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The following message is delivered by Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman. Today's sermon is entitled, "Give My Regards to Broadway." The dining room. The scripture reading of the morning is Luke chapter 22. I begin the reading at the verse number 7. "Then came the day of unleavened bread on which the Passover

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lamb had to be sacrificed. So Jesus sent Peter and John saying, 'Go and prepare the Passover for us that we may eat it.' They said to him, 'Where will you have us prepare it?' He said to them, 'Behold, when you have entered the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him into the house which he enters and tell

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the householder, 'The teacher says to you, "Where is the guest room where I am to eat the Passover with my disciples?" And he will show you a large upper room furnished. There make ready.' And they went and found it as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover. And when the hour came, he sat at table and the

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apostles with him. And he said to them, 'I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer, for I tell you I shall not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.' And he took a cup and when he had given thanks, he said, 'Take this and divide it among yourselves, for I tell you that from now

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on I shall not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.' And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, 'This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.' And likewise the cup after supper, saying, 'This cup which is poured out for you is

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the new covenant in my blood.'" And may the same Spirit who inspired these words incline our hearts to their understanding. Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. When I was a boy, I grew up in a little red brick house which stood atop a very

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high hill. We always maintained the house and kept it in very good repair, but because we were a family of limited income, we were not able to make significant improvements. We kept the place painted, doing the work ourselves, and we did the necessary repairs as time and funds allowed, and I remember once

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that we did re-carpet the first floor. It came as quite a surprise then one night when my mother said to us as we were sitting at the dining room table, "I've decided to fix up the dining room." A major renovation was going to take place, and across the next few weeks it did. The room was painted, corner cabinets were

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constructed into the corners of the room, the old furniture was sold, and a new suit of dining room furniture was purchased. Now when the folks came to pick up the old furniture and carry it away, my father stood looking at the dining room table and running his fingers over the scars in the top of

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that table which had been left by my brother and I when across the years we had done our homework there and had pressed very hard with our pencils as it is common for young people to do. And seeing those marks he said, "You know it's really hard to give up this table. There's been a lot of love and history

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around it." I personally am of the opinion that perhaps more precious recollections gather around a dining room table than any other piece of furniture you might be able to name. It was this which led A.R. Gurney, the noted playwright, to write his play The Dining Room. I saw it off-Broadway in New York. It has

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subsequently been produced here in Pittsburgh. It consists of one scene which is a dining room, rather generic in design, a table, four chairs, two chairs against one wall, a side or serving board along the other wall. Six actors appear in the play but together they play 57 different roles. You see this is not

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understood to be just one dining room. It represents dining rooms everywhere. And the scenes from these different dining rooms flow from one into another without interruption. And as I sat and I watched some of those scenes, memories came back to me about the dining room in the house where I grew up. And memories

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came to me also about this dining room table which is spread for us today. For the scriptures say, "And when the hour came, he sat at the table and the apostles with him." In one of the early scenes of the play, two parents whose children have all moved away and are experiencing the "emptiness syndrome"

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decide to move and they take everything from their home that they wish and they tell their son and daughter that they may come and make their choices about everything that remains. They have no difficulty dividing things up until they come to the dining room. And then the one says, "Well, I want this." And the other

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one says, "Well, I want it too." "Well, where would you put it?" "Well, what do you mean where would I put it? You already have a dining room. You don't need another one anyway. You'd probably end up putting it in storage." "Well, you'd probably end up giving it to the Salvation Army. What difference does it make?" They don't want

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to part with that dining room. And I don't want to depart from my memories of our dining room. I announced my call to the ministry to my family at the dining room table. My brother announced his coming engagement at the same place. And then there were the wonderful festivities around the table at holiday

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time, when grandmas and granddads and uncles and aunts, when everyone was there. And my mother would work every year to make a very beautiful Christmas centerpiece. And my father would, while she was out in the kitchen right before the dinner, always take it off the table and say, "It doesn't leave any room for

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the mashed potatoes or the turkey." There was something especially beautiful about all of that. When I went to see the play, The Dining Room, I took 40 college students with me. At that time I was teaching a course called Theater and Theology in New York City. And the morning

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after the play, we gathered to discuss it. And I was astonished to discover that slightly more than half of those students had no dining room in their homes. Or they had a little corner at one end of the dining of the living room, or they perhaps had a nook in the kitchen, or a serving bar between the kitchen and

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the family room. Some of them acknowledged that their families always ate from TV trays. Now I don't want to sound narrow or old-fashioned, but it seems to me that not sitting down at the same table in the dining room could have a very deleterious effect upon a family. That certainly was the thinking in the

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first century. That's the reason Jesus chose on his last night with his disciples to spend it in an upper room which was furnished and ready. There's a oneness that occurs when you dine with folks. There's a trust that builds up. You remember how the psalmist says in Psalm 23, "Thou preparest a table before me in

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my enemy with before me in the presence of mine enemies." This suggests, you see, the idea in the Middle East that is two people are eating from the same table and sharing the same food. In a very real sense, they are sharing themselves. There is a kind of unique unity here. This is the reason Jesus said to the twelve, "I

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have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you." Now of course I'm not going to overlook the fact that there are oft times feuds at the dining room table. There are two scenes in the play, "The Dining Room," that are ugly scenes. A father who very cruelly dominates and manipulates the life of his little boy,

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and a mother who deceitfully attempts to lead her daughter to think that she's making a free decision when in fact she has already stacked the deck against the daughter's choice. And just so at Christ's table there in that upper room, there were some ugly things. The tragic deed of Judas, the prideful refusal of the

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disciples to wash one another's feet, to which Jesus responded by getting down and washing all of their feet and then saying, "If I have washed your feet, then you ought to wash one another's feet." What he's saying of course is this, that when pride is present, you cannot have peace. Sometimes when we get into

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difficult relationships with people, things happen without our planning, which assists us in straightening them out. For example, look at the life of Edwin Booth. Edwin Booth was the most distinguished actor in America in the late 1860s and '70s. He married, his wife died two years later. He married again, his second wife

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went insane, and he went bankrupt taking care of her. But the greatest sadness he had, of course, was the fact that his younger brother, John Wilkes Booth, was the man who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. Edwin Booth used to go about and in moments when he was alone say to himself again and again, "Mountains

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of shame are piled upon me," which was a line from one of the plays which he frequently performed. And then a rather ironic thing happened. He was in Jersey City, New Jersey, taking a train to Philadelphia, and he was on the rather crowded platform of the station when he saw a tall young man ahead of him who

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got jostled by the crowd and lost his footing and fell from the platform down between a moving train and the platform. And instantly, Booth dropped his valise and ran and grabbed this young man by the collar and pulled him up to safety. And you can imagine his amazement when he discovered that the name of the young

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man he had saved was Robert "Tad" Lincoln, the oldest son of the president that his brother had shot. There was, you see, a recompense there, an act of renewal and reconciliation of a kind, which was in no way planned. But that's not usually the way in which peace is restored. Now, reconciliation is most generally a very

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purposeful act, and it often happens at a table. How many times are two people separated for some time by one argument or another, and they finally get together and they say, "Well, let's have lunch," and over lunch or over dinner, they settle the matter? I've seen that same thing happen at a place like this. Jesus says that

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before we should worship God, we should settle things with our brothers, and I have known those who have gone to those in the church with whom they are having discord and have settled those discords before they came to the table together. It's very difficult, you see, to sit at a table with someone and to pass the

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plates without passing the peace. Remember, please, that this table is 3,500 years old. This Passover was initiated 1,500 years before Christ was born, when the children of Israel crossed over into the Promised Land. Then it was that God gave them this covenant and told them to be reminded of it by the

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act of serving and eating together the Passover feast. And various times throughout the history of the Old Testament, God reminds his people of this, but the climax comes when Jesus institutes a new Passover, a new covenant, a new testament, if you will. He says there in that upper room at this

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table, "This cup is the New Testament, the new covenant, the new agreement, the new Passover in my name." The early Passover was sealed with the blood of a lamb, but this Passover is sealed with the blood of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ himself. Nations and kingdoms and empires and philosophies and theologies and

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scientific theories have gone whistling away in the winds of history while this table remains. We come to it very easily this morning, forgetting, I think, that it was brought for us by the blood of Christ and it has been protected for us across the centuries by tens of thousands of others who have been

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willing to lay down their lives in order that this meal might be available to us. You see, here we can not only have peace with each other, but we can also have peace with God. One of the saddest scenes in the play "The Dining Room" is where a young woman is talking to her father and she says, "Dad, I want to leave

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my husband and I want to come home with the children and live here with you and mother." And he looks at her and says, "Well, don't you think you ought to try a little harder to save your marriage?" And she replies, "Well, he has already left and is living with another woman." "Well then, that just makes the challenge all

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the more," says the father. "See if you can win him back." And she replies, "Well, I'm already living with another man." "Well," the father says, "then perhaps you can build a marriage with this other man which will be stronger than your first one." And the girl replies, "Well, he is already married and anyway I don't love

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him. I love another." In every response that the girl makes, the situation gets worse. And finally, she says to her father with great desperation, "Dad, I want to stay. I can't go back, Dad. I can't go back." And her aged father looks at her and says, "Neither can I, sweetheart. Neither can I." There's something fundamentally

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wrong when children come and ask for the forgiveness of their parents while they are at the same time continuing in the same sin for which they ask for forgiveness. That's why the Apostle Paul says, "If you pull your chair up to this table, if you eat this bread or drink this cup in an unseemly manner, you are

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bringing judgment upon yourself." You see, forgiveness only happens where repentance is. Jesus says, "This is my body and this is my blood poured out for the remission of sins." God is ready to forgive in full, but there has to be some testimony to genuine apology. There has to be a real sorrow for sin. To such

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ones, God never says, "I can't go back." He says instead, "Well then, let's begin over again." In "The Song of the Bird" by Anthony de Mello, the author puts these words onto the lips of an Eastern mystic. The man says, "When I was young and very revolutionary, I prayed to God that he would enable me to save and change the

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world. Then when I became middle-aged and realized how little I was when set over against the world, I changed my prayer and I asked God to enable me to bless and save those who were closest to me, my family and my friends. But now that I am old and wiser, I have put away all such foolish thoughts. Now I simply pray that

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God will give me the grace to change myself." What he's saying is that he might come to God repentant of his sin and thus be given by the influx of God's Spirit healing and wholeness and new resolve. The dining room table, of course, is a place of many memories and also a place

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of hopes. I don't like eating alone, though I have to do it most of the time, and I find it especially difficult at holidays. My mother and I are the only parts of our family that are in this section of the country anymore, so what used to be a very crowded day is now just the two of us. We enjoy the day

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until it comes time to eat together, and then you feel the loneliness. It's not the presence under the tree that we miss, it's the presence of those whom we have loved and lost a while. One of the most touching scenes in the play "The Dining Room" is a Thanksgiving celebration in that room when grandmother is brought

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down from her room upstairs to be a part of the festivities, and everyone is laughing and talking as the servings are being made, and then grandmother says very seriously, "Who are all of these people?" and her son said, "Well, mother, you know, this is the whole family. We're all together on Thanksgiving just like we've

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always been." Just like we've always been, she repeats in a kind of meaningless echo, and then after a moment's pause she said, "It's very nice, but I think I better go home," and her son says, "But mother, you've lived in this house for 52 years. This is your house. You are home," and she says, "Won't someone please drive

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me home?" and they take her upstairs to her room, and as they go, one of the other children says, "It's scary, isn't it? It makes me feel so precarious." Well, life is precarious, my friends, and the time will come when we will leave an empty chair behind us, and if that's all there is, if the end of the world is to be

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nothing but a vast collection of empty chairs, then this is a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing. If all we have is our memories, that's not enough. But you see, at this table, Jesus says, "Do this in remembrance of me until I come." There's a future tense, you see, and then he says, "In my father's house are many

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rooms," and I'm sure that one of those rooms at least has to be a dining room. What he's saying is that this table may begin in time, but it extends into eternity. It may begin with the church militant, but it concludes with the church triumphant. It may begin with remembering, but it goes on to

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anticipation. It may close on the darkness, but it opens on the dawn. Here we are with our loved ones and with our Christ in the Spirit, but the time will come when we will be with them in person. There's a scene in the play where an old man sits down with his son at the

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dining room table and he's explaining to him the terms of his will, and as he explains his will to his boy, he says, "I'm leaving you the dining room, the table and the chairs. It's the best thing I have to leave you." And just so, Christ, on the same night in which he was betrayed, said, "Do this in remembrance of me." The

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best thing I can leave you is a place where the family of God can get together about the table and feel the encouragement of their oneness, is a place where there can be reconciliation, a place where one can heal the difficulties that exist between one and others and between one and God. He gives

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us a place which goes so far into the past that none of us can remember its beginnings, and that is present with us today, but also is our promise for tomorrow. It was the very best thing he had to leave us. And the last scene in the play, a family is sitting at the table and the lights are very dim, and

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the host raises his glass and he says, "To all of us!" And that's what Christ says at this table, "To all of us." And then the plainwright, Gurney, closes the script with the following stage instructions. The lights fade to black. The table is bathed only in its own candlelight. The candles go out and the play is over. But

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not for us. Not for us. For us, dinner is served. you [silent] [silent]