This is a talk (that’s what the word sermon means) sent to me last Sunday evening. Pastor Ron Luckey of Faith Lutheran Church in Lexington, KY, said it outloud to his parishioners last Sunday, 29 August 2010, the 14th Sunday after Pentecost. His words are based on the appointed Gospel for the day: St. Luke 14: 1, 7-14. Be careful about reading it; it may transform your way of thinking about what it means to sit down and eat with people. Here’s what Pastor Luckey said:
The first day of school is always a little scary. Whether it’s pre-school, high school, or college—it doesn’t matter. My first day of high school was the scariest experience I ever had in all my years of schooling. Specifically it was lunch time that was scary on that first day of high school. In my high school the whole student body ate at the same time. So you had everybody at once in that cafeteria. The entire population of Decatur High School was in the same place at the same time. A miniature world. With all of its variety of people. I can still remember going through the line at lunch. Putting the food on my tray and paying the lunch lady at the cash register.
And then came the moment. I remember shutting my eyes and taking a deep breath. And turning around. And having to make the biggest decision of my life up to that point. Where would I sit? In that whole world out there, where would I sit? Or more to the point, who would have me? Who would welcome me to their table? In my high school, there was an unwritten seating chart. It was unspoken, but it was very real. You didn’t just sit anywhere in my high school lunch room. You sat with “your kind.” We all knew going in that certain tables were set aside for certain kinds of folks.
And it was important to know “your place.” If you looked to the left, you’d see the tables where the popular kids sat. The ones who had gone to the elementary schools in the upscale neighborhoods of Fernbank and Medlock. These were the clean cut kids dressed in the newest fads who already drove their own cars. Who got elected to student council and homecoming court. The football players, reeking of testosterone, had a table to themselves. There was another table where the smart kids sat. The chess club members and the ones who always got the blue ribbons at the science fair. And over by the wall in the back was a table for the guys with slicked-back hair who smoked behind the stadium. And the girls who hung around with them. The ones who piled their hair high up on their heads and looked as if they had put on their makeup with a brick layer’s trowel.
You were welcomed to the cafeteria at Decatur High School. You just had to know your place once you were in there. Find the right table and you’d be fine. Because the unwritten rule was: “Who you ARE is defined not so much by who you ARE as by who is the person sitting next to you at lunch.”
Whether I knew it or not, it was good practice for life out in the real world after high school and college. Because I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. The world welcomes you. You just have to know where you belong once you’re here.
The world has its own unwritten seating chart. And generally speaking, we sit at the table with folks like us. Who look like us and worship like us and vote like us. And the interesting thing is that we generally don’t feel a need to apologize for that.
Holly and I were in a group of pastors last week looking at the gospel reading for today about the poor and lame at the same table as the rich and the healthy. And one of the pastors said: “But isn’t it natural to want to be with people similar to ourselves?” I sat there thinking: “Yeah, I guess it is.” “Birds of a feather” and all that, you know. But it’s like a lot of things. It may be natural. It may be the way things are. It may be the way we’ve been taught.
But then, Jesus comes along. And says: “Just because it’s natural doesn’t make it right.” The world says: “You are what you eat.” Jesus says: “You are WHERE you eat.” He said that at a dinner table. I’ve counted nineteen stories in St. Luke’s gospel where Jesus has a knife and fork in his hand and a napkin in his lap, and he’s teaching while he’s eating.
Luke seems to love catching Jesus talking with his mouth full. And this text is one of those occasions. Jesus has been invited to supper one evening. And he notices how all the guests come in and look around and move up toward the front to get the best seats. So he takes his butter knife and hits it a few times on the side of his tea glass and says: “Can I have your attention for a minute? Let me give you some advice. If you think you’re smart enough to sit at the table where all the smart kids sit, you run the risk of them asking: ‘What did you make in Algebra last quarter?’ And you have to get up with your tray and slink off to sit with the kids who smoke behind the stadium.” But if you play your cards right, you can be the Big Man on Campus.
Let me tell you how to do it. After you’ve paid the lady your lunch money and you turn around, go sit with the folks everybody considers ‘losers.’ And you never know. With a little bit of luck somebody from the table where all the popular kids sit will yell across the cafeteria, in front of everybody in the school: “Come on over here and sit with US.” And you’ll get to say in front of everybody: “Aw, shucks. Me? Little old me? Well, I guess if you say so.’ ”
Now, Jesus isn’t serious about that little strategy, of course. And the people that night knew that. They ”got it.” They knew what he was doing. He was poking fun at their behavior. But more than that, they knew he was reminding them how ridiculous and stupid it is to structure society in such a way that we divide ourselves into different tables according to who we think we are or what we think we’re entitled to as opposed to somebody else.
Why does it matter where we sit? That’s what Jesus wants to know. Any old place is the right place, according to Jesus. Just sit down. And let other people just sit down. Right now in this country, we’re divided over where a Muslim community center should be located in New York City. I don’t know where you stand on that question. And I don’t much care. I do care, though where Jesus stands. And based on the gospel reading today, I wonder what would Jesus say about this issue? Where is it appropriate for Muslims to sit these days? Where is “their place”? Is it two blocks from “Ground Zero”? Four blocks away? A mile away? And it’s not just in New York City where that question is being asked.
There’s a big controversy brewing in northern Kentucky these day where many of the citizens have risen up to oppose the building of a Muslim worship center near Cincinnati—hundreds of miles from Ground Zero. I don’t know the political answer to any of that. All I know is, Jesus says: “When you give a dinner, invite everybody to your table.”
To be honest, I wish he hadn’t said that. Because I like to hang out with my own crowd. It feels natural. It’s much more comfortable to choose my own friends rather than have Jesus do it for me. Because you know how he is.
That’s the thing about baptism. The moment we are baptized we no longer have the luxury of choosing our friends. Jesus does it for us. He just puts us all in a bag and shakes us up and dumps us out. Jesus doesn’t care about order in society nearly as much as we do. Whether it’s undocumented immigrants in Arizona or Vineyard Community Church in Lexington with its blacks and whites and Latinos, wanting to buy an old elementary school close to an old established neighborhood and turn it into a church, the issue is the same.
Where are we going to sit and with whom? We make it so complicated. But in Jesus’ mind, it’s not complicated at all. St. Paul understood that. He knew Jesus as well as anybody when he wrote to the Galatians: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female. For all of you are one and the same in Christ Jesus.”
We might divide into religious camps because it’s “natural.” But in Jesus’ mind, there is no such thing as Lutherans or Baptists or Roman Catholics. There is just “the baptized.” In Jesus’ eyes, there are no “rich people” or “poor people.” In his mind, we’re all poor in our own way in need of gifts only he can give. Jesus never said a word about gays or lesbians. It was a non-issue apparently for him. Which means it’s safe to say, I think, that he sees no difference between a gay man or a straight man, between a lesbian or a heterosexual woman any more than he sees a difference between a Jew or a Greek.
Look at Jesus’ eating habits. The record is clear in all four gospels. He ate with conservative Pharisees on Monday and folks completely unlike them on Tuesday. Which, to me indicates that Jesus is equally comfortable with Tea Party folks as he is with Left wing Democrats. To him, they’re all sinners. And they all need his death and resurrection. Which he is more than happy to give them.
All of this is to say, we may struggle with where to sit, but we know where Jesus stands. So, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors…But when you give a banquet invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed . . . .”
The preacher was right last week at that conference. That kind of behavior doesn’t come naturally Monday through Saturday. Which is why we practice on Sunday at Jesus’own table. Where every week, even though he knows how blind we are, how we lame we are, how poor our efforts are at being his followers, he invites us to sit down with him.
When all is said and done, we Christian might as well rearrange the seating chart while we’re here on earth. Because we’re going to be sitting together for all eternity in heaven.
And that means, Glenn Beck and President Obama will be eating off each other’s plates one fine day. “Here, try some of this, Glenn.” Won’t that be a sight?
And what about the sight of a child who never drank a cup of clean water in her life drinking beside the little boy who never drank anything but filtered water from a tap. That will be a day.
The day he calls “the resurrection of the righteous.” And that day is coming when Jesus returns. We might as well start practicing now.
