Place at the Table

Third Sunday of Easter – Year B

April 19, 2015

Luke 24:36-48

Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you." They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, "Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, "Have you anything here to eat?" They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence. Then he said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you — that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled." Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things."

One of my favorite movies that has a religious theme to it is Jesus of Montreal. It tells in a modern setting the story of Jesus, his time with his disciples, his teachings, and finally his death and resurrection. It's a powerful movie. I strongly recommend it, if you can find it. But, fair warning, it contains strong language and images some might find disturbing; it's not a movie for younger children or for people that are unable to see Jesus portrayed in ways that may challenge what we think about him and who he was.

One of the biblical themes that is part of the life of Jesus in the Bible that the movie does a wonderful job of presenting is the importance of food and eating in Jesus' ministry, theologians and scholars refer to it as his table fellowship. It's one of those things that we can easily look past, yet it has a tremendous power when we take the time to see it. Over the course of his ministry, Jesus spends a lot of time with food. His first miracle turned water into wine. He is famous for the feeding of the multitudes – 5,000 people in Luke's gospel, and 4,000 in Mark's. He was labeled a glutton by the religious elite, and criticized for eating with tax collectors and prostitutes. He eats with Pharisees and a sinful woman. He shares the Passover with his disciples, and institutes the Lord's Supper. Following his resurrection, he has a fish bake with his disciple's on the beach. It is in the breaking of bread that his disciple's recognize him. Throughout his ministry, Jesus offers a welcoming table and instructs his followers in the nature of hospitality with the words, “when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind” (Luke 14:13).

For us, the act of eating with another person is something we look on as being fun. Having someone over for dinner, cooking out with friends, a pizza party for the kids. It's all about having a good time; it's hard, perhaps, to see the radical statement that was being made by Jesus when he sat down to eat with people. In Jesus' time, when you sat down to eat with someone, you were making a statement about your accepting them. A shared meal was a declaration of community. If you were the host of a meal, all those who were your guests were also under your protection. If you shared a meal, in a culture like Judaism where purity and cleanliness was of importance, all who ate together walked away from the table having shared not just food, but their purity. If one person was impure, then all of them became impure. To share a meal was to declare solidarity with another, to say, “you're all right with me.”

Jesus' ministry whether revolving around food or not, focused on opening up the table, inviting more and more people to the table, rather than seeking to keep people away from the table. On a regular basis in the church, we gather around our Lord's table, and recreate a meal he presided over. If the life of the church is to follow in the path of Jesus, in the practices of Jesus, then the invitation should be one of opening up the table, rather than seeking to limit who can join us for dinner.

Jesus came to knock down the walls that threaten to divide us, to widen the circle of inclusion, rather than to draw strict theological and moral lines in the sand to further divide us one from the other. This is not to say that Jesus had no standards, that Jesus was “fine” with everything. He spoke out strongly against divorce, and was very critical of those who neglected walking in God's ways of justice, mercy and faith. But, Jesus mission was not focused on telling people what was right or wrong, his mission was focused on opening up the Kingdom of God to more and more people.

Following his resurrection, when the disciples were gathered together in the upper room, terrified, unsure of what was going on, unsure of what was going to happen, Jesus came to them and said, “Peace be with you.” He shows them his hands and side, then to prove that that he was really alive and not a ghost, and anxious to resume his table fellowship with them, Jesus asks for food and eats a piece of fish with them.

Then Jesus speaks, “everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” He opens their minds to the scriptures so they might understand that what was written has indeed come to pass. And with that change, “repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations”. All nations, you don't get much more open than that. Jesus didn't say, all nations except those crazy ones in the Middle East. He didn't say, all nations except those in the Axis of Evil. He didn't say, all nations except the ones we don't like. All nations.

And what makes a nation? People. People gathering together, coming together to live with one another, to share with one another the burdens and joys of life. This last week Hillary Clinton declared her candidacy for President. I think we can all remember her comment that, “It takes a village.” Now, this is not an endorsement of her presidency, but it is an endorsement of her comment.

From the very beginning, the Christian faith has been driven by more than one person, it has always been dependent on the village, on the gathered community of the faithful. On the evening of the very first Easter, the disciples gathered together to share their stories, their hopes and fears, the incredible experiences they had of the risen Christ. As soon as one of Jesus' followers experiences him, they go and tell others. Mary sees Jesus, and runs and tells. On the road to Emmaus the disciples encounter Jesus, and that very night they return to Jerusalem to share with the other disciples their experience. One experience after another, stories are shared, accounts are made, faith is found, encouraged and strengthened. As we have all come to see, resurrection is not so much a fact to be believed as it is an experience to be shared with others.

Faith does not grow and flourish in isolation. Jesus himself says as much when he declares, “where two or three have gathered together in my name, I am there in their midst.” (Matthew 18:20) Catholic theologian and all-around spiritual guide Henri Nouwen says it this way, “Christian community is the place where we keep the flame of hope alive among us … .That is how we dare to say that God is a God of love when we see death and destruction and agony all around us. We say it together. We affirm it in each other.”¹

It takes a village, it takes a community, it takes an open invitation to the table. It takes the experiences of others to open our eyes to see God active in our lives. It takes the faith journey of others to guide us in our own faith journey. In the ways in which the community of faithful people welcomes, accepts and affirms others, they experience the welcome, acceptance and affirmation of God. As the community opens up the table of God to others, they experience and come to know that God loves and accepts them in spite of who or what they are. As they experience that acceptance, they come to accept themselves. The acceptance and love they have experienced encourages them to also love and accept others. Through the open invitation to the table, through the welcome of the community, they discover that their value has already been determined by God, as priceless.

Faith is rarely easy. I don't think I need to go into detail about how challenging it can be to be a person of faith today, how challenging it can be to declare that our strength is found not in ourselves. It takes a village, a community, a crowded table for us to sustain, more than sustain, to support a thriving, growing faith. It takes a community to hold on to the faith that God is working to bring grace and peace and mercy and love and life to every life in the midst of all the suffering and heartbreak and cruelty and hypocrisy of this world.

Here at Zion, we have made a commitment to be a place of welcome to all people, to be a place where the openness and acceptance of God's Kingdom is not only proclaimed but lived out. In the words of our Open and Affirming statement, we declare our, “commitment to extend God's Extravagant Welcome to persons of every gender, age, race, nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, mental and physical ability, social and economic status, faith background, political and theological beliefs, marital standing and family structure.” That is the vision, the hope and promise that Jesus proclaimed in his welcoming to the table all who came seeking nourishment and community. It is a vision that when lived out will produce fruit.

There is plenty of space at God's table, there is more than enough space in God's Kingdom, the invitation is broad. May we stand ready as a community to reflect the welcome we have received, to reflect the love we have experienced, to declare that in this place we are family, we are a community, we are a village that can gather together, regardless of our differences. We can gather together to share our faith stories, our struggles, our triumphs, our experiences of the Risen One, and in so doing our faith, our community, will grow and be strengthened, and our hunger will be satisfied. Amen.

1Henri Nouwen, Finding my Way Home, 105