Jesus’ No-So-Common-Sense Guide to Entertaining - September 2, 2007

Hebrews 13: 1-8, 15-16 and Luke 14: 1, 7-14

A few weeks ago I picked up a little book on a clearance rack at the bookstore.  It is a book about Southern hospitality.  There is something about the American south that fascinates me.  In the last couple of years, I’ve traveled a lot more in the south than in the north.  Something happens to me there.  I resurrect the southern-Indiana twang which was my native tongue for the first twenty or so years of my life, and I seem to stretch it out so that before I know it, I can speak in a very respectable southern drawl.  You may have heard a quick “Y’all” pop out of my mouth from time to time, haven’t you?  (Y’all haven’t?  Well, y’all have now.)

The premise of the book I’ve been reading is that there is a right way, and a Yankee way to do things like entertain.  Engraved stationary? “The right way.”  E-mailed invitations?  “The Yankee way.”  Using grandmother’s china and sterling for everyday dining?  “Perfectly acceptable.”  Paper plates and plastic forks at the wedding reception?  “What were you thinking?”   But above all, the wearing of pearls, and a warm smile can cover a multitude of hospitality sins, according to this author—even store-bought pie crust.

Jesus knew a thing or two about the proper way to do things.  There was a certain code about meal times in his day and age.   Everything was filled with meaning—what was served, who was served, how the guests were served, where the guests sat.  There is a lot of eating going on in Luke’s gospel, but this time Jesus talks about it like never before in this gospel.

Meal times are important times in our lives.  It’s when we celebrate, commiserate, and in the best of cases, relate to one another.  I have a jumble of mixed memories of mealtimes growing up.  I have told you before about the raucous times—about the “grab while the grabbing’s good” casual nature of my earliest years growing up in a large household with many children.  But there were also times when I could sense the tension in my parents’ worried brows when here just didn’t seem to be enough.

If that were not enough for a child to deal with, there was the whole ordeal of school lunch.  Elementary school wasn’t too difficult—the teacher was in charge of every aspect of lunch, from where I sat to what I ate.  When I went to school, children were required to clean the plate at lunch, unless that child brought his or her lunch form school.  As many of the children in my school were on the free lunch program, that wasn’t really an option for many of us.  I once saw my second-grader sister sitting in the cafeteria crying because her teacher insisted she skip recess for not eating all her cooked carrots.  (I don’t think schools could get away with that kind of policy today.)  My sister will not have carrots in her house to this day.

By the time I was in high school, things were considerably easier. There were fewer imposed food rules, but there were a lot more social rules to learn and follow.  I remember walking into the cafeteria that first day and wondering how in the world I would figure out the system.  Not the food line—the seating system.  And there was a definite system, wasn’t there?

By the time I was a sophomore, I had been paying attention and I had it all figured out.  In the beginning of the school year, my friends and I staked out the perfect sophomore table—far away enough from the freshmen that nobody would confuse us with them anymore, but far enough also from any seniors that might pick on us out of a  new-found sense of power.  We repeated the process the next year, vying to be just a little closer to the seniors—who were really not so hot, anyway.  Just a year older than us—who did they think they were?  We drove to school too!  They were not that much better than us.

Ah, but by senior year we understood what real power and privilege was all about.  Our group had solidified by then.  We were mostly drama dorks, with a few band geeks and Dungeons and Dragons dweebs thrown in for good measure.  But in a small country school like ours there was some overlap, even in our delicate stratification.  We were also the college-bound honor students, the yearbook staff, and a few of us even attempted to write an underground school paper.  Ahem.

Still, we had our standards to uphold and our reputation to maintain.  It’s not as if any old person could walk up and become a part of our table.  We had been working our way up to that table for years—we had been obeying the rules of the high school cafeteria like they were the laws of the jungle.  We were happy to let the jocks and the cheerleaders, the burnouts and the partiers have their own tables; we didn’t try to horn in on those.  Sure, a few kids might have fallen through the cracks, but we liked our little society just the way it was.  If something’s working for you, why would you change it?

Jesus’ reputation for picking odd table company was growing. He was watched now as he ate.  The crowd had perhaps become suspicious of him. He must have seemed at times like a loose cannon, and I can imagine the crowd wondering what he would do next.  He was also gaining a reputation for doing the flat out wrong thing on the Sabbath.  He was unpredictable on some level.  And as everyone knows, unpredictability can be dangerous—or can be perceived that way.   

The things he was playing fast and loose with—they weren’t just silly party ideas, but were time-honored traditions and ways in which that the society and culture had evolved into one in which the  unpredictability of a fairly fragile system of sustaining life had been minimized for the people who mattered.  The benefit of those traditions was knowing exactly who everyone was and where everyone stood. Understanding how things worked made it possible for one to advance up the social system—or to at least avoid crashing to the bottom of the heap.    The hospitality customs stood for something; they had a purpose.  Sure, there were a few people who fell through the cracks—the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind. But they weren’t the majority, they were on the fringes.  If some thing’s working for you, why change it?

Enter Jesus. Christ radically turns the system on its ear, insisting that the outsiders be embraced as long-lost family, and that social climbers humble themselves, without regard to standing or position or consequence.  Suddenly, up is down, right is wrong , and out is in. It’s scandalous.  It’s ridiculous.  It’s…marvelous.  It’s paper plates in the Antebellum mansion, grandma’s china at the homeless shelter.  It’s jocks and dweebs and partiers and band geeks and cheerleaders and the valedictorian all at the same table.  My goodness!  What would that be like?

It might be like the heavenly banquet.  Think of the freedom in simply coming to the table that God has prepared—without worry, without regard to status—a table without a fence around it.  A table we approach not because we must but because we are invited.  A table of radical welcome for upside-down believers.

The table is set this morning.  Jesus says, “Y’all come.”


Thanks be to God!