A Feast for All Peoples

"A Feast for All Peoples"

Twenty-Fourth Sunday After Pentecost

Isaiah 25:6–9

November 3, 2024

Burnt Hills United Methodist Church

Video from Livestream (starts at 54:10)

Robert Alter's translation of Isaiah 25:6–9

And the LORD shall prepare a banquet for all the peoples on this mountain, a banquet of rich food, a banquet of well-aged wines, rich food with marrow, well-aged wines fine strained. And He shall swallow up on this mountain the veil that covers all the peoples and the mantle cast over all the nations. He shall swallow up death forever, and the Master LORD shall wipe the tears from every face, and His people’s disgrace He shall take off from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken. And it shall be said on that day:

Look, this is our God,

in Whom we hoped, and He rescued us,

This is our own God in Whom we hoped,

Let us exult and rejoice in his rescue.

The ones who love us never leave us.

Five years ago, four women, each of them beloved stars and artists of their own right, got together to cut a new album. 

In the midst of conversations across the industry about the role and place of women in country music, Brandi Carlisle, Natalie Hemby, Maren Morris, and Amanda Shires formed The Highwomen—a supergroup homage to the 1985 all-male supergroup, The Highwaymen.

And in this album that came out five years ago, Brandi Carlisle opens with a verse:

I was a highwoman.

And a mother from my youth.

For my children I did what I had to do.

My family left Honduras when they killed the Sandinistas

We followed a coyote through the dust of Mexico.

Every one of them except for me survived.

And I am still alive.

The song goes on like that, with different singers picking up each of the verses that tell a different story of a different woman at a different point in history who bore witness to the truth that greater love hath none but this, than to lay down one’s life for the ones they love. 

A healer accused of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts.

A freedom rider on a Greyhound bound for Mississippi.

And a preacher whose only crime was preaching the good news at a time when men would suffer not a woman to preach or have authority over a man.

The song bears witness to these saints, these unnamed women, representatives of countless stories untold and women unnamed who offered themselves—that’s all they had—they offered themselves and, through their sacrifice for the ones and the world they loved—through their lives being cut far, far too short and far, far too soon—they were born into eternal life. 

Every one of them, except for me, survived.

And I am still alive.

The ones who love us never leave us.

And we can never leave the ones we love.

Friends, we can never know what a day is going to bring. You’ve heard me say that up here before, and I guarantee that you’re going to hear me say it many, many times again, because it’s true. 

We can never know what a day is going to bring.

We can never know, in our rising with the morning sun, if this will be the day—the day that marks the clear dividing line into the “before” and the “after”. The day when everything changes and we are confronted with the woeful and blessed fragility of our human condition. When we become all too acutely aware of our own finitude and dependent state and when all we can do is stare into the abyss and hope and pray that it does not stare back.

I don’t know that I need to go through the litany of all the things that could bring any one of us in here or out there to that place. But, if you do happen to be there this morning—if the promise of Isaiah’s prophecy is ringing hollow for you this day—know this. 

It’s ok to not be ok. 

It’s ok to not be ok. 

The promise is not that there will be no more tears. The promise that Isaiah foretells is that there will always be someone to wipe them away.

We are not alone. That’s the good news of our faith. In this vision of God’s table, we find each other. And when our own strength fails, we lean on one another, just as we lean on God, until we’re ready to stand again. That’s what this feast is about—knowing that none of us has to carry the weight alone. That, through the power of the Holy Spirit and the mystery of the Incarnation, we have been given the greatest gift of all. Look around, dear ones, and see it in the faces of your neighbors. I have been given the gift of you and you have been given the gift of me and we have been given the gift of each other. 

And if that’s just not something that you can hold onto today, that’s ok, because we’ve got you, and we’ll hold onto it for you until you can.

Because if we, temporally bound and finite beings that we are, are ever to reach out and touch infinity, if that vision cast by Isaiah is ever to become a reality, it is, by definition, going to take all of us and I mean all of us. 

That’s what the vision is, after all, isn’t it? It’s a vision where all of creation—all that is and was and is to come—is reconciled with God and with one another.

A feast for all peoples. A feast of rich, delicious food and everyone is invited and no one is excluded. 

Isaiah foresees the entirety of creation drawn into a moment of healing and restoration, a moment when the hunger of the soul is answered, where sorrow and shame are swallowed up by mercy and love. This feast, this table, is for all of us.

Not the elite, but the broken. 

The weary.

The left out and left behind.

Will it take sacrifice? Yes. Absolutely. There are things we will have to let go of and deaths we will have to experience and come to grips with in our own sanctification. Those Highwomen knew it. They knew that life is lived and love is loved most fully in the sharing and they knew that the world they were trying to build was worth any cost. 

Even the greatest cost.

But they are living still.

Because we share in that feast together with them. Death—the veil that blinds us to our shared humanity—is swallowed up in that feast, and we commune even with the ones who have gone before us and the ones who will come after us, because the ones we love never leave us. 

Now we may see, as though in a mirror dimly, but on that day, that great and wonderful day we shall see it face to face.

Because there is nothing—

Neither death nor life

Nor angels nor rulers

Nor things present nor things to come

Nor height nor depth

Nor anything else in all creation—

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that will ever, ever separate any one of us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. 

When all is said and all is done, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that can ever, ever separate any one of us from each other.

The ones who love us never leave us. Instead, they meet us at this crowded table and join with us in the feast.

Because, though we can never know what a day is going to bring—though we can never know what any given day is going to give or take away from us—we do know that the ones who love us will meet us at that table.

And so, in the words of another songwriter—one who joined that great company of saints many centuries ago—Charles Wesley: 

Let the days give joy or grief.

Let the days give ease or pain.

Let them take life or friends away.

But let me find them all again—let us all find them all again

In that eternal day.

And I’ll sing hallelujah and you’ll sing hallelujah.

And we’ll all sing hallelujah when we arrive at home.

May the one who began a good work be faithful to bring it to completion in us.

The work continues. Amen.