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You and
I live in a society in which eating together is less important
than it once was. We eat on the run ... on the fly ... on the
town ... or in front of the tube. Which is neither here nor
there. Except that it has played havoc with our table manners.
A second grade teacher recently told me of trying to teach
her children some manners. Whenever the children have a snack
or celebrate a birthday, she encourages them to say "please"
and "thank you." Which was going fairly well until
an irate mother called to complain that that was not why she
sent her daughter to school ... adding: "We don't use
no manners in our house."
There
is an ancient Middle Eastern proverb which reads: "I
saw them eating and I knew who they were." Which does
not make much sense in our own age of fast food and sloppy
suppers, but in Jesus' day, what you ate ... how you ate ... who
you ate with ... these were critical issues.
Especially
so among the Jews, for whom eating together was ... quite literally ... a
religious experience. So much so that there were specific
rules about how to come to the table. Cleanliness was paramount ... clean
food ... clean dishes ... clean hands ... clean hearts. A proper
Jewish meal was a worship service in which believers honored
God by paying careful attention to the most mundane details
of culinary life.
It is
entirely possible that Jesus knew the Middle Eastern proverb
("I saw them eating and I knew who they were").
But it is also clear that Jesus offended people with his table
manners. He ignored the finger bowl by his plate. He paid
little attention to the washing of pots. He ate whatever was
put in front of him. And he thought nothing of sitting down
to eat with filthy people whose lives declared their contempt
for everything holy. The scriptures attest that "people
saw him eating and knew who he was" ... someone who had
lost all sense of what was proper, and who condoned sin by
eating with sinners. He might as well have spit in the faces
of the folk who raised him.
In those
days, sinners fell into five basic categories. There were
people who did dirty things for a living ... like tax collectors
and pig farmers. Then there were people who did immoral things
with their lives ... like liars and adulterers. And there were
people who did not keep the Law up to the standards of the
authorities ... like you and me. The common thread connecting
these three categories of sinners was that they were defined
by the bad things they did ... or the good things they failed
to do. Two additional groups of sinners (making five in all)
were Samaritans and Gentiles. People got on that list, not
by what they did, but by who they were. They had a "genes"
problem ... not the "jeans" they wore, but the "genes"
they carried.
So were
I putting together a "sinner's table" at the Hunter
House, it might include an abortion doctor ... a child molester ... a
garbage collector ... an arms dealer ... an AIDS sufferer ... a
Cambodian chicken plucker ... a teenage crack smoker ... and
an unmarried baby maker (on welfare, with five children, and
three different fathers). Did I miss anyone? Oh yes, I forgot
to put Jesus at the head of the table. There he is, asking
the crack addict to pass him a roll, even as he offers the
doctor a second cup of coffee before she goes back to work.
If that
offends you ... even a little ... then you are almost ready
for what happens next. Because what happens next is that the
local ministerial association comes into the Hunter House
and sits at the table across from the sinners. I am with that
group. And we are really looking good. Our teeth are capped.
There is no dirt under our fingernails. And when our food
comes, we all hold hands to pray. We are perfectly nice people.
But we can hardly stomach our burgers for staring at the crowd
next door.
I mean
the chicken plucker is still wearing her hair net and the
garbage collector smells like spoiled meat. The addict can't
seem to find his mouth with his spoon. But none of these is
the heartbreaker. The heartbreaker is Jesus, sitting there
as if everything is just fine. Doesn't he understand the message
he is sending? Who is going to believe he speaks for God if
he won't keep better company? Doesn't the proverb say: "I
saw them eating and I knew who they were."
Now I
know what you are thinking. You are thinking: "Yes, he
ate with sinners, but he also confronted them with their sin."
Which was true. Occasionally. After all, didn't Zaccheus turn
his life around after Jesus spotted him in the tree and cried:
"Zach, let's do lunch." But if such confrontations
were a regular part of mealtime conversations, I doubt that
Jesus' reputation would have been tarnished by association,
to the degree that it was.
But while
you're pondering that, turn to the fifteenth chapter of Luke.
Everybody loves the fifteenth chapter of Luke. For it is filled
with stories. Three, to be exact. All of them familiar. Each
having to do with the "lost and found" department.
There is a story about a lost sheep ... followed by a story
about a lost coin ... leading to a story about a lost boy.
But notice how the fifteenth chapter of Luke begins. It begins
with a complaint about Jesus' table manners: "This fellow
welcomes sinners and eats with them," the authorities
grumble. And everything that follows is Jesus' reply to that
critique.
Jump to
the story of the prodigal son. Fast forward the story to the
end. The younger son has already gone to the far country ... squandered
his inheritance ... slopped in the pig sty ... and returned
with rehearsed repentance. The elder son has already stayed
at home ... worked in the fields ... minded his P's and Q's ... and
honored his daddy. But now it's suppertime and there's a prime
rib turning on the spit. The younger son is so consumed by
his sense of unworthiness that he tells his father he is prepared
to eat the rest of his meals in the bunk house with the hired
servants. The older son is so inflated by his sense of entitlement
that he will not eat with anyone who has not earned a place
at the table. Which means that both sons suffer from the same
delusion ... that they can be in a relationship with their
father without being related to each other. They want to be
sons without also being brothers. So what's a father to do?
Well,
you know how the story goes. The father prepares a meal for
them both and lets them figure out what to do about each other.
Which is a fairly easy decision for the younger son. I mean,
the younger son is so glad to be back at the table that he's
not about to cause trouble for anybody ... including his older
brother.
But it's
harder for his brother (who isn't even told that the prime
rib is cooking). By the time he shows up (sweating from all
that righteous effort), he finds out that his little weasel
of a brother has come slithering home a couple hours previous.
Which gives him reason to wonder whether he's been displaced
as "the apple of his daddy's eye." And in spite
of his daddy's assurance that everything the old man has is
his ... and will always be his ... the story ends with the older
son standing in the yard while the father goes back inside
to sit down with the sinner.
Anyway
you look at it, this is an alarming story. It is about hanging
out with the wrong people. It is about throwing parties for
losers and asking winners to foot the bill. It is about giving
up the idea that we can love God and still despise each other.
Because we can't. Or so the story seems to say. For what the
story says is that there is only one way to work out our relationship
with God ... and that involves working out our relationship
with one another.
But if
you're tired of that story, let me tell you a Fred Craddock
story. On his way to becoming a teacher of preachers, Fred
once preached to a small congregation in the mountains of
Tennessee. It was near Oak Ridge, and the area was experiencing
a "boom" because of the work of the Atomic Energy
Commission. Seemingly overnight, Oak Ridge went from village
to city. There were tents and mobile homes everywhere. Construction
workers descended from every state in the union. Fred said
his church was quite small at the time, seating about 80 people.
It had hand-carved pews and a little pump organ in the corner.
As he said: "It was a beautiful little building and very
aristocratic."
One day
Fred called his Ad Board together to consider the great evangelistic
opportunity the newcomers represented. He wanted to invite
them to attend worship and make them feel welcome. But the
chair of the Board said: "No way! They're not our kind."
To which Fred said: "What do you mean, not our kind?"
To which the chairperson explained: "Well, they're just
transients ... construction junkies. They're living in tents
and trailers. They don't have roots. They just won't fit."
The following
Sunday, they had a meeting after church to resolve the matter.
The elder spoke. Fred spoke. The people spoke. Then somebody
made a motion that "anybody seeking membership in this
church must own property in the community." It received
a strong second and passed unanimously. The only person prepared
to vote against it was Fred ... and he didn't have a vote.
Years
later, Fred and his wife returned to the area and went looking
for the church. They had a hard time finding it because of
a new interstate highway. But when they finally got on the
right road, they arrived at the right place. Much to their
surprise, the parking lot was crowded with cars, trucks, vans ... even
motorcycles. "Great day," Fred thought. "They
must be having a revival." Excited to see what was taking
place, he and his wife decided to park the car and go inside.
The church was full. But all the pews were gone. In their
place were formica tables and chrome chairs. The pump organ
was still over in the corner, but nobody was sitting at the
console. For the building was no longer a church. It was now
a restaurant. Said Fred: "It was filled with the most
gosh-awful people I'd ever seen." Whereupon he turned
to Nettie and said: "It's a good thing this place is
no longer a church, because none of these people would fit
in." How ironic that the same people who were once denied
the "bread of life" were now invited to pig out
on "all you can eat."
Jesus
would have liked that story. In fact, Jesus told that story
to our ministerial association at the Hunter House, the better
to silence our complaints about his dinner parties. In fact,
I remember that night just like it was yesterday. There we
were with our capped teeth and our clean nails. And Jesus
said: "Come on over ... pull up your chairs ... meet my
other friends." In fact, he even said: "Dessert
is on me." But, so far as I remember, few us of took
him up on his offer.
*
* * * *
Note:
I am greatly indebted to a pair of colleagues who stimulated
my imagination in this area. Barbara Brown Taylor is an Episcopal
priest who writes occasional columns in The Christian Century.
Rodney Wilmoth is a United Methodist preacher who delivers
regular sermons at Hennepin Avenue Church in Minneapolis.
Both offered essays entitled "Table Manners," meaning
that I have not only lifted their stories, but was even too
lazy to change their title.
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