The sermon this morning will be more of a homily than a sermon. As you may already know, I've recently returned from the Journey. The Journey is a 4-day spiritual retreat whose purpose it is to build disciples. It's exactly what its title is: "a journey into a deeper spirituality." The folks who go on the Journey – pilgrims is what they're called – they have come to a place in their faith where they want to go deeper. They want to develop a deeper faith.

And the Journey met from Thursday to today (in fact, they're still on retreat until this afternoon). We held the Journey at a campground called Greene Family Camp in Bruceville. Now the reason I share this with you – the significance of this particular Journey – is that this deeply spiritual Christian retreat gathered at a Jewish encampment. Greene Family camp caters primarily to Jewish groups, but they open doors to Christian groups as well.

And I gotta tell ya, worship was a bit of a mosaic experience – at least as far as the aesthetics were concerned. We set up a makeshift altar at the front of the sanctuary where we gathered for services. And I'll try to give you a visual.

Picture a table covered with a bunched up cloth. And there are different pottery pieces on the table: vases, plates, water jugs. And at the base of the table are different potted plants with shades of green, yellow and orange. It's a picture of God's gift of creation and the fruits of humanity's labor.

Then move your eyes up to the pulpit, a dark, cherry wood pulpit with a wooden cross carved out of cedar resting on the top. Cap it with a white candle burning softly and you've got a picture of Christianity.

Then look above the pulpit, and you find a stained glass picture. It's dimly illuminated by a soft lift right behind it, and it depicts a menorah and the star of David in shades of orange, blue and white. It's a picture of Judaism. But put it all together and it's a glimpse into community. It's a broad stroke on the canvas that depicts what Jesus might truly mean by this gift of communion.

Today in World Communion Sunday. And today's scripture readings come from the book of Esther. It's a story we find in the Hebrew Bible – what we Christians refer to as the "Old Testament."

During the weekend I read the story from Esther in this Mosaic context I shared with you. I was in the constant act of communion with friends and we shared this gift of communion in an environment rich with Judaism – Jewish symbols, artwork, and Hebrew writing all around. In that communion, it made the story of Esther that much more powerful.

The book of Esther is in the Canon of the Bible because it tells the story of the Jewish festival of Purim coming to being. Purim remembers and celebrates Esther saving the Jews of the Persian Empire from being slaughtered by the King's vizier, Haman. It's a story of unlikely courage – kind of a David and Goliath tale: Esther being David and the powers of the male-dominated culture being Goliath.

God's people are saved because of Esther's courage and self-sacrifice. But do you know what the tricky part is? God is never mentioned in the entire book of Esther. Nowhere in Esther can you find reference to Yahweh, Abba, or the Lord, and it's the only book in the Bible where the name of God is absent.

So where is the clearly stated inspiration of the Divine for our worship this morning? It's in the community and communion that Esther calls her people to. And another tricky thing is this: the religious call to community and communion isn't in our Protestant Canon – it's in the Apocrypha.

The Apocrypha is the part of the Bible that's in the Catholic Canon. We find it wedged between the Old and New Testaments. Now, there's a book in the Apocrypha called Esther with Additions. Clever name. It's a Greek writing that included those parts of the Esther story that didn't make it into our Canon.

Now, the book of Esther alluded to this part of the story that has to do with community and communion, but it doesn't spell it out like Esther with Additions does. Listen to this reading from Esther with Additions:

Mordecai told him to go back and say to her, "Esther, do not say to yourself that you alone among all the Jews will escape alive. For if you keep quiet at such a time as this, help and protection will come to the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father's family will perish. Yet, who knows whether it was not for such a time as this that you were made queen?"

Then Esther gave the messenger this answer to take back to Mordecai, "Go and gather all the Jews who are in Susa and fast on my behalf; for three days and nights do not eat or drink, and my maids and I will also go without food. After that I will go to the king, contrary to the law, even if I must die." So Mordecai went away and did what Esther had told him to do.

The rest of the story is that Ruth courageously confronts the king, the kings sympathizes with her plea, the treacherous Haman is put to death, the Jews are saved and Mordecai becomes the king's new vizier.

Now, there's an obvious message in this story for us today: You've got to be strong and make some sacrifices in your life if real change – God's change – is ever going to happen in our time. If this isn't a call to social justice, tolerance, equality and overall human rights, then I don't know what is.

But the message that has to do more with our religious imperatives comes before that in the story, and without it there can be no courage or self-sacrifice or change. Before Esther confronts the king, what does she do? She gets together with her friends. She spends time – purposeful time – in community with her friends. And in that community is communion. It's not the kind of communion that fills you with food, because they were fasting for three days. But it's the kind of communion that fills us with God's divinely inspired courage. By fasting with her friends, Esther was filled with God's grace, God's truth and God's love and the result was salvation and peace.

God speaks to us on a campground that heralds a religion other than ours, and that is good.

God speaks to us through the pages of our denomination's texts, as well as through the pages of other denomination's writing, and that is good.

But we can never be blessed enough to hear God speaking to us in every aspect of our lives – everywhere in our lives – if we do not first gather as a community and spend time at God's table listening.

It's in community that we share our lives and we witness to one another as who we truly are. And it's in communion that we experience God's grace. It's in communion that we are filled with the gifts of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

The other night, Stacy and I had the opportunity to have dinner with another couple in their home. They are Muslims, and they'd invited us over for an Iftar dinner. It's a meal that takes place during Ramadan, which is the most devoutly holy time of the year in the Islamic faith. During Ramadan, Muslims fast from sun-up to sundown and then they break their fast with an Iftar meal.

Our friends greeted us at the door. We took off our shoes and came into their home. It was 7 pm, so we had to wait a few minutes for the sun to go down. And then we gathered at their table. Some of the food was already set in front of us: fresh green salad with diced tomatoes, hot lentil soup, homemade bread and a small plate of dates. That's what we had when it was time to break the fast. We all grabbed a date and the meal began.

During the meal our hosts kept bringing out more and more incredible food. And then they'd hold up plates of seconds with wide eyes and insistent head nods. Well, within a few minutes we were all completely stuffed, but I had just enough room for one more bit of food, and Stacy had one bit of this fried potato and broccoli thing left on her plate that looked too good to pass up. So, I reached over and grabbed that last piece of food off her plate and before I could put it in my mouth, our hosts literally got up out of their chairs, grabbed a plate of extra food and held it out to me, saying, "Please, please take more." Those were the hands of Christ's generosity offered to me by my Muslim friends.

That's what it's like to be in communion with each other. When we think things are hopeless and the world's antagonism is weighing on us, and we're convinced that we can't make a shred of difference in our time, God says, "Here, take more bread! You'll need it for your journey. You'll need it to be what I hope for you to be."

Or when we're so full of great joy and the blessings of life, and we couldn't take in another drop, Jesus says, "Hey, drink more of this wine! You'll need it to share with others, so drink of this until your cup overflows."

I was able to take in a lot of wonderful thoughts from very profound speakers who brought their all to the table at the Journey this past weekend. As many of you know, I have traces of ADD. So, I have lots of those thoughts floating around in my mind right now and I want to get one out before I forget it. It has to do with an illustration in our own community. I was recently with a colleague of mine in a restaurant. There was a student that walked by my table and his maroon shirt said, "STRAIGHT PRIDE." On the back of his shirt it said, "Heterosexuals: Saving Families Since the Dawn of Time." Now, that's a far cry from the maroon shirt that our friend, Jennifer Considine – one of the best Aggies out there – wears that says, "Hate is not an Aggie Value." Amen to that one.

But still, I disagreed with that shirt. But I didn't disagree with it because of something that I read in a book or something that I was taught in school. I disagreed with it because I have come to the table with community, and because I have been blessed to experience communion with all of God's wonderful, beautiful, diverse family. Since the dawn of time, God's family has saved God's creation if we choose to do that. If we choose to.

If you are out in a field that is rampant with indifference and intolerance and oppression and hatred, and the weeds of that field start to grow around your ankles and pulling you down, and growing up so high as to choke you around your neck, that is the time when Jesus Christ meets you in this field, taps you on the shoulder and says, "I'll take your place here. Go to that table over there that I've prepared for you. I'll take your place here and deal with this. You go be filled. And when you're ready, I'll be here waiting for you. I'll be right here."

Let that be our sustenance this day as we share in this communion with one another and with our world. Amen.