An inconvenient table

 

Matthew 14: 13-21
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
August 2, 2026

Photo of people with light brown and brown skin, short dark hair and beards lining up to be served rice and a curry dish. A large crowd is gathered behind them.

I’ve heard it said that we don’t need religion to have morals. If we can’t determine right from wrong, we lack empathy, not religion. Essentially I believe that to be true. We don’t need religion to be good people. There are plenty of folx who have never had contact with organized religion who are good and decent people.



In fact, one of these days, perhaps centuries from now, I would hope humanity would evolve beyond the need for religion or at least the need to export it and convert others. The prophet Jeremiah said that one day God will form a new covenant with God’s people, that God will put God’s law within them and write it on their hearts. No longer shall people have to teach one another or say to each other “Know the Lord” because we will all know God’s law of love and justice.



But I’ve been thinking and I don’t think religion is to help us be good people. I think it’s to help people be better than good. It’s one thing to know right from wrong and to have empathy. It’s quite another to love your enemy and pray for them. Or in the Buddhist tradition, to want the same lovingkindness for someone who hurt you or who is difficult as you would wish for yourself. Or while you are fasting in the month of Ramadan, you also invite others to break the fast with you and you perform acts of generosity. Or on Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, you fast and make amends to those you have wronged.



What religion does is remind us of our morals and our empathy when they are inconvenient. And not just inconvenient but the last thing we’d rather do. “When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves’.” Or when a fruit production company faces the collapse of major processing plants, instead of redistributing thousands of tons of fresh peaches, the federal government spends $9 million in taxpayer funds to destroy 420,000 peach trees to maintain market prices.



The Mishnah, the earliest rabbinic literature of Judaism tells us, that when it comes to the distribution of wealth, there are four kinds of people. There are some who say, “What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is yours.” These are the saints, the ones who are willing to disrupt their lives for anyone, no matter what, generous to a fault. There are others who say, “What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine”. When the scriptures refer to wicked people, this is who they’re talking about. This is naked self-interest, how much of humanity’s violent conflicts begin.



A third kind of people are those who say, “What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is yours.” You live your life; I’ll live my life. We think this sounds rather sensible, doesn’t it? This pretty much sums up a lot of American culture today, the average person on the street. But it also sounds like, “Send them away to buy their own food.” Their problems are their problems and my problems are my problems. It’s pretty convenient but no real community, no interdependence, nothing that really looks like love.



The fourth kind of people are those who say, “What’s mine is yours, and what’s yours is mine.” In other words, “You give them something to eat.” This is where Jesus and other faith traditions are trying to move us toward: a world where people share with each other, cooperate with each other, nothing less than a transformation of the human heart. This is the solidarity we long for. Your problems are my problems and my problems are your problems. And thus, so is the remedy.



This is why we come to this inconvenient Table, where we are fed and where we feed others, where no one is sent away—to create a habit of the heart, one in which we realize that when we disrupt our lives for others, especially the outcast and forgotten, even when it looks like we have nothing, all who hunger and thirst for righteousness are satisfied. Interconnected, we are enough.



In the words of poet John Roedel,



whenever I feel helpless
in this overwhelming world


I become a helper


oh, oh,
my love


on the days
when it feels like
I have no power


I serve others


you see,
whenever I wash
the world’s feet

[or feed the world’s hunger]


my hands
immediately
stop shaking



Thanks be to God for where our inconvenient faith meets the inconvenient world. Amen.

Benediction – “As We Gather at Your Table” #332, verse 2


Turn our worship into witness
In the sacrament of life;
Send us forth to love and serve you,
Bringing peace where there is strife.
Give us, Christ, your great compassion
To forgive as you forgave;
May we still behold your image
In the world you died to save.