FCC Winchester

What kind of table is this? This make-shift, ramshackle table in disarray, unclean, kinda… embarrassing, even. I hope there are no guests here this morning because we really didn’t clean things up for them very well, no clean white table cloth, no pristine silver goblets and plates, no candlesticks with fresh candles…in fact it looks like we dirtied everything down! 

What kind of table is this?

What kind of welcome is this?

Well, it’s intended to be a table with all pretense gone, for one thing. We haven’t tried this morning to clean things up enough or make it holy enough to be presentable to God, as though somehow our efforts make things holy, as though our work gets God down into this sacred moment. That is the typical path of religion in human culture across the ages. We busy ourselves with so many machinations to get what we want and need from the power above and beyond us. Jeremiah and the prophets had a word for this - idolatry - and he scoffs at it - “you cut trees and carve them and don them with gold and silver, like a scarecrow in a cucumber field and then bow down and worship it thinking it’ll get you what you want if you do the right things and avoid the wrong things.” The prophets are about ready to pull their hair out over how quickly Israel turns from the mysterious, invisible, uncontrollable and often times unsatisfying works of the true God to idols that they can create and manipulate towards the ends that they think is best for them… but those ends rarely if ever are, best for them, in fact, the prophets rail, they often bring things from bad to worse.