We’re having a big family event. I mean a really big all-out family-of-faith gathering.

You know, usually it is just us at the Lord’s Table. Just us. A quick Sunday meal, a little bread, a little cup and we’re out the door and on our way again. I’m told there are a few who don’t want to come on Communion Sundays because it seems to them so much ritual, meaningless ceremony. And some who hope we hurry up with this meal because there is a football game on TV. And there are some who love being here, telling the stories of faith, savoring the communion meal, being the body of Christ together, while some may come to the table though their thoughts wander mindlessly somewhere else.

But then ones like the ninety two-year-old, who is in a moderate stage of Alzheimer’s but when she receives the bread and cup, as she has for so many years, her brain barely remembers something that her heart fully understands and a simple tear runs down her cheek.

Some Sundays it is just us. This odd assortment of “us.” Truth is, though we think it is just us, just our little church family at the table, it is not. That’s not how it is. And today on World Communion especially we recognize that our faith relatives from all over the world will be making a special effort to come to the table of the Lord together with us. Won’t that be wonderful? Can you just imagine? We are part of a whole world of believers who are going to break bread together today.

So we need to get ready; we need to set the table. In fact, we need to put another leaf in the table and add another leaf to that one and another and then add tables end to end and side to side as far as we can see and farther. The table is going to be really big. We’ll need to bring all the tables from the Fellowship Hall and that still won’t be enough. Lots of people. Lots and lots of people.

Our UCC brothers and sisters will be there, to be sure. Some local folk from nearby congregations and some all the way to New England; they’ll be at the table. And others, Disciples and Presbyterians, Lutherans and Catholics and Methodists and Episcopalians and Christians of hundreds of different names and traditions will gather at the table to eat of the Bread of Life.

And there will be others, from the many corners of the world. Our northern European cousins will no doubt come bringing their French bread. They are eager to be at the table with us all; once the stronghold of our faith, where our faith first flourished, those magnificent cathedrals are often empty. Our Christian brothers and sisters there have gotten weary and discouraged and I pray that being at the table with the whole family of Christ will do them good. Maybe as we talk together they will feel reinvigorated, encouraged, nourished again.

Some of our Greek Orthodox cousins will be there, too, with Greek bread. And our Eastern Orthodox church will be there with its 250 million members. Put another leaf in the table for sure.

The African family will bring traditional flat bread and join the group from Ethiopia at the table. You know that branch of our family in northern Africa goes back to our earliest days. Their traditions go back almost two thousand years. There will be Christians from all over Africa present. I’m told there are now more Christians in Africa than in the United States. So there’ll be a lot of folks at the table. I also know many can’t come because they are without food, water and shelter. We must remember them.

Our Chinese brothers and sisters will be at the table. I’m so glad they are able to come. They haven’t always been free to come to the table, but they are now, fairly recently and they are so excited about being in the family and my, that part of our family is growing rapidly, so energized in the faith. At the table they may want to tell us about some of the problems they face and their joys. And the Indonesian Christians - sometimes with all the natural disasters, faith is the one thing they have left. I hope they can be here. Our Filipino family both locally and globally will be here.

Many of our Russian and Eastern European Christian family members are free to travel and leave their country. They’ll join us.

Our Hispanic faith relatives will be there in large numbers, both those from south of the border and within our borders. New Hispanic congregations are springing up among us, representing some of the largest church growth on this continent. Seems like this communion meal has always been an important part of their tradition and they seem to have such joy in it. Joy is contagious you know. Yet even in their high spirits they worry about things like immigration and may want to talk about it at the table.

Those who now walk the roads that Jesus walked, both those who walk on Israeli soil and those who walk on Palestinian soil, will be there bringing with them the kind of bread Jesus might have eaten and a plea for peace in the Middle East. We must pray with them and for them.

The vulnerable Christian communities in Iraq and Afghanistan will need to come in secret; they dare not be too open these days about their faith in Jesus Christ. They need our support and our protection.

Not sure if the Christians in Burma, most of them from minority tribes, will be able to gather at the table at all, they are having to run from a brutal oppressive regime. But I do know that they would bring of their very meager resources to share at the table; I’ve experienced that kind of hospitality among them myself. They would ask us all to pray for justice; they hold tightly to the bread of hope.

Those who have no money, they will come and eat because there is no cost in this meal. No cost to them. Jesus has already born the cost; and that cost is considerable.

There are some who will choose not to come. Perhaps they are unhappy with their Christian brothers and sisters because we have not come to their aid when they were in difficulty, perhaps disappointed that there are flaws of the church. Some will choose not to come because other tables in the world have lured them and they have forgotten that the breaking of the bread celebrates the very gifts given to us by Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection, gifts of hope and love and comfort and forgiveness and new life and eternal life.

Some will not be there, but still there will be quite a lot of people. Don’t know how we are going to be able to feed all these people, but that is the Lord’s work and not ours. And I know what miracles he has done with loaves before; five simple, common-folk barley loaves. I know that he took the bread, broke it and gave thanks to God for it and then fed multitudes until they were no longer hungry. And there were baskets of bread left over. They who had eaten at the Lord’s Table went home satisfied. I know that Jesus can feed the multitudes. I know that Jesus meets our spiritual hungers.

And I believe that he is present here; even though by now the crowd is much bigger than five thousand, he will feed us all. I believe that he is present in the breaking of the bread and if we are paying special attention we will see that and our spiritual hungers will be fed.

I believe it is important that we have this simple meal together. Through the ages, bread, simple bread has been the sacramental symbol of the Presence of God and I believe that at the table where only twelve were seated with our Lord, that bread became the very symbol of his body broken for us. I believe we will meet the Risen Christ in the breaking of the bread.

So hurry; we need to be ready; our extended faith family will soon be at the table for Sunday dinner. Different cultures, different traditions, different styles of dress, different languages, different names, different favorite foods, different kinds of breads, different expressions of faith, yet bound together by one faith, one Lord, one baptism. There’s a joyous cacophony of noise and sights and smells and table talk that becomes strangely silent with an aura of mystery when in the breaking of the bread we recognize that the Risen Lord is here the host at the table. We remember we are in the presence of the One who said, “I am the bread of Life. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever.”

May the Lord be present to us and grace us as we come to dine at his table.

Sermon by Dr. Charlotte D. Nabors Central Congregational Church, Dallas, Texas
October 7, 2007 World Communion Sunday