God the Liberal

I said last week that this table is political. Here, our King calls us to his table and communes with us as his subjects, and we enact our loyalty and allegiance to our King. But this table also reveals God’s political bias. We tend to divide politics into conservative and liberal, and this means different things for different areas of life. But this table is a picture of what God expects of his people. Here God gives us himself, he gives us back to one another, he gives us the world, he gives us his joy and forgiveness. And he gives it all liberally, freely, with open hands. God is our great King, and he keeps giving week after week, day after day. The beggar mentality sees food, hordes it, and scarfs it down because it does not believe there will be more even though the King will be coming by again very soon. But notice how God deals with us. We are all poor beggars in need of mercy, in need of grace, and God comes with open hands and gives and gives and gives. The unrepentant heart does not realize that this is simply the way God is and continues to horde, continues to covet, continues to steal from fellow beggars. But the repentant heart suddenly realizes or comes to realize over a period of time that this is just the way God is. And this realization turns him or her into royalty, into nobility. Because when you realize that all you have is from the King, and the King keeps giving, then you are free to give, you are freed to care for others. You are freed not to worry about what you will eat, what you will drink, what you will wear. The King will provide all these things and more. And so it is here at the Eucharist. Here the King gives you himself; all that is his is at your disposal. In other words, in this sense the liberals are right. The way to deal with poverty is to pile gifts and riches and blessings on those without. The problem with most liberals is that they don’t know what good gifts, true riches, and real blessings are. But our God has them all at his disposal, and he invites us to his feast. So come, eat, drink and rejoice.