7/5/2026 - “The Table Comes with Extensions” - Rev. Anthony Spearhart

So, one of the things I love about the two scriptures we heard today is that they do not begin with us.

And I think that matters.

Because sometimes as Christians, we can be very quick to hear a passage from the Hebrew scriptures and immediately ask, what does this mean for me?

And that's not a bad question to be asking.

Because Scripture is living, it does still speak.

But before we ask what Isaiah 55 says to us, we need to honor who it first spoke to.

Isaiah 55 was not originally written to a Christian church in the year 2026.

It was not written to people sitting in pews wondering how to be a more welcoming congregation.

It was first spoken to a people who knew exile.

A people who knew displacements.

A people who knew what it was to wonder if the promises of God still held.

These were people who had experienced loss, longing, and uncertainty.

People who may have wondered if they were too far gone, too forgotten, too scattered, too weary for restoration.

And into that place the prophet speaks this invitation.

Come, come to the waters.

Come buy and eat.

Come without money and without price.

Listen so that you may live and seek the Lord while God may be found.

Return and receive mercy.

The invitation is not a transactional one.

It's not exclusive, it's not reserved for only those who have had everything figured out.

It's the voice of a God who gathers, a God who restores, a God who says, to tired and thirsty people, there is still enough.

There's still a mercy, there's still future to come.

So when we hear this passage today, we do not need to pretend that Isaiah was secretly written directly to us all along.

Instead, we can say something even more beautiful.

That this is who God has always been.

Before we ever get to Jesus' table, before we ever get to the church's table, before we ever get to our own slogans and signs and statements of welcome, we meet a God whose heart is already wide.

A God who feeds, a God who calls people home, a God whose mercy is not as limited as ours.

A God who says, My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways.

And then we come to Luke.

In Luke's gospel, Jesus tells a story about a great dinner, a banquet, and the table is set, the invitations have gone out, but when the time comes, the expected guests begin making excuses.

One has bought land, another has purchased oxen, another has just gotten married, and one by one they decline the invitation.

So the host says, Go out.

Go out into the streets and the lanes of the town.

Bring in the poor, the disabled, those who have been pushed aside, those who have been overlooked.

And when there is still room, the host says, Go out further.

Go to the roads and the lanes, keep inviting, keep bringing people in.

I want my house to be filled.

That is not a different God from the one in Isaiah.

That is continuity.

That is the same dream of God moving forward.

Where Isaiah says, Come.

Jesus says, Go, bring them in.

Isaiah gives us the voice of God calling the thirsty to water.

And Jesus gives us the image of God's table being extended wider and wider and wider.

And so when we hear that beautiful phrase from our UCC tradition, that no matter who you are or where you are on life's journey, you are welcome here.

We are not inventing something new.

We are stepping into something ancient, and we're joining the song God has been singing for a very long time.

Come to the waters, come to the feast, come to the table, for there still is room.

And that is where the image I've carried all week comes in.

Because the table comes with extensions.

Tyler and I have my grandparents' dining sets in our dining room, and most days it's just a small table.

It's just for the two of us and our two very large dogs.

The table holds our meals, our conversations, our very important coffee time, and the quiet rhythms of daily life.

But tucked into that table is the possibility of more, because there are extensions.

And when people are coming over, something changes before anyone even arrives.

We start making space, we pull the table apart, we slide in the leaves, and we gather extra chairs.

And we look at the room differently because now the room has to make space for more life.

And I love that.

Because when those extensions go in, it feels like the table remembers what it was made for.

It's not that the table was useless when it was just the two of us.

It is not that ordinary meals do not matter because they absolutely do.

But there's another kind of life that appears when the table gets longer.

Because the room gets louder, the stories get bigger, someone is laughing from the other end, someone needs another fork, someone is passing food across the table.

Someone is telling a story that everybody has heard before, but somehow it still needs to be told again.

And yesterday I imagined many of us were around tables of one kind or another.

In my family, we were not really gathering to celebrate our nation's birthday as much as we were there to celebrate the birthday of my niece and nephew.

And while birthdays are always worth celebrating, for me as an uncle, my favorite job ever, I'm sorry, the deeper gift was simply being in their presence.

There's something in me that gets ministered to when I get to spend time with them.

When I get to see their joy, when I get to watch them grow, hear their voices, and just be Uncle Tony for a little while.

And yesterday, part of that joy was watching them get their first pogo stick.

Which gives me the perfect opportunity to give you a random factoid about your pastor.

And that's to tell that my youngest brother is a professional pogo athlete.

And please do ask me about that later.

Now your pastor is not a professional pogo athlete.

But when the moment came, did I get on that pogo stick in front of God and everybody?

Absolutely.

Because sometimes joy looks like pastoral dignity taking a brief sabbatical.

But that is part of what I mean.

Around an extended table, stories come out.

Family connections come alive and memories get made.

Laughter finds its way into the room, and somewhere in the chaos, in the commotion, the movement and noise of more people and more stories, healing is happening.

Even before we realize it.

Sometimes we do not recognize it until later, until the calm arrives after the commotion.

Until the dishes are put away, the chairs are pushed back, the house gets quiet again, and we realize that something in us has been ministered to.

Maybe that is something we do not always say loud enough.

That sometimes healing comes when the table is extended.

Sometimes the grace we need arrives through the people who pull up a chair next to us.

Sometimes new life does not come because everything is fixed, or because the world suddenly feels lighter, or because all our questions are answered.

Sometimes new life comes because the table got longer, the circle grew wider.

And we remember that we were not meant to journey alone.

A table does not lose life when it gets extended, it gains life.

And maybe that is part of what God is showing us in these scriptures.

Because the table was never meant to stay small.

The invitation was never meant to stop with the people already seated, nor was it meant to stop with the people everyone clearly expected to be invited.

The dream of God has always been bigger than the guest lists we would like to have written on our own.

And I want to say this clearly once again that Lakeview already knows something about this.

This church knows something about welcome.

This church knows something about making room.

This church knows something about saying, no matter who you are or where you are on life's journey, that you're welcome here, and that there is a place for you here.

And that is not a small thing.

In a world where many people have been told by religious communities that they are too much, not enough, too different, too wounded, it matters that there are communities willing to say, you are welcome here.

And as we live a life of no matter who and no matter where, we want to embrace God's extravagant welcome until welcome becomes more than words at the door and starts to feel like the very atmosphere in the room.

But today I do not want us to only hear that phrase is something we say, because no matter who you are or where you are in life's journey is also about what happens after we sit down.

After we sit down together.

It means that we recognize that we do not all arrive at the table from the same place.

Some of us arrive with deep faith, and some of us arrive with questions.

Some of us arrive with old wounds, and some of us arrive with fresh, blooming hope.

Some of us arrive still a little irritated that the dryer did not dry our clothes fast enough before we left the house this morning.

That happened yesterday.

Some of us arrive certain about what we believe, and some of us are still finding language for what faith even means.

Some of us move quickly, and some of us need time.

Some of us have been on this road for decades, and some of us are just beginning to trust that there might actually be a road at all.

Some might be even willing, just willy-nilly frolicking through the forest.

And yet still the still-speaking God gathers us.

Not because our journeys are identical, not because our paths have been simple, not because we agree on every turn the road should take, but because God's dream is not sameness.

This week our youth have been at VBS and the theme has been about dreaming God's dream.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said, God's dream is that you and I, and all of us, will realize that we are family, that we are made for togetherness, for goodness, and for compassion.

And as you can see, they could recite it.

And maybe that is the next extension of the table for us.

Not only asking who else can we welcome, but also asking how do we practice belonging with the people already gathered?

How do we listen across different stories?

How do we stay curious when someone's journey has not looked like ours?

How do we make room for questions, grief, joy, doubt, conviction, growth, and change?

How do we keep the table extended when things get difficult or complicated?

Because life together does get complicated.

It does get confusing.

An extended table is not always quieter.

It's not always easier or tidier.

Sometimes adding chairs means we have to move our own chair just a little bit.

Sometimes making room means admitting that we have gotten comfortable with the table exactly as it is with our assigned seats.

Sometimes welcome asks more of us than a warm smile at the door.

It asks us to listen before labeling, to be curious before being certain, to make room without needing to control every seat, to let people be on the journey even when they are not on the same mile marker as we are.

It asks us to trust that the table belongs to God before it belongs to us.

Every conversation gives us the chance to add an extension.

Every assumption gives us a chance to pause and ask a better question.

Every disagreement gives us a chance to practice staying at the table without needing to win the table.

Every ministry, every meeting, every coffee hour, every family gathering gives us the chance to ask, Am I making the table longer?

Or am I guarding the table as if there is not enough room?

And the good news is we do not have to create the table from scratch, because God has already said it.

Isaiah has already cried out, come.

Jesus already sent the servant out saying, Bring them in.

Our call is to join what God is already doing.

To become the kind of community where the table keeps growing, not because it is trendy, but because it's easy, but because it's faithful.

Because our table comes with extensions.

And every time we add one, there is more life, more laughter, more story, more challenge, more grace, and more of the family of God gathered in.

And now we come to this table.

Not because we have mastered welcome.

Not because we all arrive from the same place.

Not because we agree on everything.

Not because the journey has been simple.

We come because Christ meets us here.

We come because this table does not belong to us.

We come because God's mercy is wider than our imagination.

And God's welcome is deeper than our fear.

We come because there is still room.

Room for the thirsty, the hungry, for the certain and the uncertain, for the joyful and the grieving.

Room for you, room for me, room for the ones still on the road.

So come, for the table has been set, and thanks be to God that the table comes with extensions.

Amen.

Please join with me in this prayer of transformation and new life.

God of mercy and new beginnings, on this weekend when our nation remembers freedom, we come with complicated hearts.

We give thanks for the hopes and promises that have shaped our country, and replaces where your spirit has been allowed to move through courage, compassion, justice, sacrifice, and love.

And we grieve the ways we have too often left you out, when power has mattered more than people, when freedom has been claimed for some and denied for others, when fear has been louder than mercy, and what we long for a nation to be is not what we see.

Free us from despair that leaves us silent, free us from the pride that refuses to challenge, free us from fear that makes our welcome small.

Strengthen us to step up and do our part for those who are still longing to know freedom in this country.

Freedom from fear, freedom from hatred, freedom from hunger, freedom from exclusion, and freedom from being unseen.

Transform us by your love that we may become people of deeper mercy, bolder justice, wider welcome, and more abundant life.

Amen.

Beloved of God, hear this good news.

The mercy of God is wider than our fear, stronger than our despair, and more faithful than our failures.

When we confess where we have fallen short, God does not meet us with shame, but with grace that frees us, restores us, and sends us forward.

So in Christ we are forgiven, and by the Spirit we are made new.

And through the love of God we are strengthened to become people of mercy, justice, welcome, and abundant life.

So thanks be to God.

Amen.