The Table.

The Table. The table is central to one’s home. It is the place where we find ourselves first thing in the morning, drinking our coffee or hot tea, reading the paper, preparing for the day. The table is where we find ourselves at the end of the day. A space to gather around, share our joys, our worries, and catch up on life’s happenings. I often say,

Paisley and Kately at my childhood kitchen table in 2016.

"If our dinner table could talk!"

The stories we tell around the table are the stories that shape us as individuals and families. If only, we took more time to gather around the table. 

Just the other night, Paisley, our 8-year-old, requested we had a family meal around the table. Robert and I canceled all our meetings for the evening and said, yes tonight we shall gather around the table. While we were eating, the usual happened:

• MaryRentz spilled her milk
• the meat wasn’t cooked just the way Kately liked it (she is a picky eater)
• the dog (bless him!) kept trying to jump in our laps
• we had to raise our hands to get a word in
• everyone was so eager to share about their day!

It was beautiful chaos.

The beautiful chaos from Paisley's birthday breakfast in 2021.

That’s when Paisley said,

“This is the best! I love us all being around the table!” 

As people of faith the table is central to our worship. The Lord’s table is where we gather as a broken and beloved community of faith to celebrate the sacrament of communion.

All are welcome at the Lord’s Table.

Sinners and Saints, doubters, and believers, broken and beloved. Christ welcomes us all. The Lord’s table is a table of thanksgiving, remembrance, and celebration. It is the joyful feast of the people of God! 

On world communion Sunday, we get to imagine Christ's body all around the world breaking bread and drinking from the cup. One Body – one bread, one cup! Church, can you imagine a table so big? We would need more chairs! Can you imagine the flawed family of God all together around one big table?  

John Pavlovits writes:

I grew up in a fairly typical family, in which one’s house is really just an expensive, elaborate covering for the kitchen. That is where we lived. That was the hub of life.

Expanding to the dining room table for my mom's birthday in 2022.

There at the kitchen table, we talked and laughed and told stories. We caught up with each other and we argued and we entertained – and we ate and ate and ate. The kitchen was the place where, over a million seemingly ordinary moments, our family became a family. As eventful as ordinary days could be in our home, holidays were uniquely special because on those days we outgrew the kitchen table and graduated to the dining room. We quite literally expanded the table so that we could fit everyone. We made room we didn’t have before.

This was a regular incarnation of the love of God right in the center of our home. This is the heart of the Gospel: the ever-expanding hospitality of God. Jesus, after all, was a carpenter. Building bigger tables was right in his wheelhouse.

How might we build a bigger table in our homes, our hearts, our church this World Communion Sunday? 

Jesus is about table ministry. Are we? As we prepare to gather around the table this upcoming Sunday, I encourage you to prepare your hearts to receive the expansive love and grace of God. And as you do so, who might you need to invite to the table? Jesus says, come, the table is ready! 

The first Sunday in October is designated as World Communion Sunday, which celebrates our oneness in Christ with all our brothers and sisters around the world. Paul tells us that we are to “discern the body” when we partake of Holy Communion, mindful that we note our relationship to all our brothers and sisters in Christ in the celebration.

Our FPC Kids learning about communion in the Kids' Worship Class this year.

The first celebration occurred at Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, PA, in 1933 where Dr. Hugh Thompson Kerr served as pastor.

John A. Dalles, a PCUSA pastor who has researched the history of World Communion Sunday notes this in his blog entry, reprinted from the October 7, 2002, issue of Presbyterian Outlook:

Davitt S. Bell (the late Clerk of Session and church historian at Shadyside) recalled that Dr. Kerr first conceived the notion of World Communion Sunday during his year as moderator of the General Assembly (1930). Dr. Kerr’s younger son, the Rev. Dr. Donald Craig Kerr, who is pastor emeritus of the Roland Park Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, was sixteen in 1933. He has related that World Communion Sunday grew out of the Division of Stewardship at Shadyside. It was their attempt to bring churches together in a service of Christian unity—in which everyone might receive both inspiration and information, and above all, to know how important the Church of Jesus Christ is, and how each congregation is interconnected one with another. When I asked Donald Kerr how the idea of World Communion Sunday spread from that first service to the world wide practice of today, this is what he replied,

“The concept spread very slowly at the start. People did not give it a whole lot of thought. It was during the Second World War that the spirit caught hold, because we were trying to hold the world together. World Wide Communion symbolized the effort to hold things together, in a spiritual sense. It emphasized that we are one in the Spirit and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Celebration of World Wide Communion Sunday was adopted as a denominational practice in the Presbyterian Church (US) in 1936. Today, World Communion Sunday is celebrated around the world, demonstrating that the church founded on Jesus Christ peacefully shares God-given goods.