Midway Christian Church sermon for October 12, 2025

Rev. Dr. Heather W. McColl, Midway Christian, Church, Midway KY

Worship Series: The Welcome Table

The Table is a place of acceptance and belonging, a place where we center ourselves in the presence of God, a place where authentic, meaningful conversations and dialog can happen as we offer up our shared experiences. As Disciples of Christ, our theology and practice surrounding the Table is rooted in the examples Jesus shared during his ministry. He welcomed friends and strangers alike. He engaged in conversation with those who disagreed with him. He broke bread with the one who would betray him, the one who would deny him and the ones who would abandon him. Every time Jesus gathered around the Table, he shared a vision of God’s Beloved Community with one and all.In this worship series, we reclaim this connection to God’s expansive Welcome Table. We will explore the invitation to come to the Table, the challenge to stay at the Table and the call to build a bigger table for all of God’s people. And in doing so, we will begin to cultivate a way of community and connection that embraces God’s love, peace, grace and joy for all of God’s people.

Part 4: “Stay at the Table: Turning the Other Cheek”

Scripture: Matthew 5: 38-48“But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who harass you…” This verse is from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, which should be a clue for us as readers to sit up and pay attention to what is happening, to what is being said, to what is being shared because it is essential to our becoming Jesus’ disciples. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus lays it out for his disciples then, and now, what it means to be a disciple – and that more often than not, it means to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek, to stay at the table when others walk away.

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