God's Lunch Table is Open to Everyone
Easter 5 – May 2, 2010
Who you socialize with, who you sit down and eat with is a big deal. It was true in Jesus' day, and it's true about our world too. Maybe the place I remember experiencing this most of all was in the high school cafeteria come lunch time. You'd come out of the lunch line into that room and there at all of those long tables with their little round, attached seats, you'd see the social hierarchy of the school laid out for the world to see: who sat together, who got the best seats (the ones along the far wall with the windows to the town's main street), all of the little cliques and groups organized in neat little rows.
And in my school, once that pattern was set at the beginning of the semester, there wasn't much you could do to change it. We joke about how church folks like to sit in their pews, but high school kids are pretty much the same way. And so we all stayed with pretty much the same group, in the same spot, day after day, people who we were friends with, who we had something in common with, people we liked and who we knew would accept us.
Of course, it's not just like that in high school. You see it wherever there are people, especially when food is involved. Think about all the agony and angst wedding couples can go through as they try to arrange the seating for their wedding receptions – who should sit next to who – who shouldn't sit next to who. Or go to an ecumenical worship here in Lynbrook or our church conference gathering or synod assembly and see what happens when it's time for coffee hour or meal-time. We tend to conglomerate with the people we already know, the ones who look like us. We want to sit with the people we figure we'll have something in common with, something to talk about. And it's hard to cross those invisible boundaries, to dare to go to another table filled with strangers, to the ones who seem somehow not like you – because they wear different clothes, or speak with a different accent, or have a different color of skin.
It's hard to bridge that gap, but that's what we hear about Peter doing in the lesson from Acts today. Last we saw Peter, he was in Joppa. He just brought Tabitha back to life, and is staying with a Simon, a tanner. And while he's there, he goes up on the roof one day to pray, and he gets hungry, and while he waits for lunch to be brought up, he goes into a trance and has this vision about all sorts of animals being lowered down from heaven – unclean animals – and a voice comes from heaven telling him to kill and eat. Peter protests - “I've never eaten anything profane in my life!” But the voice comes back – “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” And so when the men from Caesarea come looking for him, Peter understands that God is behind this. He realizes that God wants him to go with them, to carry the story of Jesus beyond the normal borders, that God wants him to switch lunch tables and go with a completely different crowd.
And so Peter does. And what an amazing experience he has when he gets there. There is Cornelius the centurion, waiting for him with all of his relatives and close friends, waiting to hear what Peter has to say. Peter starts to lay it all out, what God has done in Jesus, and barely has he started to speak when the Holy Spirit comes on them and they start speaking in tongues and praising God – and they are baptized. Everyone is amazed at what God has done, how God has moved in new ways, in new places, with new people, who before were outside the scope of what God was doing. It is a day for rejoicing!
Meanwhile, back in Judea, the apostles and believers catch wind of what has happened, and they are not so happy. They get all in an uproar about Peter and what he has done, which is not so surprising if you've ever tried to switch lunch tables. Bad enough to try to open yourself up to a new group, but the old group usually isn't thrilled by the idea. It's not a pretty site – there are feelings of hurt and betrayal and rejection; words of recrimination and criticism... Those people are not like us. They are not a part of our group. How dare you go to them and eat with them?! It's as though by accepting a new group of people you are dumping the old. At least that's how it seems in high school. For Peter and the believers back in Judea, it had more to do with following the religious purity laws, about staying true to their religion by hanging out with their own kind. After all, they got themselves into some pretty serious trouble in the past when they didn't. They found themselves going down the wrong path, following other gods, falling away – and it ended in exile. They don't want to see that happening again. Not knowing what Peter knows, they are afraid he's going to lead them right back into trouble.
But the thing is, God is the one leading this whole new thing. That's what Peter had to learn – God had to give him this vision not once, but three times before he started to get a clue. It's what Peter had to explain to the other apostles and believers in Judea, step by step, as it says in verse 4. Because all the time, God is doing new things – it's just that God's people are often pretty slow to realize it. We like our lunch table arrangements just the way they are – but in this story, God sends the Holy Spirit to show Peter and the others that now there's no more assigned seating. No one is kept out of the cafeteria. God's lunch table is open to everyone! Everyone has a place there!
That's often hard for us to live into. We're creatures of habit, people of custom. It's human nature for us to want to be with people like us, who act and think and believe in similar ways to how we do. Our socially-conceived boundaries and borders make us feel safe. The only problem with that is that by sticking to our own kind, we miss all sorts of opportunities to share the Good News and to see what God is already doing in those places we were so late to go to.
But God is not constrained by our boundaries. It's just the opposite, really – in Jesus, God threw open the boundaries for all people to come in! The way to God is not patrolled by the border police, there are no walls to keep people out. Jesus constantly crossed the social and ethnic and cultural borders of his time, going to people others would have rejected, reaching out to them, eating with them, healing them, praying with them, teaching them, dying for them. Jesus died for all to show that God's love is for all, without exception! We see it and taste it and experience it here at this meal Jesus gave us to share, the meal that takes place at God's lunch table where there is a seat for everyone – for you, for me, for the stranger we meet in the street. It's an open invitation – who will you invite?
Amen.
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