Sept 1,2019                 Invitations                                              

The Christian songwriter, Bryan Sirchio, on one of his albums includes a song entitled, the Table of Friendship and Love. The song talks about a heavy metal music loving kid, who was invited to a local church group, and there he heard about Jesus, and the table of love for all that he spread, through his sacrifice on the cross. But the one thing he didn’t understand, was all the talk about realizing the kingdom of heaven on earth, “yeah, like that’s ever going to happen.”

Now this kid thought about the message that he had received, along with the warm welcome shown to him at the meeting, and he decided to do something about it. So one day, sitting at the table in the cafeteria, where he usually ate  his lunch alone, he put up a sign, Table of Friendship and Love.

A lot of the hipper kids, the popular ones, the jocks, the socialites, snickered and laughed, but one kid, a nerdy looking freshman, came up and asked, “Is this for real?”, and the heavy metal kid answered, “yep!” So the freshman sat down, and they struck up a conversation, and became friends. As the weeks went on, the table of fellowship and love grew, to the point where they made a new sign, and put it on another table, and then another, and another. Finally, even some of the hipper kids, began to hang out at these tables.

And there, in that cafeteria, the heavy metal kid, began to understand, all that talk about realizing the kingdom of heaven on earth, all it took was a sign, an invitation, to make it happen.

This summer, working a “real” job, has opened my eyes a little wider, to the world beyond the church. In most churches, I find a lot of people who are doing just fine, or at least they put a good face on it. I know from our prayer concerns, and from ministering to you in your times of need, that many of you aren’t always doing just fine, that your life is filled with the same kind of heartache, brokenness, and loss that the rest of the people in the world experience. The difference is, that you have the gospel of God’s love for you, and you have a church family. You have people who care about you, who check in on you, who pray for you, who look for you when you are lost. Somewhere along the line, you were invited to this Table of Friendship and Love, that we will soon be sharing later today, and you responded, not with “I cannot come”, but with a “yes”.

Now back to my “real” job. In that job, I have met people who are hurting, mother’s who have lost children, young people who have made mistakes in their lives that continue to plague them, older people plagued with debt, sometimes from the choices they have made in life, sometimes because their spouse died of a long slow medical condition, People in abusive situations, people who abuse drugs, most often because they are depressed and lost. People who have lost close friends, and wonder what the purpose and meaning of life is?

The problem is, these people don’t have a Table of Friendship and Love, Oh, maybe they have some family, and maybe they have someone in that family who looks after them, but not a whole church family. You know, sometimes I think we forget, just how blessed and fortunate we are, to have come to know Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, to know how much God cares and loves each one of us, and who calls us to be a family who is there for one another, watches over and encourages one another. Not everyone has that kind of extended family to help them through their difficult times in life.

So what can we do about this? Every year, in our churches we have special events in the calendar of the church. These events are wonderful opportunities to invite people to join us, even if it is for one Sunday. Rally Day is just such an opportunity, and this rally day we are serving Ice Cream Sundaes in fellowship hour. Yes, I know that sounds a little creepy, but we are inviting them to church. Also, I know that when we think of asking people to church, we go down a list of people we know, and check off all those who go to another church, or family members who we have asked a dozen times before. How about this time, we ask people we wouldn’t normally ask? Someone we bump into at the store, or a restaurant, or in the neighborhood. “Our church is having an Ice Cream Social on Sunday September the 15^th, come join us for just one Sunday, to see what our church is like!”

Who knows? We might just be throwing a lifeline to someone in need, or we might end up, as the writer of Hebrews says this morning, “entertaining angels” Either way, by inviting them, we will be inviting the Kingdom of heaven, to be made real on earth, here in our lives. And that’s the good news of Jesus Christ!