Called to the Table--August 13, 2024

Called to the Table--August 13, 2024

"Then the Judeans began to complain about [Jesus] because he said, 'I am the bread that came down from heaven.' They were saying, 'Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, I have come down from heaven?' Jesus answered them, 'Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, And they shall all be taught by God. Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me'." [John 6:41-45]

There's a recurring bit in classic cartoons that I bet you've seen before. Someone will be cooking something delicious in the kitchen, and the aroma wafts out from the kitchen like finger-shaped wisps of cloud, where it finds some other character who catches the scent.  And in the beautiful absurdity of Looney Tunes-style physics, the aroma of the pie in the window or the turkey in the oven actually picks up the person who has smelled it and carries them, often by the nose, into the kitchen.  

Sure, it's obviously exaggeration, but there is something undeniably truthful about the way the smell of a good meal can pull you in.  Whether it's the smell from the barbecue on a hot summer day, or the way the house fills with the spicy heat of a pot full of chili when the weather gets cold, or the aroma of brownies cooling on the stovetop after they have been baked, you surely know the way sometimes it seems like the food itself is drawing you closer, as clearly as when your grandmother called the family to the table for Thanksgiving dinner.  

And when you find yourself called to the family table, or when the aroma leads you by the nose into the kitchen to sample a chocolate chip cookie, you know that you are not being given a reward or a payment, but a gift.  You are welcome to partake, not because you were clever enough to figure out there was food, or because you have earned your daily bread, but because someone has gone to the trouble and effort of cooking and baking so that you may be fed.  The ingredients are grace... the same as the labor that went into preparing them... the same as the invitation to eat.  These are things we do not earn but find ourselves the recipients of by grace, which is to say it is love that makes us welcome.  

If you can picture that madcap moment in the cartoons, or if you can recall the way someone called you to the table as the aroma of the meal pulled you closer, then you already know what Jesus means when he talks about the way God "draws" us to Jesus, who offers himself to us all as the "bread that came down from heaven."  It's important that Jesus doesn't just envision a meal sitting in some fine dining room without telling people to come and share supper--he pictures God pulling us, drawing us, calling us, to be fed by Jesus.  You know what a shame it is if there's a good meal being offered but nobody has been told they are welcome to eat--that's a waste of a feast!  So to hear Jesus tell it, God takes the initiative to pull us in close and to call us to the table. There are no prerequisites of good behavior, no prices on the menu to be paid, and no dress code like at a fancy restaurant where they can turn away would-be customers who don't have a suit and tie.  We don't earn our place at God's banquet--we find ourselves called to the table by grace.

Now the catch to recognizing that truth is that I don't get to deputize myself to be the bouncer or some snooty maître d' keeping out the people I think are riff-raff, because it's not my banquet, and I'm not the one in charge of letting people in.  God is the One who draws us, and Jesus is both the Host and the Bread.  When I find myself at Jesus' table, it means I relinquish any pretense that any of us got there by our own achievement, and therefore, I have to let God be the One in charge of bringing others to the Table as God chooses, in God's way, and with God's timing.

It's really easy to start passing judgement about the people we don't think are worthy to come to the table of Jesus--that is, unless we actually look at Jesus' kind of table-fellowship.  From dinner parties with the notorious sinners and sellouts like Zacchaeus and Levi to breaking bread with total strangers on the shores of Galilee to including Judas at the Last Supper (and thereby at the first Holy Communion), Jesus has always insisted that our place at the table has nothing to do with our performance of piety and everything to do with his calling us. Like it or not, we are drawn to the table by the compelling pull of the Bread of Life, not by our own talent or skill.  

May we be gracious companions with everybody else Jesus draws to himself in this day.

Lord Jesus, call us and draw us to you, and let your gracious pull lead us to your table and to be filled with your very life like bread for the hungry.