincerity. He is asking only that we show him a sincere,
contrite heart which opens us to receive all that God
intends for us.
To do that we need to handle our
sin and guilt in the way God handles them. A water bearer
in India had two large pots, each hung on each end of a
pole which he carried across his neck. One of the pots
had a crack in it, and while the other was perfect and
always delivered a full portion of water at the end of
the long walk from the stream to the master's house, the
cracked pot arrived only half full, having leaked out
part of its water all along the path.
Of course the perfect pot was
proud of its accomplishments, perfect to the end for
which it was made. While the cracked pot was ashamed of
its own imperfection, and miserable that it was able to
accomplish only half of what it had been made to
do.
After two years of feeling
guilty for its imperfection, the cracked pot made a
confession one day to the water bearer: "I am ashamed of
myself, and I want to apologize to you for delivering
only half my load these past years to the master's
house."
The water bearer felt compassion
for the cracked pot and said, "As we return this trip to
the master's house I want you to notice the beautiful
flowers along the path."
Indeed, as they went up the
hill, the old cracked pot took notice of the sun warming
the beautiful wild flowers on the side of the path, and
this cheered it some. But it still felt bad at the end of
the trip because once more it had leaked out half of its
water and again apologized to the water
bearer.
The bearer said to the pot, "Did
you notice that there were flowers only on your side of
our path, but not on the other pot's side? That's because
I have always known about your flaw, and I took advantage
of it. I planted flower seeds on your side of the path,
and every day while we walk back from the stream, you've
watered them. For two years I have been able to pick
these beautiful flowers to decorate my master's table.
Without you being just the way you are, he would not have
this beauty to grace his house."
God knows that each of us has
our flaws. We're all cracked pots. But if we allow it,
God will use our flaws for a useful purpose for in God's
economy based on divine grace there is finally nothing
which is wasted.
A child said that love is when
God, who could have said magic words to make the nails
fall off the cross, instead didn't because he loves us.
Not even the pain and suffering are wasted with
God.
The genuinely receptive heart is
not the one filled with self-confession and possibly
self-loathing, but the heart which opens to Paul's
radical claim of God's intention: FOR OUR SAKE GOD MADE
HIM WHO KNEW NO SIN TO BE SIN, SO THAT IN HIM WE MIGHT
BECOME THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD. (2 Cor 5:21)
The communion invitation to sit
and eat with Jesus is not an engraved invitation to learn
and know more about the righteousness of God; nor is it
even a challenge to believe in the righteousness of God.
It is an invitation and an assurance that we are to
become the righteousness of God. And that happens because
Communion is a cancelled bill stamped OUR DEBTS PAID.
There's no costs, no charges, associated with our
Communion because God in Christ has taken care of all the
indebtedness.
That righteousness means we are
destined to be in right relationship with God and when
that happens all other matters will follow in appropriate
order. Faith is the direction our feet start to walk when
we know that we are loved.
******
Finally, my mom would announce:
SIT DOWN, SUPPER IS READY, BOBBY GENE.
And so without any further ado,
much less begging for food on my part, mom's wonderful
nightly supper would appear. Oh that corn on the cob,
those mashed potatoes, that fried chieken, and that fruit
cobber!
Enough food is always how it is
when you have a mother looking after you….AND A GOD!
The host does the preparation
and the work and we enjoy. True, as I grew up and assumed
more responsibility I was wanting to help mom with the
cleaning up. And in the loving family we easily reconcile
that seeming paradox of being honored guests at mom's
table while being warmly embraced members of the
family.
That's how family works. And
that how God's suppering works, too. We are his guests
of honor while also being his children gathered at the
familiar table.
Pastor Gene
Preston
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