An Open Table

(A ‘Concentric Circle’ Sermon for Youth and Adults)

 

Craig Anderson

 

Galatians 2:1-10; Luke 14:15-24    March 4, 2001

 

            As always, the confirmation class taught me something this week.  We were trying to figure out what you really need to have a church.  Pretty soon I noticed the class was starting to repeat itself.  Somebody said we need the offering plates and someone else, the jail visitors: we need both because, these are ways we help people, and the church is supposed to help people.  I knew that!  That’s not what they taught me.  I wanted to know how THEY knew that.  So I asked, “where did you get that idea?”  “The Bible?”, somebody guessed.  Right!  I said.  Where in the Bible?  At first there were blank stares.  Then someone smiled: “the story about the Good Samaritan...?”  “Okay!” says I.  “Who else knows the story about the Good Samaritan?”  Every hand went up!  I almost fell over.  Every hand never goes up.  Two maybe, three or four if they forget they’re in church, but never every hand.  That was when I learned something.

 

            “How come all of you know this story?” I asked.  “We acted it out in church, up front, last year on Children’s Sunday.”  Maybe you remember.  They acted out the Good Samaritan:  the story about the guy who everybody in Israel hated, because he was from Samaria; but he was the guy who helped out the man left for dead by robbers, after all the supposedly helpful people, like ministers and deacons, passed by.  The confirmation class remembered.  They acted it out!

 

            So what did I learn?  That we learn by acting.  Why you could even learn to be a Christian by acting it out.  Act it out, and you remember.

 

            It turns out that Jesus got here ahead of me again.  Jesus’ stories, his parables, like the parable of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, take only a minute or so to read.  But originally they were probably acted out.  It might have taken an hour or so, with lots of audience participation, and plenty of time for discussion and debate, time to agree and disagree.  We can’t do all of that today, but we can get started, and so I need 4 helpers.  Who will come up and help act out what has been called the parable of the “open table” from Luke 14?

 

(One young person was selected to be a host, standing behind the communion table.  Three more became servants.)

 

Okay!  Here’s the deal.  Once upon a time:

“Someone gave a great dinner and invited many.  At the time for the dinner she sent her servants to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come; for everything is ready now.’”

 

Servants, that’s your line.  Rehearse it: “Come for everything is ready now....” 

 

Good.  Now, do you know who to go to?  No?  We need some more help.  (We huddled, and three “targets” to be invited guests were picked from the congregation.) 

“So, when the great dinner was ready, the servants went out, but the invited guests began to make excuses...”

 

First:  ‘I have bought a piece of land on Washington Valley Road, and I must go out and see if there are deer on it; please accept my regrets.

 

Second:  ‘I have bought a new car with the power of five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try it out going up Summit Road; please accept my regrets.

 

Third:  ‘My daughter has just been married, and therefore I cannot come.’

 

“So the servants returned and reported this to their master.   Then the owner of the house became angry and said to her servants:

 

‘Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.’” (And if you can’t find them, then bring the tall, the short, the old, the young, a girl, a man, a boy and a woman.)

 

“And a servant said, ‘Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.’”

 

“Then the master said to the servant,  ‘Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled.’”

 

(At this point it seemed as if we ought to get the choir included, and fifteen more people gathered at the table.)

 

            Let’s think about what we have here.  A big special dinner ready.  But a house empty.  Lots of excuses and a disappointed, angry host.  This is much better isn’t it?  What we have is a pretty mixed group.  Old and young.  Men and women.  Boys and girls.  Some really handsome ones; some really interesting looking ones.  Some you know, some you don’t.  This is much better than a full table but an empty house, don’t you agree?  Let’s have people return to their seats and think about this some more.  But leave the food, that’s for later!

 

            A special dinner ready.  But a house empty.  So the host sent his servants to replace the excuse making absent guests with anyone they could find off the streets.  That looked pretty good to us.  But we didn’t really have a true picture.  If we had time, to be true to the story, we would have gone out to Morristown and Dover and not just the choir loft, and we would have ended up with a crowd of people even more diverse from the one we had, right?

 

            When Jesus had people act out the parable of the open table, and then as they discussed and debated it, it must have been very interesting.  Maybe today’s group looked okay to us, but suppose we added some Latino day laborers from Dover, and some African Americans from Morristown, and some residents from Greystone Psychiatric Park?  Now don’t try this at home kids... but suppose that you did?  What might happen?  Imagine how the crowd responded when Jesus had them act out this story in his day.  Back then you didn’t mix children in at the table.  They ate what was left-over later.  A single woman would never have been welcome.  The lame and the blind mentioned in Jesus’ story, were people thought to be unclean, untouchable.  You’d never sit at the same table with them in the first century.

 

            Think about it.  If anyone had been brought in off the street to fill the house, there would have a big mix-up at the table.  Anyone could have been sitting next to anyone else: female next to male, masters next to servants, wealthy next to poor, respectable next to the unrespectable.  Imagine the discussion they must have had about the story of the open table.  I’ll bet that some argued this was a terrible idea.  Others must have thought it was just like what they hoped their community would become.  For the next several months we are going to have a similar discussion here at Brookside Church, a discussion about Jesus’ story of the open table.  Churches still haven’t decided what to make of this story.  Denominations are still debating and discussing it.  And we at Brookside Church are going to join in.  So thanks for acting it out for us.  We’ll try to remember what we saw.  Now let me read another story to the adults, a second chapter in the saga of the open table, this one told by Paul, 20 years after Jesus told his.

 

            Paul wrote to the church in Galatia to describe a meeting he had been summoned to in Jerusalem. Church leaders there had heard reports that Paul wasn’t following the rules about who and what could be served at table:

 

After fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me.  I went up in response to a revelation. Then I laid before them (though only in a private meeting with the acknowledged leaders) the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure that I was not running, or had not run, in vain.  But even Titus, who was with me, was not compelled to be circumcised, though he was a Greek.  But because of false believers secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might enslave us —  we did not submit to them even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might always remain with you.  And from those who were supposed to be acknowledged leaders (what they actually were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality) — those leaders contributed nothing to me.  On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel for the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel for the circumcised  (for he who worked through Peter making him an apostle to the circumcised also worked through me in sending me to the Gentiles), and when James and Cephas and John, who were acknowledged pillars, recognized the grace that had been given to me, they gave to Barnabas and me the right hand of fellowship, agreeing that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.  They asked only one thing, that we remember the poor, which was actually what I was eager to do.        Galatians 2:1-10

 

            Twenty years after Jesus’ death, fourteen years after Paul’s conversion from Pharisaical Judaism to Christian Judaism, a new debate broke out, or rather an old debate continued in the Christian Jewish camp.  This time the debate was sparked by Paul’s success with a non-Jewish audience: with the Gentiles, Greeks and Romans, another mixed lot, thought again to exist beyond the bounds of proper association.  Once more, cherished distinctions were challenged; distinctions Paul said he paid no attention to.  Who the leaders were in Jerusalem or what their supposed rank was, “made no difference to me,” said Paul.  “God shows no partiality.”  On the next page of his letter to Galatia, Paul wrote, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”  Robin Scroggs, commenting on this passage says that its “inescapable conclusion” is that “before God all people are equal.”  “Social and economic status are now irrelevant.  Within the community of faith, people, no matter of what background, shape, or form, are seen and accepted as equals.  All superior-inferior relationships are destroyed in the Body of Christ.”

 

            I hope you have not missed the reality that one of the issues in this old-new debate over who’s in and who’s out, was whether you and I are in or out!  For the moment we are not talking about tall or short, male or female, straight or gay, black or white, but Jew and non-Jew.  The question was whether the table was open to the likes of us.  An executive committee called Paul out on the carpet to account for himself.  There was debate and disagreement.  Unanimity hard to come by.  But in the spirit of Jesus’ open table, Paul argued that before God all of us are equal; and finally, even we Gentiles got a seat.

 

            There is an ancient Middle Eastern proverb which reads,  "I saw them eating, and I knew who they were."  Modern anthropologists agree.  Table customs speak volumes.  What is eaten, where, when, and more especially, with whom tells volumes about character, beliefs and values.  We see Jesus through rose-colored glasses, but of him a segment of his audience said, "Behold a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners." 

 

            In our nation’s recent past, we witnessed the drama of table customs and boundaries being challenged.  “Think of the furor that erupted at the start of the civil rights movement at a Woolworth lunch counter when black young people sat down to order a sandwich and Coke.” 

 

            As Dominic Crossan observes, “this modern, enlightened, democratic society had rules about who could eat and drink where, when, and with whom.  It was literally against the law for blacks to eat in certain places, and certainly for blacks and whites to eat together.  That segregated lunch counter was a miniature model of the patterns of association in the segregated society as a whole.  So when young people, black and white, broke the rules and sat around tables together to eat, they were creating a new model of what the society should look like.  The segregated world symbolized human separation and discrimination; the open table symbolized human community, oneness, equality.

 

            The debate continues.  The Christian church is not unified around this table, despite its profound and powerful symbolism.  Protestants and remarried Catholics are not officially welcome at St. Joe’s table, though surely Ken Lasch would find a way to feed us, perhaps at his peril.  Women may not preside at table in Southern Baptist and Eastern Orthodox churches.  And we’re only 20 years ahead of them on that score: the first women ushers, deacons and ministers at Brookside have not yet left the world’s stage!  The Woolworth sit-ins happened forty years ago, but Sunday morning remains the most segregated time of the week in our society.  Other denominations shun the United Church of Christ because we ordain homosexuals.  The old-new debate continues.

 

            Jesus does not seem to have been either “a social or moral segregationist.”  Equality before God led to an open table for Paul.  In one sense therefore, the communion table is a symbol of Christian unity and inclusion.  And yet there are sharp divisions between churches.  Who is invited?  Who can preside?  It seems fitting for us, therefore, to ask in the months to come:  “Who is welcome at Brookside Church’s table?”  How open is our table?  How inclusive are we?  What social reality do we aspire to?  What vision do we witness to?  These are profound questions about our purpose and identity, our values and character.  I trust you agree and will participate as Brookside Church carries the conversation forward; and perhaps even as we decide to witness to a new model of what society might look like. 

 

 

Comments?  Questions?  Provocations?

Contact Craig Anderson: craig@brooksidechurch.org