Leithart
Psalm 104: All wait for the Lord, that He may give them their food in due season. What He gives them they gather in; He opens His hand, they are filled with good.
Each week we come to church and gather at a table. That might seem odd way to spend time in the presence of God. We can eat at home. We do eat at home, every day. What’s so special about coming to church, if we only get the same-old, same-old?
It is special, but we can’t really understand how it’s special until we see that it is also the same-old, same-old. We go wrong in our understanding of the Lord’s Supper when we forget that it is food, when we neglect the obvious, that it is a meal.
Because it is food, it tells us something about our Father, and about our Husband, Jesus. Like the good husband that Toby has been describing in his sermons, Jesus provides for our needs. He nourishes us and cherishes us. He does this all because He loves us, and the bounty of this table is one of the continuing signs of that love. Our husband cares for us, and we as his bride call him Lord.
This sign of His love that is particularly apt in today’s world. By today’s world, I mean today’s world, the world still reeling from the loud kaboom of the stock and real estate bubble that just burst, the world that has seen a staggering destruction of wealth, the world where unemployment keeps rising and stocks keep falling.
In that world, today’s world, we gather every week at the table of our Father which is the table of our husband, Jesus, and we are reminded week after week that He will not leave us bereft. He will not leave us a widow. All is in His hand, and He opens that hand to satisfy the desire of every living thing. He opens that hand to satisfy us.
We can’t know what the next year or two will bring. Some have lost jobs, more might. Many have lost income, or savings on a massive scale. We don’t know what the coming months will bring, but we know one thing. Through it all, our Father will keep feeding us, here at this table and, because He does it here, He will fill every other table as well.
This table points us to look with faith to the birds of the air, who neither sow nor reap, yet are fed. This table points us to look with faith to our Father, to whom we are more precious than many sparrows.
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