Just before daybreak, Paul urged all of them to take some food, saying, “Today is the fourteenth day that you have been in suspense and remaining without food, having eaten nothing. Therefore I urge you to take some food, for it will help you survive, for none of you will lose a hair from your heads.” After he had said this, he took bread, and giving thanks to God in the presence of all, he broke it and began to eat. Then all of them were encouraged and took food for themselves. (We were in all two hundred seventy-six persons in the ship.) After they had satisfied their hunger, they lightened the ship by throwing the wheat into the sea. ~ Acts 27:33-38
Who is being fed here? And who is doing the feeding?
Paul is a prisoner on his way to make his case in Rome. This is not a pleasure cruise. He is feeding the people who are enabling his imprisonment.
He is nourishing and caring for those who are bringing him to what will be his prison,
Who do we feed?
I admit that I have a particular issue with how the sacrament of Holy Communion is used (or not used) in some churches. I have an issue when the nourishment from Jesus' table is kept from people, for whatever reason: that they aren't a member of a particular denomination; that they haven't been to church in awhile...
That they have a "reputation" as a sinner of some kind.
Even that they aren't baptized.
Years ago my daughter invited a friend to church - she came from a family of atheists and wanted to see what church was all about.
When it came time for communion, technically she wasn't supposed to receive it. But when my daughter pulled her to her feet as we moved into the line, and as I saw her wide-eyed curiosity and hopefulness...
All I could think to say to her was" Come."
Come. Because Jesus would want her fed.
Have you ever felt excluded from the Lord's Table?
Have you ever fed someone who others might not have felt was deserving?
When was a time you were fed by someone who was a stranger? What was the outcome? Did that person stay a stranger?
Help me, Lord, to live a life of radical hospitality and to keep no one from your table. Amen