A Bigger Table
A Bigger Table
1 John 3:1-7; Luke 24:36-48
1 John 3:1-7
See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.
Luke 24:36b-48
Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence. Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.
Prayer – God of grace, as we continue our journey from Easter, we still worry, we still have questions of what it means to live as an Easter people. Remind us this day that it is gathering together at a table, to share in a common meal, to fill our bodies and souls with your sustaining grace, all the while expanding the table to include all of your people – amen.
Shalom, says Jesus, which is sort of a cross between ‘Peace and Hey.’ It’s both a meaningful greeting and a casual, everyday one. The friends didn’t experience it as either meaningful or casual, to them it was terrifying. The dead one is among them and acting as if nothing weird had happened over the last couple of days.
‘C’mon people. Here I am. No really. Look at my scars. You can touch me and see that I’m not a ghost. It’s okay.’ Some of them are starting to move in closer and then he asks for something to eat. They give him some fish and he eats it in their presence. Luke is obviously writing for those who say the resurrected Jesus was not physical but spiritual only.
What attracts me most, though, is Jesus’ humanness. After three days of being closed up in a tomb, he’s hungry. Who wouldn’t be? When he walks in, his friends are so frightened they forget to show common hospitality. They don’t offer him a place to sit, something to eat and drink, a traditional welcome for first century Palestine. He smells the food and looks over their shoulders while they are backing away from him and crowding around him in equal measure. Finally, in the midst of reassuring them, he can’t wait any longer, ‘Uh, do I smell fish?’ Someone catches on to his hunger and goes to get him a plate, and they watch ever so closely as he savors that first bite and swallows. As they are assessing him in a more friendly manner, he’s simply having some leftovers. Finally, after sharing a meal together, he’s ready to engage in real conversation.
Spirituality and relationships are so often connected to eating. It makes sense. It makes us human. We talk about being fed spiritually, or we call friends and make plans to eat together. Eating is human. Relationships are human. Spirituality is human. Those things are linked by the realities of life. While we cannot exist without food, it’s also true that our existence is deeply impacted if we lack significant relationships or some type of spiritual awareness. We live better when we eat, especially when we eat together.
In the times of Jesus even more so then than today, the act of sharing a meal with someone was a sign of respect, of association with another – of one’s willingness to be seen in fellowship. It was a very public endorsement. Because of this, Jesus’ diverse choice of meal companions often made people really angry. The religious folks are quoted throughout the NT pointing fingers of exclusion, “look at him, this man eats with sinners.” They wonder aloud what kind of rabbi would associate himself with such reprehensible characters, and they seek to undermine his authority because of his presence with those on the margins of life.
Then as now, we’re often known by the company we keep, especially in the Church, and Jesus wasn’t helping his rep with the religious elites. And though not mentioned in scriptures, I imagine the street people criticized him for breaking bread with those who looked down pointy noses at them, accusing him of conspiring with the oppressors who kept them on the outside looking in. Jesus didn’t meet with just those who could boost his platform. He had friends in low places as well. Perhaps that was the radical and strategic beauty of his scandalous diverse guest list. By not being selective with his invitation for shared meals, Jesus affirms the value of his disparate meal companions to them and to those watching from a distance.
I think there is something to the reality that so many of the gospel stories include feeding the hungry and sharing a meal together. One of the most important gatherings for us as a church in the past has been our potluck meals with the Thai community the first of the month. Over the last year we all have missed those moments when we gather with one another at table fellowship. A shared table is foundational for us as Christians – it is as if it is a religion rooted in the most ordinary yet subversive practice – a dinner table where everyone is welcome, where the despised and outcasts are honored. I can only believe that our potlucks are reflective of what God’s kingdom is like – a bunch of outcasts and oddballs gathered at a table, not because we are rich or poor or worthy or good, but because we are hungry. Faithful folk know how to fuel the body and make love the central ingredient in almost any dish. When we lack words, we bring food; when we wish to dispense comfort and care, it often comes in the form of casseroles and hot dishes, bread or brownies, all seasoned with love and garnished with a sprig of hope. At church potlucks there is always plenty of food and no one goes home hungry – it resembles a bigger table.
In the eyes of many people in the world, Christians no longer have much in common with Jesus. We have become all or nothing religious extremists who take Jesus’ name in vain by using him only to further our cause, win our arguments, or justify our positions. They believe that most of us have little interest in allowing him to alter our hearts when it comes to making peace with those we consider our adversaries, that we don’t really emulate as much as name drop him. It saddens me and I can imagine that it saddens Jesus that far too many Christians have become exclusionary in their faith and practice. Religion tends to leverage fear in the name of community, to magnify the barrier between it and the world around it, and as a result the local church has a propensity to become more parochial, ore defensive, and more insular – in other words, making the table much smaller.
I am afraid that we assume that because we love Jesus, we are loving others like Jesus does; that because we feel at home with him, people feel that way in our presence. We take for granted that our table is God-sized or rationalize away why that may not be true. Few of us stop to consider whom we’re excluding or whom we’re reluctant to welcome or how we’ve become a barrier to other people, because this kind of self-awareness and self-examination is fraught with land mines. We’re forced to do some work and consider our own darkness. It’s one thing to personally accept Christ’s boundless grace, and another to avoid hoarding it for ourselves. It’s always so much easier to live with a closed fist than an open hand. And yet, the latter way is the way of Christ.
There’s a popular myth that if Jesus were to show up here today, he would be hanging out solely with the poor and disenfranchised and the outcasts. That is entirely true if the gospel stories are to be believed. They show him giving equal time to the most disparate segments of humanity. He isn’t cloistered in some cozy, insulated corner, preaching to the choir of like-minded fan club, but also he isn’t relegated to the ragged, gritty, neglected people of the street either. Yes, he dines with tax collectors, sinners and sluts, but also in the home of a respected Pharisee, surrounded by skeptical religious elites. He extends his hand to heal a despised leper, but does the same for the servant of a Roman soldier whose faith moves him. He preaches on a hillside to the poor and disenfranchised and feeds 5000 plus, yet speaks regularly at the synagogue amid the experts and insiders, afterwards sharing in a meal to further the conversation. He counsels both a curious Pharisee named Nicodemus who comes to him under the cover of night and a shunned Samaritan woman at a public well in the heat of day. Jesus was a pastor to a wide swath of humanity that crossed his path, caring for all of these people with the same degree of care and compassion regardless of their place in society. And this is perhaps one of the more challenging aspects of who Jesus is and how he interacted with those at his enormous table – embracing those we may exclude because of any number of reasons. We all have lepers in our heads and Jesus’ practice of a bigger table forces us to get out of our heads and open our hearts.
There is far too much division in our country and world today. Tensions between whites and people of color, political parties, conservatives and liberals, men and women, and the fights in the church over community and purity, who is in and who is out are just as destructive. I would assert that far too many of us have lost the vision of a bigger table, of a common humanity that hungers for connection and relationship. Jesus came to knock down walls and widen the circle of inclusion, rather than draw strict theological and moral lines. Not that Jesus didn’t have standards – he criticized those who neglected ‘justice and mercy and faith.’ But so much of his mission, so much of his ministry was focused on opening God’s kingdom to more and more people. Jesus was always about a bigger table.
I am grateful that our church is hospitable and welcoming. And I don’t want us to lose sight that is so easy to get caught up in differences and agendas. The table that Jesus sets over and over again in the scriptures is a place of continual restoration, perennial communion, unending fellowship. Jesus lived out a theology of welcome, of hospitality, of grace – he was relational first and foremost and that meant he saw people as acceptable and worthy and important. At the bigger table of Jesus, you don’t earn a spot there; you don’t fail and then find yourselves outside of it. It is a bigger table of second chances, and two hundredth chances, a table of grace. There you don’t ever lose your place and you are never finished.
The place where God is will always be radically inclusive. It will always outgrow its container, always break beyond the borders we create, imagine or intend. The bigger table will always be leading us beyond where we believe the edge of our compassion and connection should be, and often this will be outside the rigid faith of our childhood. This is the work that Jesus did in the Jewish people who comprised the core of his inner circle. His call on their lives was to move beyond their comfort zones, to include those assumed to be outside the bounds.
At the bigger table, Jesus has wisdom to share, hard words to give, and purpose to call people to, but more than that he has their humanity and divinity to affirm. He allowed them the dignity of being seen and heard and known. Our opportunity is to reflect that pursuit to have an increasingly open table and church, that welcomes and affirms and celebrates any and every prodigal who wanders in, hungry and thirsty for acceptance. Thank God that God is always going to better at inclusion than we are; always more compassionate, more loving, more forgiving. And it is our opportunity to reflect God’s presence in our lives by make the table bigger and bigger and bigger – may it be so – thanks be to God – amen.