Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

I want to bring these August reflections to a close - I don't know what September will bring but I'm ready to move on from ruminations on mosques and churches, except to add simply what follows.

This week's gospel reading is from the fourteenth chapter of Luke's Gospel. The first verse of that chapter begins like this: "on one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal..." Since I'm not preaching this weekend, a few random thoughts related to this text:

When I was still an Associate Rector in Westport, CT, I developed a curricula for a confirmation program for youth and their adult mentors. One of the sections deals with "table fellowship." In the ministry of Jesus, a lot of stuff happens around the Table. Like many of our own tables, it's not always cordial either. People argue about where Jesus goes to dinner, and who he eats with. In the Acts of the Apostles the followers of Jesus even eat with non-Jews which causes even more conflict. Eating is a political matter in the New Testament, and maybe even in our own day as well.

So the exercise after looking up numerous Biblical texts is to ask the students to arrange a dinner party - not literally, but to come up with a guest list for a dinner party in our own town. I ask them who Jesus would invite for dinner.

I'm not looking for one answer, but I'm looking for diversity. I'm looking for them to see how much Jesus is willing to "mix it up" with rich and poor, male and female, powerful and powerless. And in our context that might mean people across political lines, and religious affiliation.

In my branch of Christianity, the Table is central to our life-together. Relatively speaking it is a pretty open Table in the Episcopal Church that includes ALL the Baptized, regardless of when or where they were Baptized. But the general rule still holds (although it is being pushed in many parts of our Church) that Baptism is a requirement. Regardless of where one stands on that issue, there are other tables in our life-together as well: literal meals and pot-lucks and parish picnics that are shared over the course of a year.

The Table is at the center and we all are welcome, not just those with whom we happen to agree. This means, as I understand it, that the conversation continues. It will sometimes get heated. But there is something about arguing over good food and wine that makes it a bit easier. I think the book, "Three Cups of Tea," is about the same cross-cultural experience. Arguing across cyber-space rarely leads to transformation. Sitting at Table together and speaking the truth we know, in search of a larger and deeper Truth, gets us close to holiness.

Within the Christian tradition, there are voices that insist on purity of various kinds that still sound to my ears like the Pharisees did in the New Testament. I still hear Jesus pushing the boundaries, pushing hospitality and generosity, finding one more place at the Table where veal piccata is offered not just to the faithful but the lost and the searching.