WORLD COMMUNION John M. Buchanan
October 3, 1982 Broad Street Presbyterian Church
Isaiah 25:6-9; Luke 24:28-35 Columbus, Ohio

All the theological rhetoric in the world is not as persuasive on the subject
as that one extraordinary photograph of the earth taken by the astronauts from the
surface of the moon. There we are: a look in the cosmic mirror - from the per=-
spective of a quarter of a million miles. There we are - as God sees us: a
beautifully, glistening life support system, protected by atmosphere, laced with
water and oxygen and carbon dioxide, glowing with the good, green hew of living
things; alone in space perhaps, but clearly and more importantly - an interde-
pendency, a unit, a whole, a family.

It has been a very long time coming to fruition ~ that vision of the whole-
ness of the human situation. It has been God's favorite project from the begin-
ning. Those who have known him best have understood it. The prophet Isaiah saw
it - with his marvelous vision of the whole family reunited around a banquet
table laden with food. Jesus saw it and wept because no one shared the vision.

There are today simple, factual reasons for acknowledging the oneness of
the race. The once vast globe can be transversed in hours. Lord Nelson's first
adventure in the British Navy in the late 18th century was to confront and do
battle with the Spanish at the Falkland Islands. When the fleet in which Nelson
was a sailor arrived at the Falklands, the Spanish had long since departed. The
trip had taken two years. Before the Second World War contact between Hawaii
and the mainland was limited to one TWA clipper flight per week.

Most of us have dialed and communicated across those same distances instantly.

The human family is close, not simply philosophically, but technologically
and, of course, militarily. Weapons designed to protect one nation from another
nation have made us terribly one because in William Sloan Coffin's unforgettable
imagery, "The World is now the target."

We are one family. We are on this space ship earth together. At no other
time in our entire long history have we been so vividly and poignantly aware of
the interrelatedness of the whole human family. Perhaps that is why the reality
of the brokenness, the alienation, the hatred, weighs so heavily. Perhaps God
has brought us this far precisely so that we can see the horror of what we have
done and continue to do with the wholeness he has created. It wasn't the first
massacre in history. It didn't even approach being the worst. But it will
rank among the most unbearable, precisely because we know now, as never before,
that we are related to those people - the murdered, and the murderers.

How, in God's name to change? How, today, October 3, 1982, to do anything
which might make it different for our grandchildren, or Russian, or Chinese, or
Cuban grandchildren?

We have to think new thoughts. The old ones don't work anymore. And it
is a particular sin to cling to them simply because we are used to clinging to
them. Survival forced families to be a little less fiercely families in order
to be tribes. Survival forced tribes to relinquish tribalism in order to be
nations. And now survival requires a little less nationalism and mich more
humanism. Our ability to make war - our capacity to make war with nuclear

—2~

weapons, has made the nation ~- as a unit of survival, at least, nearly obsolete,
The process seems to be starting and given a ghost of a chance it will work.
There is not one nation on earth capable of dealing with the complexity of the
Middle East. A multinational force is, at this moment, keeping the peace. We
Must think anew. For Christians that is often a matter of thinking tradition-
ally, The Bible sees us as one family. The Bible has always described our

sin as the unwillingness to Live together in the harmony God created.

We must think anew, and if we want it to be different ever, we must embrace
the ties with one another which Jesus Christ has already created. He has
already made his church one ~ across the lines of nation and race. To think
anew heans to stop thinking paroechially about the church of Jesus Christ: to
recognize as not only silly and sad, but also sinful, any notion that God
wants only Lutherans at comminion, or Catholics, or Presbyterians; or that
somehow there is any difference that matters because of pigmentation, or place
of birth,

In 1900, there were nine million Christians in Africa, In 1980 there were
200 million. Sometime in 1987 there will be a statistical balance of Christian
population between the Northern and Southern hemispheres, After that, most of
the world's Christians will be Latin Americans, African,

How wili it ever be different? We will have to think differently + poli-
tically, geographically, and theologically. We will have to be willing to
entertain the notion that the Judeo Christian tradition, and Western Civiliza-
tion, may not be the only expressions the Lord of the whole creation has used.
We may have to relinquish our comfortable provincialism and acknowledga that
the God of all people has been at work in all of history, not just ours. One
African thealogian said it eloquently, as a question: "Was God not there in
other times and in such places as Mount Fugi and Mt. Kenya, as well as Mt.
Sinai?” (John Mbiti, Theologians in Transition, p. 54)

Ite is time, Madeline L'Engle ~ Episcopal Layperson, one of my favorite
writers suggests, to stop discussing Christian unity and to leap across boun~
daries. It is time ~ obviously ~ to learn how to think anew which often times,
for Christians, is merely a matter of learning how to think in Biblical terms.

Listen now to God's word ~ first, the prophet Isaiah: "On this mountain
the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of
wine on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wine on the lees well re-~
fined. And he will destroy on this mountain the covering that is cast over
all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up
death for ever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from ali faces, and the
reproach of his people he will take away from ali the earth; for the Lord has
Spoken.

"It will be said on that day, "Lo, this is our God; we have waited for
him, that he might save us. This is the Lord: we have waited for him; let us
be glad and rejoice in his salvation.'" (Isaiah 25:6-9)

~ =

Centuries later, Jesus lived out the promise, and wept over the brokenness
of the creation, and died to make it whole, and in his resurrection was recog-
nized in an act of reconciliation and healing. Listen to the Gospel according
to Luke.

"So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He appeared
to be going further, but they constrained him, saying, 'Stay with us, for it is
toward evening and the day is now far spent.' So he went in to stay with them.
When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed, and broke it,
and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him; and
he vanished out of their sight. They said to each other, ‘Did not our hearts
burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the
scriptures?’ And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem; and they
found the eleven gathered together and those who were with them, who said, 'The
Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!' Then they told what had
happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread,"

(Luke 24; 28-35)

The (covoretion! 5 of God, that same favorite writer saya, reminds her always of

(cotortion so in Isaiah, the picture is of a family at a banquet of reunion.
e love of God incarnate is recognized at dinner, around a table,
when the bread is broken.

Isn't the reality of God known to us today precisely in the unbearable
brokenness of the world? Isn't the imperative of the banquet reunion more
urgent than ever before, precisely because of bodies broken and blood shed?

Perhaps our job this day is simply to weep over the brokenness, and to
confess our complicity with or at least our consenting silence in the face of
the mentalities which divide the family. Perhaps, as Martin Marty suggested
last week, the mission of Christians on this day is to make particular, and
specific, and individual the atrocity which was done, to make certain that some-
one remembers that depersonalized media statics are actually men and women and
children,

And perhaps our job is to dream dreams of peace, and to see visions of
justice and harmony and to celebrate that magnificent portent of the God of
all wiping every tear away.

I know our job is somehow to get on with it: to carry all of that to the
table and somehow to confess our responsibility for the world as it is and to
confess our desparate need for forgiveness and new power, and simply to ask
God to help us get on with this job of living as he wants us to live.

I know that the picture of the earth taken from the surface of the moon
is more eloquent than what I have been trying to say. And I know that Isaiah's
wonderful banquet and Luke's gentle supper say more about God's way and God's
will than anybody's homily on the occasion. And I know that this day is impor-
tant because Christians on every continent are gathered around a table - but
that it has to do ultimately with you and me and the private places in our
hearts: that the new love required for us to get on with the job of living
together ~- really has to do with God's love for us as individuals, as beloved
children who need first to be at peace with him.

w= Lye

So let us come to table - with brothers and sisters we have never seen -

but whose grandchildren will share with our grandchildren whatever future we
make.

So let us come to table with one another, here - in this place, acknowledging
our differences, and tn spite of them our intent to go on learning what it means
to love one another.

Cn

So t ~ let us come ~ anticipating that the risen Lord will meet us:
that in bread broken and wine poured out he will love us and wipe away every
tear and give us power to live and love in the world as his people. Amen.