Come to the Table
Isaiah 65:1-9
A few
years ago, I went with Diane to Montreat, NC, to help her supervise her high
school students. Montreat is like our
Caswell weeks. There’s lots of fun,
staying up late, and every day there’s worship.
The theme that year was, “Come to the table.” Every day they would sing a song that
started out, “Come, come, come; Come to the table. Come, come come, there’s room for everyone.” Sometimes they would sing it twice during
the worship service. When I was
learning the song, it was OK to sing it over and over. But about Wednesday, I wanted to say,
“Enough already! Can’t you see I’m here
at the table?! Can’t we move on?!”
It wasn’t until late in the week that I realized that God
had been inviting me all week to take a step toward greater intimacy…to really
take a step closer to the heart of God…and I thought that just because I was in
the room, I was at the table. I thought
just because I heard the invitation, I was there. I was wrong. I wasted a
good chunk of that week thinking I was at the table…that I was where God wanted
me to be…and it wasn’t until later that I realized I wasn’t at the table at
all.
When have you missed God’s invitation?
One of the reasons I like the book of Isaiah so much is
that we see God’s gentle nudges over and over for people to come to the table
of intimacy. You only have to read the
first three verses of our text today to be reminded of this. Here we have God’s invitation to come into
the presence of the Divine, yet the people thought they were there when they
really were not.
Here in Isaiah, God invited the people to come when they
showed no interest in being invited.
God sought out people when they weren’t seeking God. And God welcomed people even when they
seemed to mostly provoke God. Listen
again to these first three verses.
1 I was ready to be sought out by
those who did not ask, to be found by those who did not seek me. I said,
"Here I am, here I am," to a nation that did not call on my name. 2
I held out my hands all day long to a rebellious people, who walk in a way that
is not good, following their own devices; 3 a people who provoke me
to my face continually, (Isaiah 65:1-3a, NRSV).
God is
saying through Isaiah, “Come to the table,” yet for a variety of reasons, the
people did not come.
Why don’t
we come to the table when invited? Why
don’t we step nearer to the heart of God?
For people in Isaiah’s day, sin was the major hurdle. The people worshipped things other than God,
they blamed God when things didn’t go well, and they neglected the traditions
of their faith. But the biggest mistake
they made is forgetting that God is serious about sin. In verses 6-7, God says through Isaiah…
6 I will not keep silent, but I will
repay; I will indeed repay into their laps 7 their iniquities and
their ancestors' iniquities together, says the LORD; because they offered
incense on the mountains and reviled me on the hills, I will measure into their
laps full payment for their actions. (Isaiah 65:6-7, NRSV).
God is so serious about sin that
he gave us his son, Jesus. Jesus has
cleared all the stuff away that prevents us from coming to the table of
God.
Every month, we come to the table. If you worship here regularly, you’ll hear
me invite you to come. You’ll hear me
say, “You don’t have to be Baptist, you don’t have to be a member of this
church.” The tradition and routine is
sound, yet sometimes we end up too much like me at Montreat. We say, “Enough already! Can’t we just get on with it?!”
This morning, I want you to listen to the invitation to
come closer to the heart of God through some different voices – the voices of
European art. In the next few moments,
you will see words of scripture taken from the passion week of Jesus, and an
artist’s vision of what this event looked like. As you read and watch, please hear the voice of God inviting you
to come to the table, to come nearer to the heart of God. Don’t let anything stand in the way.
Amen.