Come to the Mercy Table
Psalm 54
Rev John P. Wesley
February 17, 2010
Ash Wednesday
The table in the home I grew up in could seat six people comfortably. But there was a seventh chair always placed at the end of the table where my little sister sat. Six chairs were not enough places around the table for a family of seven. So a chair was placed next to my sister because she was the only girl, and she was the smallest in the family. My younger brother had to sit next to her, and I’d sit next to him. And then my next older brother would be on my left, and the oldest brother got a place at the other end of the table. We always sat in the same seats. I was always facing my mother across the table. I knew she was the one who set the table and she was the one who fixed the meals, day after day after day. Two meals when we were in school and three meals a day when we were out of school. And they’d be served within seconds of 7 o’clock and noon and six o’clock. No matter where we were or what we were doing, all of us knew we needed to be home for mealtime. There was no need for my mother to call. We knew the table was set, and food was prepared, and we’d better be there or else. One of the worst punishments I ever got was for coming late to the evening meal and then having the nerve to tell my mother I didn’t like what she had placed on the table.
We didn’t understand what she had gone through to prepare those meals. We thought that was just what mothers did. We couldn’t appreciate the creativity, the time and the energy she poured out day after day. But I think my father knew and he taught us to be respectful of her efforts by being on time and not complaining.
Now that table wasn’t always a happy place. You see, there’d be lots of times that I’d be mad at one of my brothers. We might not be on speaking terms. We may have been fighting with one another. But the feelings we had at the moment didn’t allow us to excuse ourselves from coming together around the table. We had to be there, and we had to be polite, and we couldn’t be grumpy or complain. It was the family table, and by sitting down around that table two or three times a day, the idea of what family is all about became engrained in our heads and our hearts. When we looked across the table we knew that the source of our life was the same. There was Dad the traditional provider and there was Mom, the one who cared us in her womb and gave us life and sustained that life everyday by feeding us at the table.
I didn’t know it then, but I was experiencing communion three times a day. I was feasting at a table of mercy.
There are so many words in the First Covenant that have been translated mercy. It is a very rich word. We get some idea of its multiple meaning by looking at other ways this word has been translated; to have compassion, to spare, to be gracious, to pity, to look with kindness or compassion.
One of the Hebrew words for mercy derives from a stem word that means either womb or brotherly feeling. One might speculate that the word mercy first rose out of the idea of a mother’s feeling for the child she first carries in her womb and then nurtures after birth. There is also the idea of the feeling that comes to those who have shared the same womb and been nurtured through the same mother. The word mercy become a familial word, a word that isn’t so much defined by the actions of children tin deserving the kind of treatment they receive, but rather the kind of love that sacrificially gives life and then cares for that life for as long as can be. Mercy, the mercy of God is that of a mother who does what she does not for the reward or gratitude that rises out of her actions, but does what she does because there is something inside her that cannot do otherwise.
There is a table of mercy set for each one of us, a place made for us to gather in the presence of God. It’s not just a table in a sanctuary or home. This table is set in the world God gives and contain the bounty of life. We are expected to be seen at this table when the food, the bounty of life is served. When we go missing, as Adam and Eve did in the garden of Eden, there is something about God that causes her to come looking for us. Our feeling may often be that we don’t deserve to sit and enjoy God’s cooking. We are not worthy of the sacrifice that is made for us. And that is a fair assessment. We don’t deserve the mercy that is shown to us. There is no way I merited the kind of sacrifice made by my mother or merited the eighteen plus years of meals at her table. But guess what? A mothers care isn’t about what the child deserves. It is about what is planted in the mother’s heart that cannot be squelched or removed. It reaches out to the child. Mercy, when it is attributed to God, is never just about something that is felt. Mercy is always a feeling that results in an action.
So David would pray, God have mercy on me, abundant mercy, and blot out my transgressions. And we know before David even speaks these words of confession that a merciful God is there, and that a table is already set, ready to forgive, ready to encourage this troubled sinner to embrace the life God continues to pour out upon him.
And we know in story Jesus told of the prodigal son, that as soon as he starts home with his rehearsed confession and his plan to be his father’s servant, we know that he is running into mercy and she will have a table already spread with his favorite foods, and there will be a greeting and there will be a place set for him beside his brother, and there will be a call for the brothers to remember they are from the same womb and must show mercy to one another as their father shows mercy to them.
We attempt to prepare ourselves for Lent this Ash Wednesday. We try to clean the plates, to get the bad stuff out so we deserve a visit from God. But friends we are dealing with mercy. She has not been waiting for us to get right. We are her children and she has already set the table for us and demands that we sit and receive with gladness what life can provide.
A former Roman Catholic monk told of a story from his days in the monastery. He said there was one monk who every day would take the holy sacrament of bread and wine to a small chapel and celebrate communion. One day the head of their order was visiting the monastery, and as he was being led by the small chapel he stopped to observe the solitary monk taking communion. When the monk finished, he raised the platen that had held the bread and he brushed and brushed at the table, trying to clean up any crumbs that were there.
The head of the order interrupted the monk and asked what he was doing. “Oh, I don’t want any of the precious body of Christ to be left on the table or spilled on the floor,” he said reverently.”
The head of the order went over and took the platen from the monk. With one big breath he blew the crumbs all across the chapel floor. The monk looked horrified, but the head of the order said, “There, Jesus is big enough to take care of himself. He doesn’t need you to make him safe in the world.”
This Ash Wednesday as we begin our journey toward Lent, let’s remember that we are not in charge, God is. God’s mercy to us is not about our deserving it or doing the right thing in order to receive it. God is our mother, who has carried us in her womb. God brought us into the world and wants to nourish us at the table of life. May we learn to come often and regularly, to still ourselves before our maker, that with glad and grateful hearts we will eat all that God has fixed in the kitchen and it will become our strength, our blessing, our life. Thanks be to God.
