The foundation of our faith is the feast.

The foundation of our faith is the feast that is open and inviting and welcoming to any and all – outrageously so, outrageous in its abundance and its indiscriminate generosity and unconditional hospitality (generosity, hospitality that is without discrimination, without condition).

The foundation of our faith is the feast that is all these things – open, inviting, welcoming, abundant, generous – even, or especially, in times of need and of great uncertainty, for the sake of those who are closest to their need.

Jesus’ well-known miracle of the loaves and the fishes that multiply through the multitude, occurred when the great crowd who gathered to hear Jesus discovered, after a long day, that they were hungry and tired and far from home. The disciples wanted Jesus to dismiss everyone to go off and fend for themselves. The only person with any food was a kid with one loaf and one fish. Yet Jesus invited them to stay and share that little food they had. And what did they discover? That blessings multiply – rather than divide – when we share them with others. These are gifts that keep on giving. Sharing generously the fruits of God’s good creation with loving hospitality and open invitation is nothing less than a taste of the Realm of Heaven on Earth.

The story we heard about Abraham and Sarah and the hospitality they showed in offering a feast to strangers, took place in a desert where food and water are scarce. This is a foundational story for the Hebrew people and their faith in God, for it is the story of how these early ancestors, Abraham and Sarah, came to be blessed with their only child together despite their advanced age – Isaac – whose lineage came to be known as the people Israel.

What did they discover? That blessings multiply – rather than divide – when we share them with others. These are gifts that keep on giving. Sharing generously the fruits of God’s good creation with loving hospitality and open invitation is nothing less than a taste of the Realm of Heaven on Earth.

All of this leads me to believe that the potluck is a very important practice of our faith. We each are invited to share something, big or small, we are invited to invite whomever else we can find, and all are invited to enjoy the feast that has multiplied through the giving. In a potluck someone’s presence itself is a gift, when shared with generosity – it doesn’t matter how much or how little someone is able to bring, if anything at all, or if they didn’t get the memo but rather were just pulled in from the street. After a potluck we then continue to give away what remains.

We need more of this, this potluck practice of our faith in the overabundant love of our Holy Creator. Our world needs more of it. 

We live in a time of incredible abundance and desperate poverty, in terms of immediate physical needs, as well as social needs, and spiritual needs. Our church’s partners who help to address hunger in our communities – at the Great Valley Food Cupboard down the road, and Alianzas in Phoenixville, and Old First UCC in Philly – they all are reporting increasing need among those who are being left out and left behind in our society.

Beyond the need for physical nourishment, we know our society is also suffering the ills of social isolation and disconnection.

This is all a failure of the practice of potluck writ large.

So, it is such a blessing that we have this renewed hearth-fire at the heart of our beloved church, through our renovated kitchen. It is such a blessing that we are celebrating with a potluck that invites us all to share in the communal spirit of hospitality and generosity. I invite us to

Let us open the doors and the windows wide to invite in any and all who hunger for such a feast and yearn to share their own gifts, as well as to let out the enticing aromas, and to carry out and give out the overflowing abundance of the Spirit we are blessed to share as a potluck people.

Thank you for being a part of it.

And, above all, thanks be to God.

Delivered Sunday, September 7th, 2025, by Rev. Nathaniel Mahlberg at the United Church of Christ at Valley Forge.

Photo by <a href=”https://stockcake.com/i/feast-of-flavors_230514_43662″>Stockcake</a&gt;