Letter to the Table Church

On Sunday, I preached on the letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3. These letters follow a pattern:

• Characteristics of Jesus
• Something good
• Something bad
• A call to action
• A promise of reward

I challenged the church to consider what a letter to them might look like. Here is my attempt.

And to the angel of the church at The Table write:

These are the words of the One
who was wounded for love,
who calls you by name,
who knows the pain that brought you here:

I know your works—
how you've created sanctuary for the spiritually homeless,
how you've deconstructed toxic theology,
how you've learned to name harm and speak truth.
I see the courage it took to leave behind the faith that wounded you,
to risk building something new.
You have endured much.

But I have this against you:
in your necessary work of tearing down false idols,
you have become afraid to encounter the living God.
Your deconstruction has been brave,
but where is your reconstruction?
You speak beautifully of justice and community,
but when did you last allow yourself to be undone by mystery?
To be surprised by grace?

Your cynicism, though earned through pain,
has become a wall that keeps out
not just harmful religion
but transformative encounter.
You've learned to critique worship
but forgotten how to surrender in it.
You analyze scripture
but resist letting it analyze you.
You've become so good at spotting spiritual manipulation
that you've lost the ability to be spiritually moved.

I understand why you keep God at arm's length—
the religious leaders who hurt you claimed to speak for me.
But in protecting yourselves from false intimacy,
you've also closed yourselves off from true encounter.
Your community gathers beautifully around shared wounds,
but do you also gather around shared wonder?

Remember: it is possible to be
both critically thinking and spiritually surrendered.
You can question everything and still fall on your knees.
You can deconstruct harmful theology
while still being constructed by divine love.

To everyone who conquers—
who risks vulnerability with the divine again,
who dares to be beginners in prayer,
who allows their hearts to be tender toward the mystery—
I will grant them to drink from springs of living water
that never disappoint.

Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.