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Texts: Philippians 2:1-7; Matthew 20:20-34
Today is World Communion Sunday.
In every country on earth, Christians join together in spirit at the Lord's table,
each in our own church and following our own ritual,
but by intention becoming part of a congregation of many millions.
The thought behind World Communion Sunday is that
the barriers between the nations are most effectively brought down
as all people everywhere come into communion with one Lord,
to eat at one symbolic table.
As we unite in spirit in this great corporate act of worship,
we demonstrate to ourselves and to the world
the oneness of humankind under God.
I love the image of people from all cultures and costumes and customs
sitting together at one table, breaking and passing bread and sharing the common cup,
celebrating our unity.
I love it that we sing and hear music from many languages and cultures
around the world on this day.
I like to remember how this feast unites us in a special way
with our sister church in Tottori Japan,
and with the Evangelical Presbyterian Churches
in Accra and Hofiefe Ghana in West Africa,
the sister church of my wife’s congregation, which she visited two years ago,
and with the Christian communities of the villages in and around
Rio Chiquito, Honduras where our congregation helped missionaries
Tom and Ava Clough build housing and develop health clinics,
and with the people of Zambia that Josephine McNeil visited this summer
with Communities Without Borders program
and with so many other Christian communities and cultures
where our members have connections and relationships.
This is a radical witness.
In a society so quick to distrust foreigners, despise immigrants,
and dismiss as inferior those “others” whose culture and customs
are different from ours,
we hold a worship service that celebrates our unity as children of God,
symbolically sitting down at a common table
and breaking bread together with all of them.
It is truly a counter-cultural thing to do.
The recent financial meltdown on Wall Street,
for all the fear and hardship and contentiousness it generated,
also served as one more reminder of how much
we all live in one common world, not many separate worlds.
The actions of the few affect the well-being of us all.
The greedy and rapacious designs of a few,
which generated the subprime mortgage debacle,
soon threatened the financial security of our entire banking structure,
locking up credit not only for big business,
but for small businesses and homeowners and everyday folks.
And this wasn’t just an American dilemma.
Stock markets and banks around the world reacted to the crisis,
because we have increasingly become one world economy.
The events of the past few weeks reminded me once again
of the words of my former pastor, William Sloane Coffin, who liked to say,
“The world is too dangerous for anything but truth
and too small for anything but love.”
of radical love and radical leadership:
“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them,
and their great ones are tyrants over them.
It will not be so among you;
but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant,
and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave;
just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve,
and to give his life a ransom for many.”
“Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant,
and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave.”
That may never fly as a political slogan for a presidential candidate,
but wouldn’t it be wonderful if it did?
Wouldn’t it be an amazing transformation
if our political leaders really were “public servants”
and the greatest of them – the person who held the highest office in the land
-- earned that position by being the servant of all the people?
Radical love and radical leadership.
I don’t think it’s any coincidence that right after Jesus presents that challenge,
he and his followers encounter two blind men on their way out of Jericho,
They cry out for healing: “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!”
“Lord, let our eyes be opened!”
Right after Jesus presents the challenge of radical love and radical leadership,
the blind men cry out, “Lord, let our eyes be opened!”
And moved with compassion, Jesus touched their eyes.
Immediately they regained their sight and followed him.
Sometimes, amid the dark threats of economic ruin,
and the nightmares of doomsday scenarios, and the thick clouds of xenophobic fear,
we can loose sight of God’s vision for our world,
a vision of equal worth and equal rights and equal justice
for every one of God’s creatures.
Then we are the ones who need to pray,
“Lord, move us with compassion, touch our eyes and let our eyes be opened”
Celebrating One World in Communion is one way
that we give witness to God’s vision for the world.
We bear witness to how God wants the world to be,
how we want to receive and treat and serve the other,
and how we want to be received and treated by each other.
The church in every generation is to hold before the world
Jesus' vision of what the human race really looks like,
a God's eye view of the earth and its destiny.
This is Jesus’ house, and Jesus’ meal table,
— the One who loved to gather with the alienated and the marginalized
and the outsiders for supper.
The church is to be that banquet table where there are no separating barriers,
no unknown languages, no passports or border crossings,
no entrance requirements or financial means test or demand of unfailing virtue,
no dividing lines of class or ethnicity or income or education,
no "alien" peoples or cultures or lifestyles.
For the true church, there are only fellow children of God,
only kinfolk and family, fellow sinners and fellow forgivers,
all needing to hear and share the good news of God’s free grace.
Gathering in World Communion is a political as well as a spiritual act.
Through World Communion Sunday we bear witness
to that new world that is already here, and is yet to come.
Through World Communion Sunday we bear witness against the old order
and the forces of fear and hate that would drive us apart.
World Communion Sunday is an act of hope,
that by our common faith and faithfulness
we can uproot the tree of division and death,
and replace it with the tree planted by the river of life.
And the leaves of the tree will be for the healing of the nations.
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