Series: October 2024
Speaker: Rob McClellan
Today's Sermon
"Refuge & Engagement: Who We Are Series 4"
Refuge & Engagement: Who We Are Series 4
Today is World Communion Sunday, a tradition that began in 1933 at a Presbyterian church in Pittsburgh. Rather than out of some syrupy motive, the Rev. Dr. Hugh Thomson Kerr, who had been moderator of the General Assembly in 1930 began the practice out of concern around the rise of totalitarianism.[1] As the world was coming apart, Kerr instituted the practice as an attempt to hold it together sacramentally. It was making a visual display, as the sacraments do, of an invisible reality, namely that we are connected.[2] These rituals can have power.
There are two meanings of communion we will focus on today as we continue our “Who We Are” series, in which we are developing a vocabulary about our faith that goes beyond saying who we are not. The first is communion as a place of refuge, safe harbor. We are people who find refuge in God. We haven’t done much God talk thus far. We’ve said we are people who are spiritually strong, we are people who believe in sticking together, we are intergenerational. God talk, even in a church, is hard for some. If you think about it, it takes some hubris it takes to develop whole systems of belief about God. If you notice, the Bible does not put God in such a neat and tidy box, which is how it seems in life. Sometimes God seems this way, sometimes that, sometimes God feels present, sometimes absent. Moreover, our understanding of God evolves over time, and our language of God can only ever be approximate. To paraphrase Karl Barth, we can’t really speak of God, but of course we must. We do so, therefore, humbly, honoring our experiences of God, the experiences handed down to us, knowing we cannot fully articulate the ineffable.
One of the claims we do make, and people have made over the eons, is that God is a place we go to feel safe, to get fortified, to feel solid. Hear the way our ancestors put it in Psalm 46:
1God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
2Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,
though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
3though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble with its tumult.
4There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
5God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved;
God will help it when the morning dawns.
6The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter;
he utters his voice, the earth melts.
7The Lord of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our refuge.
8Come, behold the works of the Lord;
see what desolations he has brought on the earth.
9He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear;
he burns the shields with fire.
10‘Be still, and know that I am God!
I am exalted among the nations,
I am exalted in the earth.’
11The Lord of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our refuge (Psalm 46).
Those words land harshly after the storms of this past week and yet people claim refuge in God. Did you have a safe place you went as a child? Maybe that is an image of God. Maybe that is God, a safe space in a world that is not always so. Jesus speaks this way, Jesus who Christians claim in one form or another represents God. In Matthew, he says,
‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light’ (Matthew 11:28-30).
We are people who find rest, who find safety in God, trusting there is a place at the heart of reality that accepts us. If you want to develop your faith, developing a practice that puts you into that space, the heart space, of God’s accepting presence. That will do more than working on getting your head around the tenets of the Apostles’ Creed. The creed is fine; it just talks about God rather than ushering you into an encounter with God.
The second meaning of the communion is that it equips us to engage the world. We are a people who take refuge in God and engage the world. They are related. The refuge is what strengthens us, guides us, teaches us how to engage in the world faithfully and joyfully. The image of the table is helpful. We are fed at tables, fed with literal food, giving us energy, but also by the company present, the wisdom gathered and shared, the tangible reminder of our kinship and connection. Something transcendent happens at tables, which is why there are eating rituals in every tradition that I can think of.
You don’t sit at the table all day, and we are not an escapist people. Jesus went away many times to pray so that he might inhabit the world well, facing difficulty with grace, opposition with courage, brokenness with healing, deceit and hypocrisy with truth-telling. His time with God allowed his love for the world ultimately outweigh his anger at what was wrong. The table is to feed us for something. Hear what the prophet Amos says of those who seem only concerned with religious ritual:
21I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
22Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
23Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
24But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream (Amos 5:21-24)
You can see why Dr. King cleaved to that passage. There were plenty of religious people in the segregated south who I’m sure went to church, but who didn’t want the church to be political, so they hid behind the trappings of religion and in doing so missed the point of it altogether. We are people who believe it is important to engage the world. Engaging in society is not just our civic duty, it is our spiritual obligation, and if we get the refuge part right, it is our joy. It is joyful to be a part of the healing of the sick and broken places of the world. It is our joy—remember that’s part of our theme this year—to help build up and grow what is struggling.
In that sense, while we get up from the table, we bring the table with us wherever we go embodying table values just as they described Jesus as making the word flesh. James, an epistle, a letter, in the New Testament says, says the following
…be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. 23For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; 24for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. 25But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.
26 If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. 27Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world (James 1:22-26).
It is this dance in and out of the world, to and from the table, refuge and engagement. We take enough refuge that we are not stained by ugliest of the world and we use that refuge to allow us to blot out the stains born by others. Purity, as James tells us, is not found merely by practicing the rituals perfectly, but rather by inhabiting the world with a perfecting love.
The rituals teach us if we let them. The table teaches us we may rest in God, the great mystery. The table teaches us we belong to one another, and that we all belong to God, all humans and all beings, all substance. The table teaches us that there is enough to go around, and, by the way, the last should be fed first. The table teaches us that creation is powerful and sustaining and also vulnerable and interdependent, that we are best when we are in balance. The table teaches us that when we take the time to be in God when we go out into the world God is in us. So, come be fed, find rest, learn the way, and go out to engage with joy.
Amen.
[1]https://www.syntrinity.org/featured/world-communion-sunday-origins-begin-at-shadyside-church-in-pittsburgh/
[2]To read more about World Communion Sunday’s origins, see https://www.presbyterianmission.org/ministries/worship/churchcalendar/world-communion-sunday/#:~:text=World%20Communion%20Sunday%20(originally%20called,Thompson%20Kerr%20served%20as%20pastor.