“It’s not difficult to imagine, really. It’s World Communion Sunday. The sermon is finished. The congregation is singing a communion hymn like “Let Us Break Bread Together on our Knees” or “For the Bread Which Thou Hast Broken.” During the singing of the hymn two elders move toward the table and remove the lids from the trays and lift the fancy napkin off the loaf that is there in the center next to the chalice. Out in the congregation, a six year old girl stands up on the pew to see what it going on at the table. An older woman discreetly removes a mint from her mouth and wraps it in a tissue to place in her purse so she can gracefully receive the elements. The elders who have been sitting in the front row can actually smell the bread and the grape juice as they sing the last verse of the hymn. The organist plays the last note. Everyone sits down and rather noisily arranges themselves there in the pew as if they were actually sliding in chairs at the table. Every sits down except the pastor, who after a beat or two of silence, looks out from the table and with arms outstretched announces, “Friends, this is the joyful feast of the people of God! People will come from east and west and from north and south and sit at table in the kingdom of God!” The pastor actually gave some directional signals at north, south, east and west. A boy in the fourth pew perks up and looks all around to see who is coming. And more than a few listeners on this particular sabbath morning perceive the pastor’s directional cue in reference to World Communion. North. South. East and West.

People will come from east and west, from north and south. Before it was a quote from the communion liturgy it was a quote from Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. Jesus had been teaching about the kingdom of God. He compared it to the shelter that a tree provides for the birds of the air. Shelter that grew from only a mustard seed. A kingdom that grows from the size of mustard seed to form the very canopy of creation. Jesus compared the kingdom of God to the yeast mixed into the flour by a woman. Yeast mixed into three measures of flour until all of it was leavened. It is a kingdom that eventually, inevitably leavens all. Luke tells us that Jesus went to one town after another teaching about this kingdom. He was teaching his way to Jerusalem. Luke’s mention of Jerusalem is a mention of the cross. Jesus was teaching about the kingdom of God as he made his may toward his suffering and sacrificial death for the sins of the world.

“Lord, will only a few be saved?” was one of the questions asked. Jesus answers by describing a narrow door and an owner who is not apt to welcome strangers after the door is shut. Jesus tells of the crowd reaction outside the door. “Come one, we ate and drank with you. We hung out. We’re tight. You remember us. You taught up and down our streets. We were there. You saw us. Now let us in!” Still the door doesn’t open. Still the housekeeper, the party host says he doesn’t know them. Jesus follows up on the point, after that metaphor of the door and the house and the owner, Jesus steps back and says to the questioner and those all around who were straining to hear about salvation and the kingdom of God. Jesus said “There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God and your yourselves thrown out.”

And it was only then that Jesus said, “Then people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God. Indeed, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.” After the talk of judgment, after the narrow way and door being shut, and the owner not knowing and the weeping and gnashing of teeth, after a reference to those who find themselves tossed out, only then did Jesus say “People will come from east and west, from north and south.” My hunch is that no one in the crowd that day perked up and looked around to see who was coming. They were looking within, longing for that kingdom, and praying to the Lord about their place in it, praying for all the more grace to abound. Jesus and his teaching on the kingdom of God. That dance of judgment and grace. That mysterious, earth turning upside down reversal of power and expectation and piety and religiosity: some are last who will be first and some are first who be last. Jesus making his way to Jerusalem teaching about the kingdom. Judgment and grace on the way to Jerusalem. Judgment and grace never far from the cross of Christ.

In his writing about Holy Communion, German theologian Michael Welker describes that dance of judgment and grace. This Table is all about grace. But we share this meal under the shadow of the cross. Our joyful feast comes only in light of Christ’s suffering and death. Here where “you proclaim his death until he comes again”. Our glimpse of the kingdom of God, our foretaste of the new creation, our nibbling at the heavenly banquet, comes with the full understanding that our lives and our world fall so very far short of what God intends for us and for all of creation. Or as Welker puts it, this Supper points to the path and the distance which lie between us and the fulfillment of God’s rule.” You cannot celebrate a vision of people coming from east and west and north and south without at the same time, lamenting the suffering of the world and demanding an end to war and thinking about the high school girl in Colorado whose life came to such a violent end and weeping over the nameless, faceless children of God who die everyday because of hunger and disease and neglect and oppression. This world God so loves, this world for which Christ died.

Here at this Table.... all the more grace. For here amid that dance of judgement and grace, Christ in the power of the Spirit, both invites us to share in and points us toward the kingdom of God. The Holy Spirit is at work here to gather, to build up, and to send the church precisely into that world God still so loves. Our table celebration is, to use Professor Welker’s words, “a meal on the way into the reign of God.”

When our children were younger, a favorite family book was entitled “Guess How Much I Love You” It is the story of Little Nutbrown Hare and Big Nutbrown Hare and their conversation after Little Nutbrown Hare says “Guess how much I love you.” What follows is a bit of a contest about the size of their love one for another. The Little rabbit says “I love you this much” and stretches out his arms. But the bigger rabbit says “yes but I love you THIS much” and his arms stretch much longer. The conversation goes on and the measures of love keep getting bigger and bigger, as high as I can reach, as high as I can hop, all the way to the river, to the river and over the hills. Finally the little one is too sleepy to even think anymore. Just as he falls asleep he sighs, “I love you to the moon.” Big Nutbrown Hare leans over and whispers to the little one, “Oh, that’s far, that’s very far.” And he kisses him goodnight and says “But I love you right up to the moon and back.” He wasn’t offering a directional cue. He was offering a promise.

“Then people will come from east and west and from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God.” It’s not a directional cue. It’s the promise of Christ himself. In the Greek text the first word is a little one, a conjunction. Kai. And or Then. Who knew such a promise could start with such a little word. Kai. The narrow way. The door being shut. Weeping and gnashing of teeth. All of it on the way to the cross. And....then....and then....and then people will come from east and west and from north and south. It’s not an instruction from the celebrant that indicates how people are getting to the table. It is the very promise of God. That one day, that then, people will come from every where to feast in the kingdom, to share in the meal that has been prepared. Indeed some are last who will be first and some are first who will be last. Yet....but....for...people will come from east and west and from north and south.

The promise of Christ here at the Table. We share this meal this morning on our way into the reign of God knowing that one day grace will all the more abound. That the kingdom will one day come on earth as it is in heaven. That justice and righteousness will overflow, the poor will be lifted up, the hungry will be fed, the broken will be made whole, peace will last, and nations shall be drawn to the brightness of God’s light. And then people will come from east and west , from north and south.

Our lives echo that dance of judgment and grace. Christ himself invites us to the Table this morning, to taste of his promise, to feast on all the more grace.

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