“A Banquet With The Saints”
Scripture Reading: Revelation 21:1-6
Sermon Transcript for November 5, 2006
By Pastor Bob Coleman
I want to specifically say this morning, usually we get concerns before the prayer, but you hopefully will see how it is going to be woven in. I want to share with you that Sue Smith fell and broke her hip this week and we need to remember Sue, and Raymond, and John in our prayers. Pat Burton had knee surgery. And we want to remember, of course, the service for Dick Armstrong yesterday. And Vera Jean Adams was in the hospital this week. I mention these because we need to see ourselves connected, that those concerns are not just a passing off of information, but it helps us to know that we are with each other now. We talk about the “Communion of Saints” which we sang in our opening hymn. Most of us think of that as something in the future. The very word “saint” because of the Catholic side of the Christian faith talks about the person becoming qualified to be a saint long after they are dead and sometimes a century or two as we know Mother Guerin became a saint. Most of us hold that off way too long.
I want us to think about the saints that we are sitting with today or who can’t be with us because of hospitalization or other reasons. But I also want to talk about a banquet. What was the first banquet you ever went to? It’s a trick question. The first banquet I ever went to was when mom called me from the backyard to come in for dinner. And I can remember that. Do you remember that? Maybe you had that warm episode in your life. We’d be out playing, my four sisters and I, at different times doing our own projects and our own play and here comes a voice clear to the back of our big back yard, which was really only to the back of the sanctuary. It was big when I was growing up; it got much smaller when I was an adult. But I can remember Mom’s voice. Dad didn’t call because we couldn’t hear him being a lower voice. But Mom’s was high enough and shrill enough it carried all of the way back. And when we responded the first time, we would go in. But sometimes we knew that there was something more important—that was the play that we were doing. So Mom would call again. Finally, in our rush to get inside and wash our hands, sort of—one bathroom and four sisters and Mom and Dad, well, some of us didn’t always wash our hands. But we gathered around the table. We had a prayer, a memorized prayer. And then it was like a circus. Now Mom kept trying to bring order and Dad just lovingly passed the potatoes. But Mom would call out to the back yard, “Julie, Bob, Kathy, Janice, Nancy!!” And usually we didn’t have to be called twice.
But now we are around the table and I think it was all of, Mom said it was five minutes, but I think we were there at least ten before we were done. Because you see, there are more important things than just eating something, it’s eating something to fuel you up so you can go back out and play. Mom would say almost every meal, “I spent hours preparing this meal and you can eat it in five minutes!” And that was really true on Thanksgiving and birthdays and Christmas. She spent much more time. We ate noisily; we ate quickly; but it was a banquet none the less. And now we grow up and I can remember we would call, “Christa and Angie”, when it was time for supper. Sometimes they would respond first, many times not. But we went through the same. Now I look forward to the time to calling, “Jacob!”, or hearing my daughter do that calling our grandson.
Maybe you’ve got that memory and maybe you don’t. But let me share with you that if you do not, it does not mean you’ve not been invited to a banquet or shared in one. Harry Leveridge was one who was probably never called in to supper like that for he grew up in an orphanage in Iowa. Harry Leveridge had a rough life. He didn’t have a family like we typically think. He also lost his daughter through a murder and then his wife through a difficult, long illness. So by the time he came to be a custodian at the church where I served (before I got there), he was an old crusty guy. He didn’t know what it meant to be invited to a banquet. He didn’t know what it meant to be invited to anything other than the navy. But the people at the church invited Harry there to real meals—fellowship meals but also just invited Harry and said, “Come on to church. Come on and sit with me.” That’s an invitation to a banquet and Harry took it one day. And he had a new family. It was the family of the church and he loved that family until the day he died. And I believe he still loves that family.
See, I want to offer you today an opportunity to look through a veil that is truly there. None of us can see beyond this life. We can imagine. We can read the words of Scripture. We can conceive in our head the ideas and images and the possibilities. We hear music that gives us another understanding. But we still do not know what it is going to be like. So when we talk about the “Communion of Saints” it’s thinking of those people who have gone before. But I want you to think about those who have gone before and those who are here today in our midst in our lives—our friends and our families—because it’s not a banquet around a table where you sit down and eat food, it’s the banquet of life and of God’s love. There is an invitation that Jesus offers through the Parable of the Master and the Servant in Luke 14. Let me paraphrase and read it to you:
Jesus said, “Blessed is the man, the one who will eat at the feast of the Kingdom of God.” And he tells a story about a certain man who was preparing a banquet. And he called his favorite friends, the “Top A” list to send out by his servant a word of invitation. ‘I’m going to have a banquet and I wish for you to come and be with me.’ Then the sad news came for they all began to make excuses. ‘I just bought five yoke of oxen. I just got a new car and I want to break it in. I just bought a field. I just made an investment over in Ohio and I need to go look at it and check it out. Sorry. Excuse me, I can’t come.’ Now the one even had what sounds like a very reasonable one, ‘I just got married. I can’t come.’ So the master becomes angry. The very people he gave a direct, personal invitation turned him down. He says to his servant, ‘Well then you just go out into the field and the streets and the alleys and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.’ The servant did all of that and he brought in many people. When he came back the master said, ‘Now there is still room for some more.’ The master says, ‘Then go out to the road and the country lane and make them come in so that my house will be full. And I tell you, not one of those who turned me down from my personal invitation will be able to be at a banquet with me.’
That’s a powerful message. If we literally didn’t come in at all when Mom called, we wouldn’t get anything, right? That’s a simple answer to this. The invitation God gives to us is to be around the banquet table, not literal with food, but the banquet of love. And the invitation is open, not just the “A list” but to all people. For Jesus Christ came and said, “I’m the door, the pathway, the life. Come through me and you will know eternal life beginning now.” In fact, I want you to see the words from Revelation, which is where God completes the story that He started with His creation in Genesis. And listen to what it is going to be like in that place to be. In Revelation 21 the Scripture shows and tells us, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth have passed away and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying; ‘Now the dwelling with God is with men and He will live with them. They will be His people and God Himself will be with them and be their God. God will wipe away every tear from their eyes and there will be no more mourning or crying or pain for the old order of things has passed away.’ He who is seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new.’ Then he said, ‘Write these down. These words are trustworthy and true.’ And he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To him who is thirsty, I will drink without cost from the spring the water of life.'"
The banquet has been made new. It is a future image and it is a present image. When Harry Leveridge accepted the invitation to come around the banquet of love, it was a new beginning for him, it was a new life. Everything old had passed away even to the point of forgiving the man who had killed his daughter. He told me, “I can’t forgive the event, but I have forgiven him in my heart. I don’t know what good it did for him, but it did a world of good for me.” A powerful message for us to keep our minds and our focus on. In Hebrews, Chapter 12, the writers says to us, “Therefore since we are surrounded by such a great crowd of witnesses, let us throw out everything that hinders and sin that so easily entangles and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus the author and protector of our faith who for the joy set before Him endured the cost scorning in shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
The invitation is open. We sometimes though wish to believe that the invitation takes away all of the unhappiness of this life. No, a grief physician and counselor said this, “Sometimes there is no happy ending in this life and we are suspended through this journey in grief. Sometimes we need to stay with grief for a while, feel it, and let it out for the wisdom is that we can see things through tears that we can’t see through dry eyes.” So maybe some tears will be shed today for the loss of someone just this last year, for the loss of someone thirty and forty years ago. My father died eight years ago and I can’t guarantee or predict when the tears will come but they do when they need to because it is when I have a communion with my father, when I remember him, some special moment. For it is never lost to us, not in eternity.
The invitation to the banquet has gone out, it has gone out to each of us and to all those who have gone before. And the communion of the saints today then is around the communion table. It is when the bread is broken we remember. It is when the cup is taken it is remembered what Christ has done for us and what Christ makes possible for us. For it is Jesus who gave out the invitation and the table has been prepared and we need not, we dare not turn him down. For it is our lost completely. God will receive those who hear His voice. God will take unto Himself those who have heard the call. God will be the God of those who hear His voice when He responds. For God will go with you and with me and with all the saints in glory and all the saints around here by you today and in your life.
So when you hear the names read, in the setting of communion today, remember it is the same as Christ inviting them and us to His table. So will you bring up in your heart also today anyone that you miss. Any name of any person who is no longer physically with you but you remember with both tears of joy and of sorrow and of hope.
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