Thanksgiving is this coming Thursday, and it is a time—all over our nation—when people sit down to a feast with people who are dear to them, and who are also exasperating to them. This is why holidays like Thanksgiving are often filled with joy, and with tension. This is why our reunions contain both laughter and quarrels.
This meal is one we partake of every week, because we need to learn the discipline of loving sinners, and the even deeper discipline of doing so while being a sinner. Every week you sit down at this meal with people who are dear to you, and who are exasperating to you. And things get complicated fast.
Think of this meal as a pitch pipe. Let it tune your heart, as the hymn says, to sing God’s praise, and to sing His praise in all kinds of challenging circumstances. We do not come to this meal as a statement that we, all of us together, have attained perfection. We come in the full understanding that we have not. We do not come to this meal with a requirement that all the other communicants must no longer need the grace of God. We come with the knowledge that all of us need it. We do not confess that those who exasperate us must deserve to come here. We know that not one of us deserves to come here as a result of our own performance. But if they don’t deserve to come, then their ill-desert does not disqualify them from fellowship with God. And if God welcomes them, then of course, so do you—both today and Thursday. So then, come, and welcome, to Jesus Christ.