Come Home With Us

Here is my wife Beth's devotion for this past Sunday, written for our church to complement the Sunday sermon. 

Come Home With Us

By Beth Stroble

As we consider the meanings of being “at the table,” Linda first invited us to imagine how our gathering for communion joins us to a very big table of all the saints in our lives. The action of setting place cards for those most dear to us was a poignant and vivid way of experiencing that fellowship of all believers.

This week’s scripture (Luke 24:28-35) shares a different story of Jesus sharing a meal with the disciples after walking with them unbeknownst. Only as he breaks bread with them do they recognize him as the risen Christ. In retrospect, they realize their “hearts were burning” in his presence on the walk to Emmaus, but only as they joined him at the table are their eyes opened to see him clearly. This well-known story is puzzling.  Why would the disciples have not known him as they walked and talked together?  Yet they felt a familiarity from his presence.  What was it about the breaking of the bread that created the revelation?

Theologians across the ages have pondered these same questions. For Wesley, the experience of his “heart being strangely warmed” triggered an awakening of God’s grace in ways that were as life-changing as the moment when the Apostle Paul was momentarily struck blind.  These journeys did more than take individuals from one place to another. But in this case, it was the fellowship of the shared meal that created an epiphany that then forged the bond of shared identity—believers in the presence of God.

How true it is for me that my earliest sense of self was formed through interactions at kitchen tables with my immediate and extended family members!  What did it mean to be the firstborn? Who was I as the first generation of a Southern family to be raised in the north? What traditions and habits defined us as a family?  What topics of conversation were favored at the table?  What kinds of stories did we enjoy telling and retelling?  Who was the most skilled in the telling of those stories? What memories were sure to provoke gales of laughter?  And when would my father get ready to head to the car, always saying to his mother and the four brothers/families, “Just get in the car and come home with us.” An impossible thought, of course, but a sign of his true love and hospitality for his family. I knew what it meant to be a Powell and what it meant to be the granddaughter of the McNabbs and the Powells because the sense of being our truest and most grounded selves was formed at those tables. I was stamped with this sense of being together, being with my people, knowing who and whose I was.  While the aunts and uncles and grandparents did not physically come home with us, in a sense, they did and remain with me still.

And so it should be as we join the table of our Lord. Through the breaking of bread and the sharing of the wine, we affirm our identity as children of God.  We are the ones who believe that we are saved through Christ’s death and resurrection.  We are those who trust in the presence of the Holy Spirit. Just as we are our most relaxed and unguarded in family gatherings, may we feel fully welcomed at the Lord’s table, bringing our every care and need, knowing that our salvation is found there in Christ’s saving grace and in the fellowship of fellow believers. As we unmask to share the bread and the cup, may we welcome into our hearts and lives the abiding presence of our Lord. Come Lord Jesus, come home with us.  Amen.