Rosedale United Church

‘Who Would Jesus Bring to Dinner?”                        February 7, 2010

                                                                                    Rosedale United Church       

(Isaiah 6:1-8, , Luke 5 :1-11)                                      Doug Norris

 No Audio available this week

So, this short series of sermons about Jesus winds up, as the gospels wind up, with a shared meal.    A brief recap, if you haven’t been here – the first week was a review of the many images of Jesus – the different ways in which we understand him – on the premise that the image we carry of who Jesus was will shape the life we live.

 

Then last week, a look at Jesus’ habit of annoying people with his prophetic challenges to our structures and our economics.    Some of you found that sermon annoying, and while I would never set out to annoy you it tells me that something of Jesus was communicated.

 

For today, let me begin by quoting Canadian songwriter Stan Rogers – in a song appropriately called ‘I Used To Be A Pharisee’  a man describes how it is that he ahs peace of mind :

 

“Tonight the smoke is rising all around the room,

And judging from the warmth of the smell from the kitchen

There’ll be supper ready soon.

And the table’s set for 20,  room for more if they should come…

 

And we will hold on to young friends we made of old,

And cleave to the women who make us whole,

And keep a warm fire, for all our friends to come in from the cold,

We love them all as brothers as we don’t even know their names

I know this must sound different but for us it’s always been the same…”

 

I have always carried a very high opinion of the importance of how Jesus ate with people.  This is perhaps because of the prominence of Communion in our tradition, or perhaps just because the notion of a community of people around a table is simply a perennially compelling image.  So I’m interested in how Jesus ate, who he ate with, what this tells us about him…

 

Eating is always, in every culture, a marker of boundaries.   Who gets to eat with who, who gets to eat where.  We will each carry tacit categories of who we would give a buck to, to get a coffee, who we would send a casserole to, who we would have soup with in our kitchen, and who we would get out the good china for.

 

A couple of years ago, immediately after a funeral here, we all headed out to one of the private clubs in the city for a reception.  As I usually do, I put my suit jacket into my shoulder bag, hopped on my bike and went to the club.  So as I walked into the club, for a moment I actually looked more like a bike courier than a minister, and in that moment one of the Club attendants caught my eye and was heading over to intercept me, and I could see a tone of indignation on his face – and at about the same time one of the members of the family came over to greet me, and it was a lovely gathering,  but I understood some more about our perception of boundaries, and how they land at our tables. 

 

So here’s something I have always understood about Jesus – and it is an image of Jesus that fits neatly in between the two readings we’ve heard : Isaiah’s vision of the utter and unapproachable holiness of the Presence of God, and, in Luke,  Jesus moving directly to the undesirables to be his companions, finding holiness in the Galilean fisherman Peter, and finding life that nobody else could see in the tax collectors and sinners..

 

It is that along all of the things he did, his teaching and healing and debating, his busy schedule as the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, above all he modelled much of what we might need to know in how he went about eating with people. 

 

So I set out on Monday this past week to re-read all four gospels looking specifically for the list of the meals he had, the counter-cultural practice of the Table.

 

This might seem a heavy task for a guy on his day off, but I put a nice fire in the woodstove and I had a tasty glass of Scotch and a bag of peanut butter cups…     So you may imagine my feeling of irony when one of the first themes that appeared was that Jesus was several times accused of ‘eating with gluttons and drunkards’.   So, I thought, I fit right in…

 

What I learned in that enquiry, however, was surprising.   There were far fewer meals than I had expected, in fact, only a handful.

 

Here’s one that was in three of the gospels, almost word for word.   Let’s call this one ‘May I get you something to eat?’.  It is the healing of Simon Peter’s mother in law.   Goes more or less like this.  

 

Knock knock.   Hey Simon.   Hey Jesus.

How’s your mother in law?    Still sick.

Hmmm…  (Jesus looks around)   Let me heal her, then we can eat.

‘So Jesus healed Simon’s mother in law, and she began to serve them.’ (Mt 8, Mk 1, Lk 4)

 

This actually makes Jesus look bad,  and although presumably Simon’s mother in law was glad to have been made well, this doesn’t sound like the glorious vision of Isaiah that Jesus was extolling – good news for the poor and liberty for the oppressed and so on. 

 

I suspect that this story is, in part, a parable as well – the early church recalling the connection between being healed and serving…   If we, ourselves, have been lifted, have been raised, if we have been healed and restored it is not so that we might plunk down in the Barco-Lounger to watch the game – it is so that we might re-enter  the world in service….

 

There were two other stories about eating that were common themes in all the gospels.

 

The feeding of the multitude – you know how this one goes – it actually occurs 6 times in the 4 gospels.   A crowd follows Jesus, he teaches and heals, it’s late and everyone gets hungry – the disciples want to send everyone away and Jesus says why don’t you feed them right here – and it turns out they have all the food they need.  And some interpret it as a miracle of Jesus magically making food appear and others interpret it as a miracle of Jesus evoking generosity of the people who bring out the food they have carried – the first Church PotLuck.

 

And the other common eating story is the Last Supper – a highly symbolic meal – Jesus tells his disciples to go into the city, borrow a room and set up a meal, and they eat the Passover meal together. 

 

There were really only 4 other eating stories scattered around.

 

In Mark 2, Jesus eats at the home of Levi, one of the despised tax-collectors, and the Pharisees challenge him, insulted by who he has chosen to hang around with.

In Luke 7 he is eating at the home of Pharisee and a woman arrives with him, presumably, and scandalously anoints his feet with ointment, using her hair. 

In Luke 14 he is again at the home of a Pharisee and he heals a sick man who has come with him – and then proceeds to scold the Pharisee about not assuming the best place at the table…

In the great parable in Luke 15 the feast is offered to the wrong son, the one who should have been down at the food bank, not welcomed into the private club…

 

I see a pattern emerge – which leads me to two findings.

 

First, that Jesus brought everyone to dinner.  Whoever was there.  In the words of Stan Rogers, ‘we love you all as brothers and we don’t even know your names…’.  And in doing this he signalled that the life lived in God breaks apart all of the comfortable assumptions about rank and privilege.   We simply belong to one another.

 

And second, that he actually brought nobody to dinner, because he had no table.  And he had no food.  He was always the guest at borrowed tables with borrowed food.

 

It was precisely when Jesus himself came to your table that odd things happened.  That rules were challenged, that odd and provocative people followed him in and because they were there new and awkward shards of light were pointed at the situation. 

 

So, we come to this Table today.   To take the Bread and to receive the Cup is to receive Jesus into your home.  And so we need to be warned.  That when he is welcomed in, odd things can happen.  We ought to put up one of those lawyerly warnings like the coffee stores : Caution !  The beverage you are about to enjoy is HOT!

 

Man, o man….  So who will he bring to your table?  Let’s start here, build this gathering into a community, and see where it goes from here.

 

We love you all as brothers, sisters, and we don’t even know your name…

We know this may sound different but for us it’s always been the same…