Wednesday, March 31, 2021 - Holy Week
“Later, Levi
invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many
tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. (There were many people of this
kind among Jesus’ followers.) But when the teachers of religious law who were
Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his
disciples, ‘Why does he eat with such scum?’ When Jesus heard this, he told
them, ‘Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call
not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.’” (Mark 2:15 -17, The Living Translation Bible)
Back in the 1800’s, Baptists argued
vigorously about who was eligible to “take communion” – only those who had been
baptized or could any believer come to the Lord’s Table? It caused great rifts.
Eventually, in Ontario, the Free Baptists won the day for a more open table.
But there are still Baptist churches in the world who practice a strict, rigid protocol
of who is eligible for Communion. Sometimes it is even a members-only policy.
But as I watch, via the Gospels,
how Jesus practiced his ministry in his world and times, I am struck by the extreme
level of openness he had for all people, no matter who they were. Our story
above is but one significant example as to how Jesus broke the rigid codes of religious
etiquette and instead broke bread with sinners, tax collectors, outcasts, the
unfit and the misfit – “scum” as our translation puts it. It drove the religious
purists and strict religious legalists to be very judgmental of this particular
practice of Jesus dining with anyone and everyone. They accused him of being a
drunkard and a party-animal because of the company he so often kept.
In one church of mine, I introduced
the use of common loaves to be passed around, so that each participant could
tear a good piece off the loaf. “Because there is one loaf, our many-ness
becomes one-ness—Christ doesn’t become fragmented in us. Rather, we become
unified in him.” (1 Corinthians 10: 17, The Message Bible) But we had a
number of street people wo regularly worshipped with us – not the cleanest, not
the most hygienic, not the easiest to be around, aromatically speaking. A few of my well-groomed, well showered,
well-fed members complained that they did not want to share from the same loaf
from which a street person had just handled. I found that to be sad but rather than
argue I made sure that the usual, safer(!) tidbits of bread were provided along
with the common loaf.
Why does he eat with such scum?
There’s the question we must answer.
Why does Jesus host a supper
with those from the highways and by-ways? Why does he not check their eligibility
to sit at His Table? Why does he have such “low” standards about who gets to celebrate
a meal with him? Why does Jesus not give any thought about the types of people
who have gathered at His Table. Perhaps it is even the grimier, the dirtier,
the more sinful, the more broken, the hungrier, the more uninvited they are everywhere
else, the better and more likely it is that Jesus includes them on his own personal
guest list and openly, lovingly welcomes them to his Feast. If not Jesus, the Saviour
of all humankind, then who?
On Good Friday, the world crucified
the gracious Host of God’s banquet of Love. But even then, the religious snobs and the legalistic
interpreters of the scripture couldn’t shut down the Banquet Hall. “One man
died for everyone. That puts everyone in the same boat. He included everyone in
his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection
life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own.” (2 Corinthians
5:15, The Message Bible)
Pass the Bread please.
Pour a Cup of Wine.
And, oh, by the way, do the same thing for my brother and my sister.
Dale
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