One summer, my family and I rented a house 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
hard-wired 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 eat 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 the 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, made different friends, and realized
that the cliques were not as homogeneous as I had led myself to believe.
There were smart students at the "pretty table", "jocks" at
the orchestra table, and interesting stories everywhere.
"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,
and block us from trying to develop relationships with strangers.
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 during four
different weeks of the year. Many Central Church volunteers come together
to make this work, even spending nights 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 a considerable amount of 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. Jesus' answer might be 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 on it, and live it
out here on earth. For Jesus and his 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 be better off. But the myth of that
story is to think we 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 where I sit down, because it is 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.
Is this too big a job for us to tackle by ourselves?
IF we sit down at a table with an unfamiliar group, and try trusting that the
Holy Spirit will work through all of us, we are going to grow to be more
like Jesus. 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.
______________________________________________________________________________
These thoughts are brought to you by the CPC Adult
Spiritual Development Team, seeking some spiritual growth for you this summer.
______________________________________________________________________________
WEEKLY COMMENTARY
invites YOUR comments . . .
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story, let's talk!
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this week's subject?
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below in "Post a Comment."
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______________________________________________________________________________
The June 7, 2016
COMMENTARY discussed FORGIVENESS - - -
We have received the following reader comment:
"I
would inform the person he was wrong, and ask that he or she come to me to
learn the right message.
Also, the offender can inform all of the error and say he or she is very sorry for being wrong."
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