Lunch with Phil and Linda

Lunch with Phil and Linda--August 1, 2018

"After this Jesus went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, 'Follow me.' And he got up, left everything, and followed him. Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house; and there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others sitting at the table with them. The Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, saying, 'Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?' Jesus answered, 'Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance'." [Luke 5:27-32]

This is the kind of troublemaking that got Jesus killed.  He deliberately shared tables with the "wrong kind of people."

More to the point, Jesus shared tables with the wrong kind of people, and he dared to claim that this was what the Reign of God looked like.

And that was the last straw for the Respectable Religious Crowd.  Jesus knew full well that he was pushing buttons by showing up at parties like Levi's, or inviting himself over for dinners at Zacchaeus' house.  And he did it anyway, not out of bitterness or spite for the Pharisees, really, but out of the conviction that such a widely spread table was what it looks like where God reigns.

We might not put a great deal of weight or meaning on the matters of whom we sit with at a meal.  We are used to being herded into seats at random in the elementary school lunchroom from a young age, and we end up sharing tables or eating space with all sorts of people with who we have no connection or conversation in our adulthood.  You might eat your lunch in the office break room at the same time as Phil and Linda from accounting, but never actually look up from your egg salad sandwich and speak with them.  You might find yourself packed into a crowded McDonald's at a rest stop and having to share a table with Bernie from Milwaukee on his way across the country, but you and Bernie are not likely to become best friends because you ate Big Macs within two feet of each other.  Our culture doesn't necessarily read much into your table companions, maybe in part because we try so very hard to eat in isolation from others for so much of the time.

But not in the first century, and certainly not in Palestine.  In any ancient Near Eastern culture, table fellowship is a big deal.  To eat near someone is to eat with someone, and to eat with someone is to regard them as social equals. So for Jesus to allow himself to be made the guest of a despised tax collector (read: sell-out to the despicable Roman Empire) wasn't simply a matter of eating a hurried lunch in the office break room at the table next to Phil and Linda from accounting.  It was a conscious choice, and a symbolic act that treated these outcasts like they were friends of Jesus. (And again, beyond any accusations of cheating or extortion, tax collectors had definitively cast their lot with the occupying pagan Romans rather than with their own people.) Jesus knew that his choice even to attend a party with Levi was provocative on its face, and it would be only more provocative as Jesus did more and more things to identify himself as the Messiah.  

That was really the scandal that made Jesus' table fellowship so threatening to the Respectable Religious Crowd.  For Jesus to share a table with "tax collectors and sinners" was to act as though they really were acceptable as they were. And for Jesus to do that while also saying and doing things that only the Messiah was allowed to say and do... well that was like saying that God actually accepted these tax collectors and sinners as they were!  And that was simply too far for the Respectable Religious Crowd.  Now Jesus was making claims about God!  And if the Messiah is going around fraternizing with crooks and sell-outs like Levi, well, then it was like saying that Levi was beloved of God as he was, even before any amends or good behavior was attempted.

And yes, that was exactly what Jesus was saying.  Jesus' choice of table fellowship was a conscious and radical choice to include those deemed permanently unacceptable, and in sharing a table with them, he was claiming that they were beloved of God already.  And that's the thing--if Jesus really was and is the Messiah, he has the authority to declare someone acceptable, just on his say-so! That was threatening to the Respectable Religious Leaders, who prided themselves on having the clout and influence to be the gatekeepers of acceptable and unacceptable people. And yet, despite the trouble it caused and the anger it provoked, Jesus kept on getting himself invited to dinner parties where his presence made the nobodies into somebodies.

There is still a great power available to us in our choices of whom we will share tables with in this life.  Even if our culture around us treats the eating of meals as a simply utilitarian chore that gets in the way of productivity, we have the power to reclaim the table as a place of welcome.  We have the authority and example of Jesus to allow our own tables and shared meals to be moments to include the left out, to lift up the despondent, and to create genuine connection.  The only question is whether we will use those opportunities when we are sitting down for lunch somewhere for the sake of drawing someone into the pull of Christ's love, or whether we will wolf down our egg salad without making eye contact with Phil and Linda... who might just have been hoping and waiting for someone like you to tell them they are beloved in the eyes of the Maker of the universe.

Where will you sit today? And what difference could it make?

Lord Jesus, grant us to use our table moments in this day as you did, and as you still do: to welcome, to restore, and to include.