I shared in the Great Thanksgiving, the ancient liturgy of the Christian Church, two times on Easter Sunday. The first in a joyful and beautiful morning service at First Presbyterian in Durham, a large downtown congregation, its pews packed with families, children and grandchildren who came from somewhere else to visit, worship and share a traditional Easter Sunday dinner.

The second in an outdoor service at 5 p.m. in a cleared spot on the bumpy concrete at the end of a service road along U.S. 15-501 between Durham and Chapel Hill, where for the past "seven or eight" years a church called Open Tables has been gathering from time to time for worship.

Nobody's sure of the exact date of the first service, only that it was on an Easter Sunday. Four students from Duke Divinity School, all now graduated and appointed to other work, led the first worship service that included six to eight homeless folks who walked in out of the woods and sat in a semi-circle around a make-shift altar.

That altar is still there with only a cross made from weathered wood to set it apart. On the altar for the Easter service, there were flowers and bread and juice for the Communion service. The cross was a gift from the youth group at New Bethel, one of three churches in the Rougemont Charge of the United Methodist Church.

On this Sunday, one of the worshippers was Joe, who was riding high with the kind of exultation that often accompanies a meaningful spiritual experience. He was telling everybody about his baptism during the Easter morning service at Rougemont United Methodist and how happy he was.

The small congregation sang, but the words were muffled by the passing traffic just beyond the tall trees and tangled grasses that separated the four-lane roadway from the worship space.

From the beginning, these gatherings were not soul-winning events, but an opportunity to make friends and to share that friendship with someone you might never encounter otherwise. It was an opportunity to bring the church to a particular group of people who lived in tents in the thick trees beyond the highway right-of-way.

Those Duke Divinity School students had been impressed by John Wesley's notion that the church needs to get out of the sanctuary and into the places where people live.

But it soon became apparent that sharing the life of this particular population meant more than holding a worship service or bringing food for a meal. It meant responding to other needs like helping someone get a Social Security number so he or she could get disability assistance. It meant taking sick people to doctor's appointments. It meant picking up scantily clad persons on winter nights when temperatures were expected to drop to the low teens. It meant advocating for these people as governmental bodies debated what to do about the homeless folks who were begging at intersections of major roadways in and around the city.

Although Open Tables has had a lot of changes in leadership over its short life, the group has continued to hold Sunday worship some of the time and a regular gathering on Wednesdays for a meal at noon.

The past year has been a hard one, said Jay Davis, a volunteer from Rougemont United Methodist who has made this group a top priority in his life.

"Since I started working with Open Tables I have seen seven people in our homeless group die," Davis said. "This fact is tragic enough by itself. It is more tragic in the context of many people's outlook concerning the homeless.

"I have been told by persons through words and attitude that we are only 'enabling' the folks in our ministry and that if we denied them the assistance we give, they would somehow 'hit bottom' and 'come to grips' with their situation."

Davis sees it differently.

A tall imposing man in his late 60s, Davis is a retired labor organizer who worked for years in California, but who came back to his home state to retire. He drives a pickup truck that he uses to gather homeless folks on those cold nights in January and February. And when money is available, to rent a couple of rooms at Days Inn so they can have a warm shower and a warm bed for the night.

"Those who have died are seven people that I knew and broke bread with," Davis said. "Even with our help, care and love the only thing they 'came to grips' with was a cold ditch in the woods or a hospital bed on life support. These are people I knew by name. Many had ridden beside me in my truck. All of them have sat with me at lunch as we shared our stories with each other.

"I have found that those that talk about 'tough love' applied to the homeless are more about 'tough' than they are 'love,'" he said.

Davis believes no one consciously decides to live a life of poverty and addiction, but haplessly falls into that lifestyle. And once they fall there is only one way they can crawl out, through the love, care and support of friends and family.

"These tragic seven people were my brother or sister in Christ. I should not have done less for them, I should have done more. Jesus did not direct us to feed his 'sober sheep' or his 'drug-free sheep,' and despite our best efforts we still lost our war with addiction and despair for seven of these children of God."

Davis listed the seven.

David died in a ditch in the woods on a freezing night.

Nick, Andy, Robin and Taz all died in intensive care on life support.

Barbara and Wes were both struck and killed by a car.

But on the brighter side, Davis said Open Tables has one member who is into her fourth year of sobriety and another who is into his second year of sobriety. And on a really happy note, Joe was baptized on Easter Sunday as a member of the church.

Open Tables operates through a temporary grant from the Duke Endowment, which makes it possible to have a part-time director. Carolyn Schuldt, who is graduating from Duke Divinity in May, will assume that role on a full-time basis after graduation. The ministry is also supported by volunteers from the three United Methodist Churches in the Rougemont Charge and by Resurrection and Duke's Chapel United Methodist and Duke Chapel, all in Durham.

Anyone who would like to join Open Tables for lunch at noon on Wednesdays is invited to bring enough food to share and be ready to make new friends. The group always ends the gathering in a fellowship circle during which they share concerns and make prayer requests.

Visiting Open Tables is not something you will soon forget. It is a reminder, as Davis says, that "Jesus did not direct us to feed his sober sheep or his drug-free sheep. He told us to feed his sheep."