Room at the Table (December)

30 November - 4 January Open the Resource Pack PDF for all the information on the weekly subthemes and the daily prompts and Bible readings which shape our Daily Worship and live streams. 

There’s room at the table!

It’s such an evocative, welcoming phrase. It invites us to be generous and open handed towards each other. It calls us to table and to make room; to budge up; to practise hospitality to the stranger in need as well as for those we love and cherish. It speaks warmly of expectation and acceptance. In fact it’s a kind of prefiguring of the Kingdom of Heaven being born in the human heart. To hear there is room at the table is to hear the voice of God saying there is a place at the table in my Kingdom set for you!

Advent is a time of journeying, waiting, preparing and expectation. It resonates with the inward longing within all of our hearts to find a spiritual home, a place where we know we belong and where we are accepted. The story of Advent is primarily one of God journeying towards us, but it also uncovers unnumbered stories of very diverse people discovering they too are on a journey towards God. As you read this perhaps you too are thinking that’s me. Of course you might be also asking how will I be accepted, will I be too late? Am I fooling myself, is there a table? Is there a God? Is there a homecoming?

We will encounter all sorts of people on the journey to the table of the King. Think of the journey Joseph and Mary made to encounter Jesus. The journey the shepherds made to find themselves known by God. There were also foreigners, wisemen from the east perhaps a little later but they made an incredible journey. So we too will have our personal journeys with doubts and struggles to encounter King Jesus.

Then there is the waiting. There is a certain degree of patience required hoping that those invited will come. Those who have arrived need to be patient as others come from distant journeys. The big brother syndrome always has a tendency to emerge as time passes and the table places are not yet filled. Yet the patience of the King continues. ‘Room at the table’ speaks of his open heart and the preparation he knows is required to make the journey, and to wait for the coming of others. 

No doubt the place of waiting will resonate with us all at some point in our lives. However the most hopeful of all our spiritual feelings is that of expectation. When we literally gather around the Lord’s Table for Communion it is much more than a remembrance of the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is filled with expectation that there is room at the table for our identity in time and in eternity. 

In the coming weeks and months we hope to invite members of the Sanctuary First Community to help us exact out the meaning of ‘Room at the table; in such a way that we will see many more people start out on the journey to enter into the Kingdom of God. 

And perhaps this Advent as you begin to make your preparations for Christmas you might literally think about what it would mean to leave room at your table for the unexpected guest...

Weekly Overview 

• Leaving room — hope and expectation

• Finding room — harmony and flourishing 

• Room enough — hospitality and generosity

• Making room — welcome and belonging

• Room to spare —  room for all the world

Each week of this theme runs Sunday-Saturday and has its own subtheme, which contains daily Bible readings and prompts for thought (see the Resource Pack PDF for more information).