Bigger Tables

Bigger Tables--October 30, 2018

"Then people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God. Indeed, some are last who are first, and some are first who will be last." [Luke 13:29-30]

It is a truly difficult thing for us to get in our stubborn heads and crusty hearts that other people matter to Jesus as much as you do.  But that is the challenge of Jesus: to see that other people--and not just people like me or near me, but folks who come from distant places, divergent backgrounds, and different stories--are welcomed into the never-ending party that is the Kingdom of God.  

It is all the more striking to hear that come out of Jesus' mouth, knowing that in his culture, the conventional wisdom said that only their nation was special to God.  But Jesus doesn't see God's goodness stopping at the borders of one land, one province of the empire, or one national boundary.  And Jesus seems to be convinced that God is making a new community out of people from every direction on the map, every nook and cranny of creation, every tribe and tongue and race and people and nation.  Jesus, in other words, is no nationalist.  And the practical consequence of that truth is the challenge of accepting that Jesus cares about other people as much as Jesus cares about me and my group.

What makes that so difficult is that it seems are virtually hard-wired to think of ourselves as "special"--as though my focus should be on getting and acquiring the most for me and my circle of family and friends, me and my ethnic group, me and my like-minded friends, and so on.  We tend to just assume that God nods approvingly at our way of looking out for Me-and-My-Group First, and we figure that everybody else in the world is just as self-centered as we are about their own groups, so that must be how we are all "supposed" to be.

But Jesus dares us to see things differently, and not simply to put our own group "first," but rather to look toward a day when peoples will be drawn from every nation, every country, every category, and every color of the rainbow into God's Reign.  In fact, like the prophets before him, Jesus takes it as a sign of the strength and glory of God's Reign that it welcomes all such people from "east and west, from north and south" to find places at the table.  It is a sign, Jesus challenges us to see, of the abundance and goodness of God that people from all over are welcomed in and that God has more than enough to provide for all there at the messianic banquet.  After all, it would be a pretty pathetic sort of deity who said, "Sorry, there is only so much to go around here inside my heavenly country club, and if I let in more people, we might run out of dinner rolls."  Jesus challenges us to see that the wide invitation to people from all over, every nation, every language, and every background is actually evidence of the greatness of God.  Only a weak and false idol would say, "There's not enough good stuff here for everyone who wants it, so we have to keep a tight guard on how many of the riff-raff we let in, or else we'll run out."  Like the old saying puts it, when you have abundance, you build a bigger table, not a higher fence.  

Well, Jesus is definitely a "bigger table" sort of savior, rather than a "higher fence" voice.  As he envisions God's great celebration, he sees a lot of the supposed "insiders" missing out because they have missed the point of it all, and meanwhile, the people from "east and west, from north and south," are all streaming into their places to "eat in the kingdom of God" and find there is room for them.  Much like the prophet Isaiah had envisioned a future day when "all nations" would be gathered to God's big feast and celebration (see Isaiah 25:6-9), Jesus sees people from all over being welcomed to God's table. 

And as Jesus sees that future promised day with all those outsiders, foreigners, and strange faces coming closer and closer to God's territory (as Isaiah says it, "On the mountain of the Lord of hosts"), Jesus doesn't get anxious or fearful or worried.  He sees that this is exactly what God has wanted all along--a party where people from everywhere are there.  Jesus doesn't say, "They'll all be coming from the east and the west and the north and the south, so God will have to stop them at the doors and turn most of them away to avoid exceeding our occupancy permit!"  But rather, Jesus takes it as evidence of the greatness of God that all these people are welcomed in.  That is what greatness looks like, if you ask Jesus.

Now, accepting this is hard for us, because as we have said, we all seem to be hard-wired for suspicion of "the other." And we seem to have this innate tendency to view everything as a zero-sum game, where if you get something good, it must be taking it away from me.  We all seem to have this sense of scarcity that there's only so much to go around, so I should get while the getting's good for myself, and then hold onto my pile at all costs, so that I will "win" by having more than you.  We all do it--I watch my kids do it bickering over animal crackers at snack time, and I watch grown-ups talk at podiums with that same childish logic on television.  But the challenge of Jesus is quite clear: to follow Jesus will mean learning to see the world through his eyes rather than through the eyes of scarcity, and that includes seeing other people as of as much importance to Jesus as each of us is.  It will mean trusting Jesus when he tells us that God's Kingdom will not run out of abundance, and that the welcome of others to the party doesn't take anything away from me.  Just the opposite, rather--Jesus is a "the more, the merrier," sort of Messiah, after all.

And once we dare to see the world as Jesus would have us see it, it will affect our daily lives, priorities, and choices in countless ways.  We will be less anxious when we hear of good things being done for others, and will be able to celebrate for them and with them.  We will be less worried about whether there will be "enough" for us (which is already a sort of laughable position to take given the gluttonous overkill of so much of our society already).  We will come to see others, for all of their differences, not as threats to our way of doing things or as competition over scarce resources, but as fellow guests welcome to God's dinner party.  We will start building larger tables, rather than higher fences.

We should be prepared, sisters and brothers, that if we accept Jesus challenge of acknowledging that others are as important to Jesus as I think I am, it will affect everything else in our lives.  We may find our old allegiances do not hold like they used to.  And we may find that new connections are formed with people we never expected.

Be ready, dear ones.  Accepting Jesus' challenge will change you.  You will come to see yourself as one of those faces streaming in from the north or south or east or west seeking refuge and welcome at God's table.  And you will see the faces of everyone else in that procession as people beloved of God, too.

Lord Jesus, enable us to love others and see their worth as of the same value as ourselves in your eyes, so that we can rejoice at how you draw all peoples to yourself.  Stretch our hearts where they have become shriveled, so that we may be full of your kind of love.