We moved to Florida from Massachusetts when I was 8.  We didn’t have extended family nearby for most of my life.  On Thanksgiving Day, my parents, sister, and I could be found in the kitchen of Spring Hill United Church of Christ.  My mother had the idea that we should band together with other church members who were without close biological family and instead have a church family Thanksgiving.  People who had the energy and ability to come and cook would meet in the morning and prepare food for about 50 people.  My job was always peeling the bags and bags of potatoes, and I think I still have the callouses…  but the days were joyful.  Chatting around the preparation table, clearing the chairs out of the Sanctuary and turning it into a banquet hall of homemade decorations and lovingly placed table settings…  Eating around tables with family you had known for years and family you just met, and then clearing the food away and playing board games around those tables late into the evening. Christmas dinner, however, was held in our home, but the dining room table, plus 2 or 3 card tables would wrap around from the dining room into the living room and there were usually more than a dozen of our chosen family gathered around it.  Luckily, the end of the table met up with the beginning of the piano, so it was an easy transition for my dad to make after dinner so we could sing everyone’s favorite carols.

Those holiday tables were formational in a way that I didn’t consider for many years. One significant time I always call upon when thinking about the family that was formed around those tables is my sister’s wedding.  My sister had three grandmothers present, announced in the program, and escorted into the ceremony. None of the three was biologically related to us. As the years have flown by, many of our precious table guests have passed away as at what feels like the same moment, my family and my sister’s have grown by 2 wonderful spouses and 3 pretty amazing kids. Although we mourn their absence, while still feeling the presence of our dear ones, time has changed the demographics of our holiday tables.  However, what my parents taught me, not just about holidays, but about tables was indelible:  No one should be alone, there is always room for another chair, and everyone should get to eat their favorite dessert, to play their favorite game, and to sing their favorite carol with people who care about them.  Anyone and everyone can become family.

Tables are, at their very essence, about community. It’s no wonder of coincidence that so many of the stories about Jesus revolved around tables and eating.  The story of the feeding of the multitudes is the only one of Jesus’ miracle stories that is recounted in all four gospels (and actually told 6 times).  The repetition of this story is a clue that it represents a memory near and dear to the heart of the early church. Apparently, they also viewed these memories of eating together too important to ever be forgotten.  Matthew’s account has the disciples respond in a matter-of-fact way to Jesus’ command to give the people something to eat. They simply give a factual account of their limited provisions.  The accounts of this story in Mark, Luke, and John emphasize, in varying ways, the more sarcastic skepticism of the disciples:

“Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?” (Mk. 6:37)

“We have no more than five loaves and two fish—unless we are to go and buy food for all these people” (Lk. 9:13).

“Six months wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little” (Jn. 6:7).

In Matthew, though, they simply report: “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish” (Mt. 14:17).

To which Jesus responds, “Bring them here to me.”

Jesus then blesses the food and instructs the disciples to move through the crowds, distributing baskets of food to the hungry people.

So it would seem that, if we are to imagine ourselves into the shoes of the disciples in Matthew’s account, we are also called to obey Jesus’ daring, even ridiculous command.  We are to offer our limited resources with a blessing and take responsibility, not to hoard them for ourselves, but to distribute them to others. Alyce McKenzie writes: “[This story] is recorded for future generations because we need to hear it over and over again too.

Why? Because over and over again in life, we stand in the shoes of the disciples in this passage: surrounded by human need, faced with a challenge, knowing we do not have the resources, in our own wisdom, wealth, and strength, to meet the need, to stand up to the challenge. Jesus’ words “You give them something to eat,” are a “divine jest. They are a daily dare. He’s saying “I dare you to take me at my word. And see what happens.”  The scene leaves us with the disciples moving through the crowds, lugging twelve baskets full of leftovers. That’s the mental image we ought to keep before us whenever we stand in the shoes of the disciples in this passage—which, really, is every day.”

Now, do I believe that Jesus did a divine magic trick and those 5 loaves and couple of fish literally multiplied and fed all those people – 5,000 men, plus women and children?  No, I don’t.

Because if magic tricks were what it took to feed hungry people, to give the outcast and lonely a place at the table, then there is no hope for this world.  I don’t think it was a magic trick at all, I believe it was a shared blessing.  I believe that as that basket was passed around, people had the opportunity to add to it – to share.  The disciples may have only had 5 loaves and 2 fish- but someone else in that crowd may have had 2 loaves and 1/2 a fish, and one had a cracker or two, and one had an egg, and one had a chocolate bar, one has a bottle of wine stashed in a pocket, and one had a peppermint somewhere in the bottom of their purse, and some had nothing at all, but when it was added all together, there were twelve baskets of communal abundance left over.  I believe that the blessing and challenge that Jesus offered that day was one that gave the crowd an opportunity to turn against the empires’ refrain of scarcity and hoarding and inequitable distribution of wealth and instead to indulge in the practice of generosity that leads to equality and abundance – and that really is a miracle.  I read this story as one that invites those who can to give from their privilege, and also those who can give a little bread, but need to receive a drink of water are met in their need and thanked for their generosity, and those whose pockets are empty and cupboards are bare are still met with a seat at the table.

This is a story that reminds me that even though I can’t literally multiply food, I can accept the challenge of setting a table with a generous abundance of what is needed: food, toys, hugs, time, love, or whatever else may be asked of me.

So, what does this biblical story have to do with Christmas – nothing, really and maybe, also everything.  It reminds us of the kind of person whose birth we celebrate year after year, the kind of person that was raised not in a vacuum, but by a radical mother who sang upon her child’s conception that the powerful will be brought down from their thrones, the lowly will be lifted up; that the hungry will be filled with good things.  That this child who was born vulnerable calls out first to the vulnerable of society. A child who grows up and reminds us if we have but 2 loaves and 5 fishes, we can feed the hungry world because we are not called to scarcity, but to abundance, and we will keep showing up for each other.  This story calls us back to the table.

Of course, you all know this.  UCG is a place built around tables of abundance.  Tables of chili, tables at Grace Marketplace, tables of gifts at Rawlings Elementary, tables that are not empty because of backpacks that went home full, dinner tables with our Family Promise guests, the Kairos table of cards lovingly prepared for us to sign and send off with messages of love, of tables of laughter and sacred conversations at lunch groups, tables set with a laptop recording a book being read to a child by their mother or grandmother or auntie who has been incarcerated, board and committee tables keeping our sacred place moving forward with health and vitality, small groups and seminars learning and growing together, folders and stands and lecterns that serve as tables for the music and words that we share with each other, people holding hands in prayer and meditation around a table lit with the flames of blessing, and communion celebrations when we remember that we all are sustained from one loaf and drink from the same source… and I am sure that we all could name even more tables which you have been blessed to have pulled up a chair.

Earlier this fall, Sally Simonis introduced me to the poet laureate, Joy Harjo – and I was enthralled.  I read another of her poems at our Church on the Prairie service and perhaps at this rate, some day I may earn her the same status at UCG as Mary Oliver (I mean, I am talking about miracles today)…

This morning’s poem caught me in this time of rush and tradition and reflection and anticipation. In it I heard the Advent journey to Christmas spoken anew…

Put down the junk food and go on a journey…  Take a breath…  “The journey might take you a few hours, a day, a year, a few years, a hundred, a thousand or even more.  When you find your way to the circle, to the fire kept burning by the keepers of your soul, (advent wreath) you will be welcomed.  Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It may return in pieces, in tatters. Gather them together. They will be happy to be found after being lost for so long.  Your spirit will need to sleep awhile  (preach, Joy) after it is bathed and given clean clothes.  Now you can have a party! Invite everyone you know who loves and supports you. Keep room for those who have no place else to go (perhaps like those refugees in the stables of our world and those who need someone to hold their grace light for them).

Make a giveaway, and remember, keep the speeches short (I promise I’m almost done).  Then, you must do this: help the next person find their way through the dark, (and pull a chair up and set a place for them when you arrive there together).

Tables are sacred and to these tables we are accountable.  All of us are accountable to pay attention to who is missing, who may not have received an invitation, and we must always be ready to make room at the table for one or 5,000 (plus the women and children) more.  And we must be accountable to ourselves – to love ourselves enough to show up and to find ourselves worthy enough to sit down, to know that we have something to bring, and a unique and sacred gift to offer.

When I was a student at Rollins College, in the winter, Mr. Rogers would often pop in to his alma mater.  It was a special blessing when he preached a Sunday service in the chapel.  I will never forget the Sunday morning when he said to all in attendance, “I would like to give you all an invisible gift, a gift of a silent minute to think about those who have helped you become who you are today. Wherever they are, if they’ve loved you and encouraged you, and wanted what was best for you, then they are right inside yourself.  And I feel that you deserve quiet time to devote some thought to them.”  This was a practice he often invited people into, and if you have seen the new movie with Tom Hanks, they even included it in the script.   I want to give you an invisible gift today.  In fact, I want to give you three.  Three silent minutes for three trolleys of thought.

At the beginning of each minute, I will give you a prompt for thought.  These gifts are just for you, I will not ask you to share them, so feel safe and free to follow them wherever they lead.

And so, the first gift: A minute to remember those who have loved you into being, who have shown you what abundance means and helped you become who you are today.

The Second: Imagine yourself at a sacred table, what is on it, who is around it, and who made room at it for you?

And the Third: Who is missing from your table, and how can you extend the invitation, make room, set a place, and pull up a chair for them?

I will close as Fred Rogers would: “Whomever you have been thinking about, imagine how grateful they must be that during your silent times, you remember how important they are to you.”  On this love Sunday, I want to thank you for being a place of abundance, for always finding a way to make room, and for setting a place for me at your table. Amen.