Every Sunday we pray that the Kingdom might come and then when it does, we sometimes miss it because it is a place of surprises. One time when Jesus was describing the Kingdom to his friends he said that the confident should not be so sure of themselves. He said that in the Kingdom the last will be first and the first will be last. And he told them that people will come from east and west and from north and south and take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. What a glorious surprise for a world fractured by geography, politics, economics and race.

One of the things I love about life in Beaver is our World Communion celebration. Four congregations gather together and for at least one day we lay aside our differences about polity and theology and unite in the name of our common Lord, Jesus Christ. Trinity Episcopalians emerge from the east making their way down the middle of Third Street. Park Presbyterians process from the west. The United Methodists march from the north and First Presbyterians parade from the south. I believe that we are reenacting a Kingdom reality each World Communion Sunday.

World Communion Sunday reminds us that the family of Christ’s followers is larger than any one congregation or denomination. It is not bound by time and on World Communion Sunday, especially, we remember that the church is not bound by place. When we come to the Table on Sunday, we will experience both the real presence of Christ and the reality of the church scattered to the ends of the earth gathered to drink of the one cup of blessing and loaf of communion with Christ.

On Sunday, I will be aware of the “mystic sweet communion” with Sue Makin and her friends at the Mulanje Mission in Malawi. I will think of the staff and the patients and Bulape Mission Hospital in the Congo. I will pray for our new mission partner in Southeast Asia knowing the risks she is taking just being in her particular place. The hundreds of faces of Brazilian friends we know and love will flood my heart and mind.

Rain or shine, be ready for a surprise on Sunday. The last will be first, the self-confident will be humbled and people will come from east and west, from north and south to sit at table in the Kingdom of God.