Volunteers, guests, and others are invited to submit their reflections and comments about HT Dinner Table to warden@trinityspokane.org for posting on this page.

Reflection from Char Mills
Did I See Christ in Her?
(Names changed to protect privacy).

It was the Holy Trinity community dinner. I sat next to her. Her name was Gina. She and Ron came together. They were hungry. She looked slightly unkempt, a little dirty. I asked her where she was from. She said she had been homeless most of her life. She looked young, could have been a teenager. You’ve never had a family? She said, “Not most of my life.” I asked her what homelessness was like and commented that it must be difficult. She said, “Not if you know what you are doing. As long as you know where to sleep where the cops won’t bother you. We do get cold,” she said. I asked do you ever go to shelters. Not usually. She said,” If Ron goes. I go. If I go, he goes.” Gina never looked me straight in the eye. Her face was always turned slightly to the right and she looked down.

So how do you walk in the shoes of someone whose experience was completely alien to yours? I can’t even imagine what it would be like to be homeless “most of my life.” I have had the wonderful blessing of shelter, warmth and food from birth. Did I see a spark of Christ in her? I know it was there, deep down in her troubled soul. Homelessness is not always a chosen way of life. I have thought of Gina and Ron on these bitter, cold days. Where are they sleeping and where do they get food? What talents and gifts have been thwarted because these two fell through the cracks? How do we reach out to the invisible, the people we don’t see every day? One thing we can do is keep Gina and Ron in our prayers. Holy Trinity is reaching out and is a wonderful example of what a church can do in the West Central community so stricken with poverty. 

December 28, 2008–reflection from Kris Christensen
The Word became flesh and lived among us . . .

This Christmas Eve, HT Dinner Table served somewhere between 45 and 65 neighborhood guests. Honestly, it was such a busy evening, we lost count! Guests were treated to a festive ham dinner, a Christmas pageant (Holy Trinity style), and a visit from Santa complete with gifts generously donated by local businesses and individuals. A number of guests told us they wouldn’t have had “a Christmas” without Dinner Table. See photos of the party in our Dinner Table photo album.

On this Sunday, the first after Christmas, we hear from John’s gospel (John 1:1-18) about the core of our faith—the incarnation. The Word (from the Greek, logos: think creative and ordering force, mind of the universe, God’s revelation of himself) becomes flesh and lives among us. Why? Because God is so big, we can’t build a box big enough for Him. God has laid down the Law, put words in the mouths of prophets, and we still don’t get it. So He does his best to translate.

God himself—the great I AM, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen—becomes incarnate as flesh. Muscle, bone, sinew, nerve fibers, blood and breath: He comes to us as us—revealing Himself in terms we understand.

This time between Christmas and Epiphany is a good time to examine our expectations of the incarnate God. Who would play him in the movie? Charlton Heston? Maybe we long for Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger to come and blitz the bad guys once and for all. Or maybe we imagine someone suave and mysterious like Antonio Banderas.

But of course, that’s not our story. The creator of the universe comes to us in weakness: formed in the womb of an unwed mother from a rough, low-brow town. God slips into the flesh of a human infant—one of the most vulnerable creatures on the planet.  While a foal or a calf will take tottering steps within hours of birth, the human infant takes an average of 12 months to make that first lurching journey from one pair of outstretched arms to another.  The infant Jesus can’t even maintain his body temperature. For years, he’ll rely on other humans for nourishment, safety, the gift of touch. That’s not exactly the package we expect to contain the King of Kings.

Immanuel:  God-with-us. What if God’s revelation arrives among us as something (or someone) unexpected? I’m thinking of the Dinner Table guest who told a volunteer, “I hate Christmas because I don’t have any family, and I never receive a gift. But this was wonderful. I’m glad I decided to come.” Or the guest who said goodbye to everyone over the loudspeaker and invoked the presence of the Holy: “Thank you all for coming tonight and being here together in the spirit of God.” A balm for loneliness, a reinvention of family, an awareness of God’s presence among us—could these be incarnations of the Word?

If we understand Jesus as a revelation (a revealing) of God, it becomes easier to encounter Christ in unlikely places and people, to recognize Christ in His distressing disguise, as Mother Teresa said.

Keep awake. Listen for angels. And be prepared to find God where, and in whom, you least expect Him.