One summer, my family and I rented a house for a month at
the Jersey Shore. Several nights a week we would eat out, so during the day, on
our wanderings through town, we would keep our eyes open for interesting
restaurants. One in particular was recommended to us, but it had a window
sign saying "NO tank tops for ladies, NO shorts for men."
This window sign was quite clear ----- you knew where you
stood. Most of society is not that honest. As Pastor Lillian Daniel
observes, "Groups of people have those signs in their heads, but outsiders
never see them. You just perceive that there are rules and an order to
things that some people seem to know and others don't."
I remember my first days at a new high school. I
entered the school cafeteria and froze. Where should I sit? Will I be
welcomed? Will I be ignored? I was the outsider, with no welcoming
place to sit.
Perhaps the desire to eat at a table with others has been
hardwired into human beings. But there is a social status element to all of
this as well. It is not just that we do not want to eat alone. We
do not want to be seen as eating alone. From our earliest nursery
school memories of snack time to the seating chart at the retirement dinner, we
know that these eating arrangements, formal and informal, mean something about whom
we are and where we are placed socially.
If Jesus had been a student at my high school, he probably
would have been actively discouraged from eating with the tax collectors and
sinners. But Jesus did eat with tax collectors and sinners,
breaking rules that were more rigid than those at my high school.
In Jesus' day, whom you ate with mattered. Where you
sat was not a casual affair. You were associated with the people you ate
with. If they were good, upstanding people and they invited you to eat at
their table, you were, by association, good and upstanding, too.
But, if people were sinners, known to the community as such,
you definitely didn't want to eat with them. The only people who ate with
sinners were the other sinners, the people who had to share a table because no
other table would have them.
At first, when I would sit down at any of those cafeteria
social enclaves, I was stared at as if I had made a mistake, But
gradually, I got to know different people, make different friends, and realized
that the cliques were not nearly as homogeneous as I had led myself to believe.
There were smart students at the "pretty table",
and jocks at the orchestra table, and interesting stories everywhere.
The Pharisees, who were good and observant Jews, the ones
who were most careful about the rules, were watching this and must have said to
Jesus and his disciples: "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors
and sinners? Why isn't he sitting at his assigned table?" They
were honestly baffled at this rule-breaking. They were genuinely worried
that Jesus was making himself "unclean." And he was,
without apology!
"NO tank tops for ladies, NO shorts for men."
Most of the world just isn't that direct. But the unspoken
and unwritten rules are often the ones that cause the most pain.
Jesus turned the tables on that by sitting at the wrong
table. What makes it the wrong table? The wrong people were sitting
at it? Who are the wrong people? The ones who are not like us.
At Central Church, we house the homeless for four weeks of
the year. We will host as few as 6 or 7 and as many as 12 or 15 persons
(adults and kids). Many Central Church volunteers come together to make
this work, and even will spend the night with them. Briefly, we have a
"community."
Meanwhile, there are grumblings about a homeless man who has
been encamped outside for many months at the edge of the church parking lot,
with all his possessions gathered in plastic bags. Sometimes, he has
homeless visitors. By camping so permanently where he does, one could say
this long-term camper "does not respect the assigned seating
arrangements" in our affluent town of Summit.
It is as if, in affluent Summit, there is an unspoken sign
that says that if you pay enough money for your home, you should not have to
walk next to a homeless person ------ you should not even see one!
And this attitude is not unique to Summit, but pervades much
of our privileged culture.
To which Jesus would have had a very clear answer, that
would not satisfy some people. The answer is this: "In the world,
there may be assigned seating, but in the Kingdom of Heaven there is not."
If we believe this, we ought to act like it, and live it out here
on earth. For Jesus and the disciples, there were no assigned seats at
his table. All were welcome, particularly in their brokenness.
Indeed the church was born on the damaged consciences and rotten reputations of
tax collectors, sinners and people in need.
We will always be told that the social barriers are there
for a reason ----- that the rules are there to keep order, and that if we will
keep to our own lunch tables, we will all be better off.
And the myth of that story is to think you can keep all the
sinners at their own table. Of course, this is wrong and profoundly
self-deceiving. Because, there are sinners at every table. There
is definitely a sinner at every table I sit down at, because it's me.
Perhaps we should try reading this story as if we were the
tax collector. We are looking over the tables, wondering where to sit
down, and who will have us. We want a way out of our past mistakes and
sins. We want to live better.
Perhaps this is too big a job for us to tackle by ourselves,
but if we sit down at a table with an unfamiliar group, try trusting
that the Holy Spirit will work through all of us, and that we are going
to grow. Isn't this how a true community begins? Isn't our church
a fertile garden for planting and nourishing "community"?
Everyone is welcome because church is actually a school for sinners, not a club
for saints.
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These thoughts are brought to you by the CPC Adult
Spiritual Development Team, seeking some spiritual growth for you this summer.
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