November 3,4, 2007
23 Pentecost
The Rev. Barbara Schlachter

Ah, Zaacchaeus, there’s a man I can identify with:  short, eager to see Jesus, willing to risk his dignity by running and climbing a tree and not caring what others thought.  I can further identify with him on being told that Jesus was coming to his house today—for when I leave church this noon, I have to head to the grocery store because we have eight people coming to our house for dinner tonight—eight people from Trinity Church—after being at Diocesan Convention all day  Friday and Saturday!

Jesus is coming to Zaacchaeus’ house, but Z. doesn’t worry about what he will serve.  He is simply overwhelmed that Jesus is coming!  And in the joy of knowing that Jesus had sought him out, while others were grumbling about look who Jesus is going to eat with this time, Z. had a conversion experience, a moment of transformation.  He admitted publicly that he was a tax collector who was rich and that he might have defrauded people in his work as a collaborator with the Romans.  No wonder he was despised.  He confessed his sin and announced that unlike some of the other blind people in the gospel of Luke, he saw the light.  He was ready to change his life.  He announced before all his disbelieving neighbors that he would give half of his possessions to the poor, and that anyone he might have defrauded, he would pay back four times over.  That’s quite a response to Jesus.  He didn’t announce he would try tithing.  He didn’t turn away sad like the rich ruler of an earlier chapter.  He saw what he had to do and without caring about his image, he announced he would do the right and just thing.

Z. may have been  wanting to see Jesus, but Jesus had been wanting to find him.  Jesus didn’t need to say a single word of judgment or give any advice to Z.  He simply said, “Z., hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.”  Not, do you think we might do lunch next week?  No—hurry.  I am coming today.  I wonder if the other dinner events we find Jesus in started out by Jesus’ inviting himself in this manner!

You might be thinking that it doesn’t say that Jesus is asking for Z. to feed him, but going to someone’s house and not being given a meal was a dishonorable thing, invoking shame.  You would pound on your neighbor’s door at midnight if you didn’t have any bread and someone dropped by unexpectedly.

So, we can only wonder what conversation was like around the table at Z’s house.  The transformation had already occurred.  All that was left was the celebration.  Jesus indicates this in his final words, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham.  For the Son of man came to seek out and to save the lost.”  Z. has been restored to righteousness, to his status of being one of the children of Abraham, a status his neighbors who hated tax collectors would have found hard to hear, understand, or accept.

I have been thinking about the importance of table fellowship a lot lately, ever since Carolyn McMann sent me an article about how “sharing dining space with strangers is appealing to a growing number of diners at all levels of the food chain.”  There was a description of twenty people at a restaurant in Manhattan, all of whom had been total strangers, except perhaps for a dining partner they arrived with, sitting down around a long table and meeting one another and talking.  One of them, a 28 year old named James said “I eat so many meals rushed, in front of the TV.  It’s sometimes nice to share a meal with people.”  Even if he has never met any of them before.  How interesting.

Then, there is an article in the latest Utne Reader about intentional dinner parties that are in someone’s home where you invite 30 or so others, many of whom you may not know at all.  They are to be outside your social networks.  Marnita’s Table, what one such gathering is called because it is in Marnita’s home, usually has about half the guests people of color and half  living below the poverty line.  People come in with enough time to get to know each other over appetizers, or even perhaps by being asked to help fix part of the meal.  Music and beverages are offered, and by the time the dinner is served, people have had a chance to interact.  There is a sharing time for people to offer a 2 min. response to a question, like”What’s your personal immigration story?”  Rather than everyone sitting at one table for dinner—who can seat 30 people at one table anyway—there are multiple food stations which allows more interaction.  At the end of the evening everyone is asked to share a valuable insight from their conversations.

Here’s another thing I am reading:  there is a pattern here!  It is called “Soul Banquets.”  It’s a new book by an old friend, and in it he challenges us to think about how Christ is present in our table fellowship in the church or at church related events.  It is his conjecture that Christ is present not only in the Eucharist, but because he is present in the Eucharist, he is also present in the other ways we break bread together. 

Think how much we love to eat together!  There is something holy about any meal, anytime we share food with one another, if we truly let ourselves sink into tasting our food and into talking about what is on our hearts. 

Today is All Saints Sunday, and we remember those who have died this past year, but also all the Saints—past, present and future.  Think how many of those whom we feel a kinship with we shared food with.  We ate together.  We laughed together over food.  We talked about things important to us over food.  Whenever we have a celebration—a birthday or a funeral—there is food.  Food brings people together and binds our lives together.  When we break bread together, we become one.

It is interesting to me that in the time in which we live people are wanting to eat dinner with others, and presumably because they don’t know other people well enough to suggest having dinner together, or because they want to know more and different people, they are willing to spend an evening with total strangers. 

The idea of having an intentional mix of people in your home that you don’t know like Marnita’s Table Dinners strikes me as exactly what Jesus was talking about when he said, have people into your home who can’t invite you back.  Go into the highways and byways and find them.

And what about this challenge of Jubilee to help Swaziland or ERD recipients by having a dinner in your home—Eat In and Help Out.  What a great opportunity to invite people to your home who may have a social conscience but not a church home.  You may not ever have to say “Come to Christ Church,” but in your telling of our involvement in mission with Swaziland and the  MDG’s, you may be getting them interested in checking out a church that has fun together around food and is concerned about those in need.  You never know, it might turn out that it was really Jesus who invited them to join in the table fellowship, and you just thought it was your good idea.

In “Soul Banquets” John Koenig talks about some other ideas that some of us have been thinking about for awhile.  What if instead of our always thinking that people need to walk through these doors before we can talk to them about church or God, what if we went to places where people already are.  What if we had a Bible Study on Wednesday nights in a coffee shop or pub?  Or what if we just made one Sunday evening a month our night to gather at a pub for drinks and supper?  And engage some of the regular folks in a friendly kind of way?  This is happening in some places, John reports.  Some of those gatherings are called “Theology on Tap.”   I kinda like “God on Draft” better.

What we know as Christians is that all Judeo-Christian gatherings are based on sharing food.  We know that Jesus sat around the table, or reclined around the table, and engaged people over food.  He was accused of being a wine-bibber and a glutton.  All of the early church gatherings occurred around food.  Eucharist was served as part of a meal.  All of our gatherings on Sunday morning have the sharing of  bread and wine, and when we want to truly get together, we know it will be over food of some kind—from coffee hour goodies to an all-out banquet.

Also, what is our image of heaven—the heavenly banquet.  Just think of what a feast our dear ones are having with God!  That’s the table we are all going to be around one day.

So hopefully there are some things to think about here.   But I would like to bring it closer to home.  Closer to your home.  Do you have occasions in your home where Christ is invited?  I am saying, do you have family meals?  Do you sit down together with your family and share food, without the television, perhaps with candles, with a blessing, and with conversation?  I know it’s hard, but it can be done, with some planning and effort.  And where two or three are gathered together, Christ is in the midst of them.  Those who live alone—that’s why we have supper clubs here at the church.  It’s also something for us to think about—who could we invite to join us who might be alone at Thanksgiving or Christmas this year.  Or who else could you get together with to share a meal if you live alone. 

If Christ is most fully present in table fellowship, then let us keep the feast!  Alleluia!