"When one of those at the table with him heard this, he said to Jesus, “Blessed is the one who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God." -Luke 14:15
"There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for all are one in Christ Jesus." -Galatians 3:28
"Every morning sunrise says, I'm madly in love wit you" -Madly in Love with You, Sean McConnell
Teenagers are honest! There is no getting around that. And occasionally in my work with teenagers, there are a few funny and awkward moments.
So a few weeks ago when I was teaching on Palm Sunday, we shared one of those moments. "And there was, of course, the night where a prostitute comes and washes and kisses Jesus' feet," I reminded them.
Silence.
Then one by one their mouths started to fall open and they started to turn to one another and whisper. And all at once it hit me. I wasn't reminding them of a story. I was telling them a story for the first time.
Oh it was such a blast playing their whispered conversations in my head while I stood without speaking. "Like a... REAL prostitute???" I imagined one saying. "I'm pretty sure Martin has been reading a different bible than I have!"
It was an awesome experience I cannot fully explain in this blog. But, after collecting myself and imagining all of these little conversations, I pulled myself back together to continue and said the smartest thing I could come up with at the time. "So, I guess you all hadn't heard that story before, huh?" Looking back, I think I could've done better.
But I LOVE that story. In fact, I love reading the stories of Jesus eating. They are some of my favorite stories of who Jesus is. He eats a lot! And it's not so much WHAT he eats, or THAT he eats, but WHO it is he eats with!
He will share a table with ANYBODY! When someone asks him why he's going to eat with a bunch of tax collectors and "sinners," he says, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick." When he runs into Zaccheus, a tax collector who has swindled and robbed pretty much everyone in Jericho, especially the poor, Jesus goes into Zaccheus' house for dinner! Heck, he even has dinner with the Pharisees, who seemingly spend their entire days trying to make trouble for him!
He will share a meal with anybody! At the Passover meal we call the Last Supper, Jesus sat in the place of the host, and who sat in the place of honor? JUDAS!! The same Judas who was in cahoots to get him killed!
There was no one too low or too high for Jesus to share a table with. And I think that's what heaven is like. And not the heaven in the clouds, but the heaven we bring here.
During one particular meal at a Pharisee's house he told a story about what the Kingdom of God is like: a feast! And everyone the host invited originally was too busy and made excuses for why they couldn't make it. BUT, the host was going to have a party, period. So he sent his servant out and invited the poor and the crippled and they had themselves a banquet.
When Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God being a banquet and then I see the people he eats with, it makes me re-focus the lens through which I see people. It brings into closer view who my brother is and who my sister is.
You see, there is room at the banquet hall for us. ALL of us. We're the people Jesus would have eaten with.
At Jesus' table there is no too poor. Too homeless. Too suburban. Too clean. Too dirty. Too white. Too black. Too Hispanic. Too educated. Too illiterate. Too addicted. Too lonely. Too short. Too fat. Too victim. Too culprit. Too insecure. Too proud. Too weak. Too gay. Too straight. Too self-conscious. Too worried. Too consumed with eating disorders. Too young. Too old. Too scared. Too Republican. Too Democrat. Too American. Too Middle Eastern.
At Jesus' table we are all the least of these, offering our brokenness to CELEBRATE THE FEAST OF GRACE! If there is room for a prostitute to humble herself, then there is room for me. And if there is room at the table for me, there is most definitely room at the table for you! And if there is room for us, let us pull up a chair and offer up another seat to our brothers and sisters, no matter what they look like, because we all have a place.
forever unfinished...
