September 11, 2006
Tale of Two Tables
I love tables and my favorite is a large round oak pedestal table that I inherited from my grandma. As a young couple starting out, my grandparents bought the table at a yard sale for 25 cents. After her children were grown, grandma turned her large home into a boarding house for men. In keeping with grandma’s motto of everything must be ‘easy to clean’, she covered the table top with heavy duty linoleum and secured it with an aluminum band. At some point a strand of bailing wire wrapped around the base of the pedestal solved the problem of loose glue joints. Bill refinished grandma’s table without loosing years of character marks. Our Communion table at church also brings back fond memories. Positioned prominently in front of the podium, the table held a large white gilded King James Version of the Bible, an 18 inch pedestal gold cross and the communion trays for the worship service. Across the face of the 6 foot long oak table was written in block letters, “This Do In Remembrance of Me”. Our communion table was unceremoniously removed to make room for worship service props and productions. As if to keep protests to a minimum the table sat for a time in the Fellowship Hall covered with a plastic table cloth. Next it migrated to the men’s baptismal area where I last saw it holding laundry baskets containing wet robes and towels waiting to be laundered…This Do In Remembrance of Me.
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----As I began reading your piece, I quickly looked for a tie into 9-11. You know: two towers, two tables.
----Then I noticed that these two acts by the leaders, taking the communion table from the sanctuary, and using it for the support of dirty laundry indeed caused the collapse of two towering scriptural principles: 1) love your neighbor as yourself, and 2) do nothing that causes your brother to stumble. Is there any question that the communion table would have remained firmly in its place if it were the contemporary leaders who found significant meaning in its presence? If there is any question, then examine this evidence: it was in the contemporary leaders' interests to remove it, it is in their interest to perform predominantly contemporary music, it is in their interest to leave the "stage" cluttered with music equipment, to replace Fred's podium with a transparent one, then a music stand, to save up a staggering sum of money and cry to the church about how short the budget is, to remove good volunteers from benefitial positions and replace them with paid personell, etc., etc., etc.
All of these things which were in their interests, but not in the universal interest of the church, seemed to work out according to their interests.
----The concept of love is actually supposed to mean something. I have heard the preacher there refer to the twenty one "one-anothers" in the New Testament. And that is what love is supposed to mean, being about one-another. But the interests of those who found meaning in the communion table, the podium, and the rest of the evidence found no other place to rest in the hearts of the leaders except in the term, "narcissistic immature Christians." That towering Biblical principle of "love thy neighbor as thy self" fell with the removal of the communion table.
----The other tower was hit by the dirty laundry. So what if the leaders do not hold any meaning in the communion table? The Scripture does not require them to. But it does require them to hold meaning in their brothers and sisters...great meaning. In fact, the Scripture goes so far as to tell them to look to the interests of their brothers and sisters (Philippians 2:4) and to please them for their edification (Rom 15:2). The meaning that the Scripture tells us to have in one another is to be so great that we will be compelled by it to not even so much as offend one another (Rom 14:13-23). Yet the irreverant treatment the leaders gave the communion table offended many who still held great meaning in it.
----What should have stood tall in the midst of that congregation, the Scriptures that call for unity in looking to each other's interests, and treating each other accordingly, or the values and meanings in which the leaders place interest? I will choose the Scriptures every time.
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