Christine Smith - "Spreading and Moving the Table" (March 9, 1997)

Sermon start time: (Part 1) 3:58. Sermon end time: (Part 1) 27:31.

Jesus gives a simple mandate for us to feed those who are hungry and in the place of wilderness and desert, spreads a table before them. So we are to spread and move the table to where there is need, bringing this table to where there is the cold fire of hunger both in the physical hunger and also for the marginalized and oppressed. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)

Key quotation: People who have made a difference in the world live the urgency and passion of Jesus’ simple mandate, “They need not go away. You, you, you give them something to eat.” In a day and age when religious people speak more about the dangers of codependent behaviors than about the passion and meaning of deeply invested self-giving love and justice, I wonder if we are prepared to move this table once more into all the places that it is needed……