Making room at the dinner table

Monday Ministerial Musings

By Rev. Mark William Ennis

2024 Blog #11

March 17, 2025

Making room at the dinner table

I grew up in a one floor railroad flat on the second floor of a two-family house. My Grandmother owned the house and lived in the bottom flat. Like any flat in our neighborhood, the rooms were small, and we all learned to live in small spaces. This was a challenge on holidays when extra people were invited for dinner and the space around the dining room table got quite crowded. To this day, I am not sure how we squeezed so many people around that table, but we managed.

Our dining room table had nothing on our neighbors down the street. An Italian family lived four doors down from us. That family worshipped hospitality. Three generations lived in that house. The grandparents spoke very little English. The parents spoke heavily accented English. We used to call it “broken English.” Eating meals for that family was almost a religious experience. Every cousin gathered in that kitchen for meals that the mother spent all day cooking. If a relative saw a child from the neighborhood walking by, that child was invited, or should I say, dragged in, to share a meal. I believe that it was a miracle how many people were squeezed into that kitchen, and somehow, everyone was fed.

In that Italian kitchen, there was only one question. “Who can I feed?” There was no talk of who is worthy or who was likeable, or who was a relative. That Italian mother saw feeding hungry people as her mission in life and she took it seriously. I’m glad she did. I enjoyed many good meals in that kitchen even though I was not a relative. Being hungry and nearby was enough to get an invitation.

It has been my hope and prayer for decades that the Christian Church would operate like that Italian kitchen that I loved so much as a child. Too often, I found that the church operates in ways that are opposite to that kitchen in Jersey City. In too many ways, churches have historically forgotten people who are not “family” at worship and their communion table and have made no effort to invite in other spiritually hungry people. Let us make no mistake about it. There are many people who are hungering to know God, but too often, they have not been invited to the table.

Growing up in Jersey City, in a chronically shrinking church, congregation members would complain that no one was coming to church, but little energy was paid to inviting people in. I guess, people were expected to figure out how to come in without receiving an invitation or any guidance from the members.

When people did come into my home church, they often were made to feel not very welcome. The question we asked was not, “how can we feed them?” but instead the questions were, about why they did not dress like us or were they the correct ethnic group. We were not as welcoming as the Italian kitchen.

In the past two decades, perhaps the group that has been the most unwelcomed, is the Gay community. Congregations have left many denominations when these groups would not make statements condemning Gay folks. Many Gay folks have received a great deal of “Church Hurt” because of the actions of these congregations. It seems incredible to me that we would spend so much time discussing Gay people when Jesus never once mentioned Gays. He did talk about greed, justice and mercy, but we would rather not talk about these topics.

Last Saturday evening, I spent the night with the Pride Community of Glen Rock. This group was using the Fellowship Hall here at the Community Church of Glen Rock for a fund-raising event and I attended the event and brought greetings from the church to the attenders. I have never met such a kind, gentle, and talented group in my life. These are the people that many churches wish to exclude. Such exclusion makes no sense to me.

I do hope that congregations who do such exclusion will have a time of repentance and will begin to welcome such individuals and communities. I do hope that we become an Italian kitchen and make it our goal to invite anyone who needs spiritual feeding to come on in. And yes, that includes everyone, Gay people included.