The Lord's Table

The other day, our "small group" met after a long hiatus from formal meetings during the summer. Many of us have been busy with travel, visiting out-of-state family, children's high school activities, college graduations, exchange student host family meetings. You get the idea.

So, we finally met on a Saturday night and had Pizza together. Usually, we have a more formal study in the living room. But somehow, this day we started our meeting around the kitchen table. We pulled up a few more chairs and began to read the devotional prepared by our small group leader and dear friend. Our devotional was a prayer by Henri Nouwen:

Dear God,
I am so afraid to open my clenched fists!
Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to?
Who will I be when I stand before you with empty hands?
Please help me to gradually open my hands
and to discover that I am not what I own,
but what you want to give me.
And what you want to give me is love—
unconditional, everlasting love.
Amen.

As I thought about our gathering around the kitchen table, it occurred to me:
- a lot of love, forgiveness, and grace have kept us together at that table over the last few years
- we are struggling to make it in this economy....
- we have been disappointed with people and circumstances...
- we all want to honor God with our plans and our service and yet....
- our lives are being led in directions we would not have chosen for ourselves....
- we continue to look out for each other (job referrals, car repairs, house-sitting, prayers)...
- we have visited each other in hospitals and emergency rooms...
- we know if we were in trouble and had just one phone call, who we would call...

It was good to sit close around that table, look each other in the eye, and realize how much we love each other. The pizza may not have been "eucharist" in the technical, theological sense, but it was the bread we broke together.

While we are on that thought, why wouldn't the table we gathered around be the Lord's table? How would such a table where believers gather in His name, forgiven, in peace and unconditional acceptance not be the Lord's table? How is it that at times we allow ourselves to succumb to the dualism where we separate new life, forgiveness, and restored fellowship at the Lord's Table from the reality of life shared around any table?

There is No Turning Back...

As the final two days of 2009 draw to a close, I am looking back at the road I have travelled this year. What has become especially clear to me is that we are are all created in the image of God. Even when the divine image is marred and barely recognizable, it is there and is worth restoring. I have come to realize that Christ's mission is to facilitate the recovery of the divine image (Colossians 3:10) in humanity. Moreover, I have understood that my mission is the recovery of the divine image in others.

So what exactly does "recovery of the divine image" mean? It means the recovery of human dignity. I find that people are so beat down these days. They are ashamed at having to receive assistance for the first time in their lives. Young people are disillusioned that they can't begin an independent life in this economy. And then there are those who are enslaved by addiction.

My perspective has changed in the past year because I have allowed my heart to be touched with the stories that people tell. Where there is discouragement, disillusionment, or addiction, there is always a story behind it.

I have learned that people don't need our pity, they need our respect. Respect comes from our recognition that we share the divine image and that we have the same value before God.

More than respect, people need love. How empty, how alone, how isolated we are if no one loves us. If no one cares if we live or die, what greater pain is there?

I have learned that the only legitimate expression of faith is love. I believe that God sees our love. I've learned that if I want to find Christ, He is in "the least of these."

I've learned these things and I can't go back....