Missing from the Table

NOTE: I write this blog post in light of my brother-in-law (Ray) who is serving his third tour of duty in the U.S. military. Ray--we can't wait until you come home in a few weeks.

On my drive from my parents-in-law to my mom and dad's home, I listened to a show on NPR dedicated to the people who were missing from the family table this Thanksgiving weekend.

One caller told about his dad who was killed in Vietnam several decades ago. He was just two. He never knew his dad, yet he desperately wanted him at the table. Another caller wept as she described her son's drug addiction, his status in rehab, and the grim reality that his spot at the family table would remain empty for the foreseeable future.

An Alaskan called in saying this was the first time he would not be in the "lower 48" (a phrase that is now in mainstream culture thanks to Gov. Palin) for the first time ever. He was sending out a word of encouragement and thanksgiving to his family.

A middle-age man called in lamenting his parents unexpected divorce. Now the family was divided into two camps: those spending Turkey Day with mom . . . and those spending the beloved holiday with dad. His call was essentially a lament.

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The Greek word for which we get communion and Lord's Supper is the word "eucharisteo" (often used in English as simply The Eucharist). The word simply means "to give thanks" or "I give thanks."

I've always been convinced that Thanksgiving has the potential for Christians to really be the church. To welcome all sorts of people to the table (family, friends, estranged, broken, forgotten) and the midst of sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes, green-beans take the bread and the wine and give thanks for the tables and people in our lives.

And . . . to remember that Jesus himself would remind us that a day is on its way when he will reside at the table and we will no longer have to lament the broken relationships, addictions, divorces, and death in our lives for all things will be made new.

The Table

“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets.” Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk (pg. 52)


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Yesterday, in one of our church gatherings during family communion, we asked the church to write the names of those who are hurting during the beginning of the holiday season on a large sheet of paper in the front of the sanctuary.

Some wrote their own names. Others wrote the names of women and men experiencing Thanksgiving and Christmas for the first time as a single mother/father. One person wrote the names of homeless women and men he'd been working with the last several months, while another person wrote the names of people undone by the loss of a spouse. One young person prayed for their grandma; at least I deciphered the writing, "Mimi," as the work of a grandchild.

In a time of systematic, commercial frenzy--the church is a place that offers healing, relationships, and listening ears. We do not offer "air-tight" answers for most people need a person, not a clever diatribe on suffering, angels, and God's activity in the world.