October 6, 2024 – World Communion Sunday

Nehemiah 9.16-23

Ephesians 2.4-10

Dessert First

World Communion Sunday

What?

Nine times out of ten I am the last person downstairs for Coffee Hour, and when I get there less than half the goodies are left, and without fail the best of them are completely gone.  But then I remembered somebody somewhere once said that the last shall be first and the first shall be last, and I decided what better time for the last person to Coffee Hour take that advice to its logical conclusion?  Anybody want to argue with Jesus?  Not me.  And by the way, the coffee and the… are great!  And don’t worry – I left some for you.

A group of us were sitting around the other afternoon, it was around dinner time, and one of them said they had to get home to put some homemade soup on stove, when somehow the conversation turned to Honeycone Ice Cream’s latest flavors.  Just in time for the season they have pumpkin caramel, apple cider sorbet, apple butter oat crisp, and two flavors that really appealed to me, sea salt stracciatella and cornflake crunch.  Don’t those sound delicious?  The soup maker agreed, and said, “You know, I think I need to get some ice cream before I go home to have dinner.”  And resisting mightily the temptation to tell them about this morning’s sermon, I simply replied, “Dessert first!  Now there’s a philosophy I can get behind!”  And we could all recall those times our parents would tell us, “No dessert until you finish your dinner,” like dessert is a kind of reward for eating everything on your plate.  It’s like the line from Pink Floyd’s song “The Wall” that goes, “If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding!  How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat!”  I can tell by your smiles that we all remember those days.

Dessert first has been a philosophy of mine for a while now, because for me it is shorthand for the grace of God.  For me it is shorthand for the grace of God.  We beat up on poor old Martin Luther pretty well last week, but this week let’s nod respectfully in his direction via Michele’s reading from Ephesians:  “By grace we have been saved through faith – by grace we have been saved through faith – this is not our own doing, it is the gift of God – not the results of works, so that none of us might boast.”  In the words of John Newton’s immortal hymn, “Tis grace has bought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.”  The Anchor Bible Dictionary puts it this way:  “Grace is love demonstrated by giving; in the gospel, grace is unmerited divine favor, arising in the mind of God and bestowed on [God’s] people.”  The Protestant Reformation may have debated about salvation by faith vs salvation by works, but superimposed on them both is the notion of grace, a free gift of God that no one earns, indeed, that no one can possibly earn, because it is bestowed freely and without condition.

A few Sundays ago Marie Ready responded to something I said in my sermon by reminding me that “Grace is getting what you do not deserve, and mercy is not getting what you do deserve.”  I had not heard that one before, and though I tried, I could not find the source of the quotation, although there are plenty of folks who have quoted it.  And it is a nice way of simplifying two rather deep theological concepts, of grace and mercy, although I would quibble over the use of the word deserve, and how and why we might or might not deserve something.  But we get it.  We get it.  The grace of God, which empowers us to do things we never thought we could or would, is freely given.  It does not cost a thing, and it is not something we could ever earn.  It is God’s way of reminding us how powerfully we are loved, and of how powerfully we may love in turn.

I shared this story once before, so I’ll keep the retelling brief.  I had a history professor in college who began the semester by telling us we all had an A for the class.  On the first day of classes!  We all aced the course!  All you need to do, he said with a wry smile, is keep it.  To me this is one of the ways grace works.  You’ve got this!  God says; it is the best and most I can possibly give you – now go out and do something with it!

The twin notions of grace and mercy are found together repeatedly in the Bible, the Old Testament in particular.  We heard a vivid description of it in Nehemiah this morning.

“You are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love…  You gave your good spirit to instruct [your children Israel], and did not withhold your manna from their mouths, you gave them water for their thirst.  For forty years you sustained them in the wilderness so that they lacked nothing; their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell… you multiplied their descendants like the stars of heaven and brough them into the land that you had promised their ancestors to enter and possess.”

The apostle Paul’s phrase, “rich in mercy,” is a deeply Hebrew concept.  It comes from the words rav chesed, and appears repeatedly in the historical books, the psalms and the prophets.  Literally it means “the greatness of loving kindness.”  The greatness of loving kindness is the grace and mercy of God.

I think it is fitting on this World Communion Sunday to think about the grace and mercy we find at this table to which Jesus invites us.  It is a table of grace:  God has placed a seat here for all of God’s children, regardless of how good and faithful we may or may not be.  We cannot earn a place at the table, because the place is already there for us.  The feast is prepared in advance and it is ready every time we come to it.  It is also a table of mercy:  the bread and cup are the promise of salvation in Jesus who set the table and calls us ’round it.  And on this first Sunday in October in particular, we remember that it is a universal invitation and an inclusive promise:  communities of faith all over the world are celebrating this morning, making our little congregation part of a global community.  And bringing the global community around our little table.  I was at a clergy retreat Thursday at the Mercy Center in Madison, and at the end of the day we celebrated communion with the reminder that the grain that comprises the bread has been gathered from countless distant hills, and that the grapes that make the wine come from vines across multiple vineyards, and these are combined to create a feast enjoyed by peoples from every community and town and city and nation.  When we come to the table of grace and mercy, we think of our tablemates, here in our sanctuary, and in churches and sanctuaries around the world.  I attended a communion service in a church in Prague several years ago where nearly the entire service was in Czech, yet despite the language difference, the minister made it abundantly clear that everyone was welcome at the communion table.  At the moment of invitation, she switched to English and said “All baptized persons are welcome at the table.”  It was the only sentence she spoke in English, and in that moment it was clear to me that even this foreigner belonged.  It truly is a global table to which we come.

And it is a table where we remember Ezra’s words in Nehemiah about the rev chesed, the greatness of loving kindness, “You gave your good spirit to instruct us, you did not withhold your manna from our mouths, you gave us water for our thirst.”  You gave us bread for the journey, and you gave us the well from which we drink deeply. By your abundant grace and mercy, you gave us the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation.  And in the sense that we enjoy a taste of salvation, a hint of heaven at the communion table, we can say God is inviting us to enjoy our dessert first.