The Crowded Table

Last week multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez got married in a 50 million dollar wedding in Venice with 200 of their closest celebrity friends and family. My invitation must have gotten lost in the mail. In April and again in May, President Trump hosted campaign dinners at 1 million and 1.5 million dollars per plate. I missed both of those as well.

While I haven’t taken time to dine with billionaire’s, I have spent money that in effect was supposed to guarantee me a certain seat, a particular view, a better room, or an elevated cuisine. At one point or another, I have bought my way into the modern day “seat of honor.” What about you?

Have their been times where you have purchased your way into VIP status? Into a better seat, a better room, or a backstage pass? We want to be closer to the stage, closer to the action, closer to the main attraction. We pay a high price for being closer, let alone getting a meet-n-greet. As they say, the early bird gets the worm. Jim and the girls would go walking on the beach each morning at sunrise and even at 5am there would be some out there staking out there prime spot to set up for the day. The same concept existed in Jesus’s time with seats nearest the host being considered VIP and a sign of your own status. But when Jesus had sinners around him at the table, it broke the rules and crashed the hierarchy.

What is he doing? Who is this that he would eat with the likes of them? Not just eat with them but sit next to them? This table is too crowded. Ugh!

Sometimes life can feel crowded. My husband doesn’t like it when things get too peoply. I found a shirt for him that says “I like hiking and maybe 3 people.” Let me tell you, the beach on the week of the Fourth: crowded. Traffic to and from: Crowded. One day we took the girls to a water park in Destin. One of my favorite slides takes you down a series of rapids. All is well and good until ten of you get bottlenecked in their own inner tubes. On the last ride Adalyn was in her own inner tube but didn’t weigh enough to be carried by the current. I got separated from her and this one woman said “don’t worry, I got your baby.” Little by little, different people pushed Adalyn along until she got back to me. As one man commented when we were all crammed together, “this ride is an exercise in community.”

For Jesus, the crowded table was an exercise in community, an exercise in hospitality. With Jesus as the head of the table, everyone at the table became a VIP guest. Christine Pohl said that “when strangers and hosts are from different backgrounds, the intimacy of a shared meal can forge relationships which cross significant social boundaries.” When John Vanier began to share meals with others who battled serious mental disabilities, he finally began to feel the force of today’s passage. He said, “sitting down at the same table meant becoming friends with them, creating a family. It was a way of life absolutely opposed to the values of a competitive, hierarchical society in which the weak are pushed aside.” Ed Loring, director of the Open Door Community that started in Atlanta and is now based in Baltimore shared that “justice is important, but supper is essential....without supper, without love, without table or companionship, justice can become a program that we do to other people.

Christ invites all to his table. If that is the case, then it is a crowded table. Christ says we aren’t meant to always surround ourselves with a bunch of yes people who love us but to humble ourselves and invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. In other words, we are to invite those rendered helpless, invisible, and who are unable to pay us any favors, let alone pay at all.

In The Brothers Karamazov, a wealthy woman named Madame Hohlakov tells the monk Father Zossima of the beautiful dream she has of the loving person she really wants to be: (Read highlighted quote) The dream is spoiled, however, whenever she thinks about how the person she dreams of serving might respond – with ingratitude, with petty comments, even with abuse toward her. She confesses that she would be unable to love anyone who did not repay her with love, or at least with gratitude, and her dream dissolves as she confronts the pathetic limitations of her love.

How often do we reach the limits of our own love and hospitality because it is grounded in what we might receive in return? How many of us get irritated when we don’t even receive so much as a thank you?

For John Wesley, hospitality wasn’t about providing money and services to secure his own salvation. It wasn’t just about giving food out as it was in the act of sharing a meal together. John Wesley and stewards of local Methodist groups would find and furnish homes and invite in as many widows as they could. There, they would share meals together. Wesley said, “For I myself, as well as the other preachers in town, diet with the poor on the same food and at the same table. And we rejoice herein as a comfortable earnest of our eating bread together in our Father’s kingdom.”

Hospitality is meant to be personal and face-to-face. It is about the power of recognition and respect, the very building blocks of community. And we should not just wait until we are asked to help but actively be seeking ways to joyfully give of ourselves to others. We are to run and seek out the unseen, recognizing Christ in every stranger, recognizing our common humanity in every face. John Calvin said that “as long as we are human creatures we must contemplate as in a mirror our face in those who are poor, despised, exhausted, who groan under their burdens.” Ed Loring in describing the homelessness in Atlanta in 2003 said, “all of the homeless are human beings. They are much like the rest of us in their hearts and hopes. They are taxpayers; they are people of faith; they are hungry for work at a living wage; they are desirous of love and justice. They are us, and we are they: friends, sisters, brothers.”

I recently came across a piece in the book Liturgies from Below entitled Migrants. The last four lines caught me which say “Please, look at me as if you were looking at a mirror, for if you recognize me as human, your brother, your sister, you will be wearing your own existence of humanity.”

So who are you welcoming to your table?

In 2013, a woman named Kristin Schell had read Romans 12:13 which says “take every opportunity to open your life and home to others (The Voice)” and wondered at what it meant to take it seriously.

Kristin had ordered a new picnic table for her backyard. When Lowe’s came to drop it off, they left it sitting in her front yard. Kristin began to wonder, “What if we just leave it here? What if all the things we do in the back yard move to the front yard?” So Kristin painted the table bright turquoise and sat down. She placed a basket on the table with empty cups and a water pitcher and some leftover birthday party napkins. She sat down at the table and opened her mail. She sat and wrote a letter. She did everyday stuff at this table until one, two, three people slowly started to stop by. Probably talking about the crazy lady who sits at the turquoise table in her front yard. As Kristin says, “we’re drawn to each other and our stories and through that, experience oneness. It’s how community is built; layer by layer, struggle by struggle, story by story.”

Hospitality isn’t about securing your own space in life, but about opening your space, your time, your life, your story, to others.

I wonder what it would look like for us to live into being a community of front yard people, a crowded-table kinda people.

If you are wondering how to join the Turquoise table movement or how to begin your own journey of hospitality, Kristin has some tips:

1)Don’t wait for the perfect time. Chances are, there never will be one.

2) Spontaneous gatherings are just as important as planned ones.

3)You don’t need anyone’s permission to go outside and love.

4)Do it with a buddy to make it easier and more fun.

5)Be patient; it takes time to develop community.

6) Pray for the ministry of presence every day. One of my prayers lately has been “grow my compassion.”

Our God is a God of a crowded table, a place for everyone.

And at the Lord’s table, there is freedom and hope.

At the Lord’s table, all are seen as created equal because you dine with the Creator of all.

At the Lord’s table, there is a community in which we remember we belong to one another.

At the Lord’s table, you don’t need an overpriced ticket or to buy the seat of honor.

At the Lord’s table, the welcome is wide.

So come to the crowded table, to the table of grace, to the the table of love.