Many years ago, I went to see a movie with my father.
The movie, which was a foreign film made by a famous Chinese director, was set in the present day, in rural China. The plot, as I recall, was the story of a peasant woman who stubbornly turned over every stone (and then some) to force the village headman to apologize for attacking and injuring her husband.
As you can tell, this movie was not a summer blockbuster. No pyrotechnics or computer generated special effects. Nor was it the sweeping epic. It was a small story that involved only a handful of characters, but like many such movies, what it lacked in spectacle, it more than made up for in truthfulness. It felt real. I am not a Chinese peasant woman, yet I understood the urgency with which the main character sought to reclaim her husband’s bruised dignity.
After the movie, as my father and I were walking to the subway, he made an astute comment about the film.
“Did you notice,” he said, “that all the important moments in the story took place while people were eating together?”
It was true.
In the humble village homes, in the roadside noodle stands, even in the police stations, whenever an important conversation took place, a cup of tea or a bowl of noodles would appear.
But until my father mentioned it, I had not noticed.
For the people in the film, and for me too, food was the natural habitat for the important moments in human life.
This was the first time I became aware that eating is about much more than sustaining the body.
In addition to keeping us physically alive, food plays an important role in our spiritual well being. Food nourishes our spiritual life by creating community.
When we live together in a family, we cross paths in the kitchen.
As the poet Joy Harjo writes,
The world begins at a kitchen table…
Babies teethe at the corners…
At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.
And the table is not just the center of gravity in our homes. Anywhere people gather, in restaurants, schools, hospitals, churches, hotels, malls, parks, you will find tables – big tables, small tables, counters, bars, picnic tables. Almost anywhere a human stops moving for a moment, you will find a table, placed in a spot that is conducive, not only for eating a little something (as Winnie the Pooh would say), but also for being together.
People need to eat… but also…
people need to go about the business of being people – and they need to be together.
**
Jesus of Nazareth was, as you know, a Jew, so in its early years, the followers of Jesus were Jews who happened to believe that the Messiah had come. The idea that there was a religion known as Christianity did not appear until later.
During the time of Jesus, and today too, the table has played an important role in Jewish communities. Because of their strict dietary laws, religiously observant Jews tend to only share their tables with other religiously observant Jews. Keeping kosher has always been a highly visible way for a Jew to act out their faith – to demonstrate his or her fidelity to their religious identity. This, of course, meant that Gentiles, who did not keep kosher were considered ritually impure, and hence were not welcome at a Jewish table.
Kosher dietary laws do two important things – they define Jewish identity, and they limit access to the table.
Early in his ministry, Jesus challenged this. He did not relinquish kosher restrictions, but he did flaunt the idea that ritual purity should restrict who is at the table. Jesus shared his table with people like tax collectors and prostitutes – individuals that the Jewish leadership of the day considered impure. He did this in a very public way, and when the Pharisees took him to task on this, he dismissed their concerns out of hand.
Before going on, I want to name something that is at work here. There is a tendency, among Christian ministers, to devalue the traditions of our Jewish brethren – a mistake that we are susceptible to because the narratives in the Gospels can often lean that way. Let me state clearly, that I am not saying, “look at how much better we are then the Jews.” My goal, here, is to show how two religious practices regarding what can be on the table and who can sit at the table, led to different outcomes.
Kosher laws could be thought of as exclusive, or they could be thought of as an expression of a community’s urge to collect, in unity, around ancient practices.
As Christian worship practices began to develop, they too, developed around the table – but in a very different way. The Holy Sacraments, which happened at the table, was an invitation to diversity – all the more so, when, at length, the followers of Jesus set aside the requirement to observe Kosher dietary laws. Christian worship evolved as an open invitation, to people of all nations.
The table – or more precisely, what church historians call Table Fellowship – was a crucially important factor in the development of the early church. It was here – at the table – that the early Christians differentiated themselves from their Jewish forbears, transforming from a local Jewish sect, to a global religious tradition.
**
The two passages from the Gospel of Luke that Vicki read for us this morning, offer further evidence that tables are everywhere. The gospels are stories that take place in the context of community, so keep an eye out for them, and you’ll find tables throughout the gospels.
In the passage from the 14th chapter of Luke, Jesus has been invited to the table of a Pharisee to share in a Sabbath meal. When he looks around he notices that the guests who come in tend to choose to sit in the places of honor. In response Jesus recommends the opposite course of action – that one should habitually humble oneself and choose the less desirable seat. This, Jesus points out, has practical value. You avoid the shame of being displaced if someone more important comes and you are asked to move. You also enjoy the possibility of being asked to move up. The implied wisdom here, though, is more than practical. This, Jesus tells us, is the way of God:
For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Unsatisfied with this social commentary, Jesus also approaches the host of the event and offers him a new approach to his understanding of hospitality.
Jesus is never shy about challenging people by flipping everything on its head. (He was known for doing some actual flipping of tables wasn’t he?). In this case he says something calculated to unnerve anyone, not just the Pharisee.
“When you give a luncheon or a dinner, Jesus says do not invite your friends or your brothers and sisters or your relatives or rich neighbors,
Did I read that right?
If there is a single place that is most closely associated with our inner circle of intimate family and friends, it is the table. And yet Jesus says “do not invite your friends or your brothers and sisters or relatives.”
If there is a single place best suited to entertain, impress and influence rich neighbors, surely it is the table.
But no. Jesus is suspicious of your motives. If you invite someone like that, you might get repaid… and if you do, your intentions, as far as God is concerned, are misguided.
Jesus – and presumably God – have a different guest list. Who should you invite?
when you give a banquet, Jesus says, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed because they cannot repay you,
Well what do you think of that? I’m not sure that I would call such an event a “banquet.” The word “banquet” makes me think of having fun. Plenty of good food and drink. Friends and family all around. Christ’s guest list is not at all like that. It sounds more like lunchtime at the soup kitchen in some rundown urban area.
When I compare the Pharisees guest list, and Christ’s guest list it seems quite clear that the reason for God’s banquet must be different from the reason for the Pharisee’s banquet. God’s is not a black tie affair. Its not the kind of party where you go to be “seen.” God’s banquet does not attend to the desires of the host. It attends to the needs of the guests.
Or does it?
**
Not long ago, I learned a new word.
As a self proclaimed word guy, I am always in the market for new words – the word of the day comes into my email inbox everyday, and every once in a while I collect a new one. In my world, learning a new word is a big deal.
This new word, I am glad to say, did not come from the internet, but organically, as it were, in a conversation with an old friend.
What were we talking about? I’m not exactly sure. I’d known Jessie many years ago, and we were catching up. It was one of those intensely pleasurable conversations that goes hither and yon, but keeps you in one place. You know what I mean?
Wherever we were, bushwhacking our way through the years since we’d last spoke, Jessie saw a sign of a path in the undergrowth…
“There’s a word for that…” she said, lifting her eyes to the ceiling, as if asking the cobwebs for assistance. “What is it…?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“It’s a German word.”
“Zietgeist?” I asked, picking the low hanging fruit.
“No,” she said. “It’s a word that expresses the feeling you get when you realize that each person that you encounter – every one of them – even the tired mass of commuters on the subway – that each of them has a complex life, filled with pain and desire.”
“There is such a word!?” I asked. “If so, I must have it.”
She whipped out her phone and looked it up.
“Sonder,” she said.
“Sonder? I’ve never heard that word before.”
“Sonder,” she said, reading out loud: “The profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passed in the street, has a life as complex as one’s own, which they are constantly living despite one’s personal lack of awareness of it.
**
When we hear a Christ’s guest list – a list that includes the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, our immediate assumption is that the event will be a charitable one, and that the people receiving the charity are the guests, unfortunate as they are.
But what if we consider the intriguing possibility that Christ’s guest list is compiled as much for the benefit of the host, as for the guests?
Indeed, Christ himself points us in this direction when he says that, inviting the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind,…
you will be blessed.
The table is the place where we meet with the people – our family and close friends – who we are intimate with. We are accustomed to knowing the sonder of their lives – the intricacy of their relationships, the beauty of their ambitions, the way they like their coffee…
So when we invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind to the table, we open ourselves to the sonder of their lives.
They are no longer defined by their pain. They become real to us.
Just as Jesus became real at the moment that he broke bread.
This is the genius of a religion that is centered at the table.
A religion brings people – regardless of their social standing – to the table, is a religion that, at its very core, breaks down the categories that define us.
At best, this is our Christian faith – a religion with a table – a social ethic – at its core. A religion that disregards the artificial hierarchies that society imposes. A religion that, as the prophet Isaiah said, makes its way through wilderness:
Every valley shall be raised up,
every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
the rugged places a plain.
Amen.