By Alex Evans – from Sunday, August 29, 2010

Texts: Hebrews 13:1-8; Luke 14:1, 7-14

“It Matters With Whom You Eat”

I saw them eating and I knew who they were. 

            That is a Middle Eastern proverb that Jesus probably knew.

            Maybe it makes little sense to us in these days. I saw them eating and I knew who they were. We live in a fast paced world where there are fewer and fewer moments when we actually take, or make, the time to sit and dine together. Families do it less and less because of everyone’s crazy schedules. Many of us often eat on the run, skipping breakfast, grabbing a quick lunch; dinner may be a pizza in front of the TV, or a sub sandwich that is eaten at the computer.

Moreover, studies show that more of us are dining out. And perhaps you have noticed what I notice: so often those in restaurants people, especially couples, are not talking, just sitting, thinking, watching others.

All of this brings interesting questions: what is happening to meals around the table, with sincere sharing and conversation, which deepen our souls and enrich our lives? Are they happening less and less in our culture? And if so, what might be happening to our culture?

In Jesus’ culture, what you ate and with whom you ate were some of the most critical matters. Hence, the Middle Eastern proverb – I saw them eating and I knew who they were.

For the Jews especially, eating together has long been – literally – a religious experience. To eat together is to celebrate faith. Cleanliness is paramount – clean food, clean dishes, clean hands, clean hearts. A proper Jewish meal is a worship service as people honor God by making sacred the most ordinary details of human life – like eating together.

This is why Jesus’ table manners, or lack of table manners, and Jesus’ meals offended lots of people, especially religious people. The passage says  “when the Pharisees saw Jesus going in a house to dine, they were watching him closely.” Jesus was, in the minds and hearts of many, breaking too many rules: he did not practice “proper cleanliness;” he ate with tax collectors and sinners; he thought nothing of sharing the table with the filthy, the poor, the broken, the irreligious. So they were watching him to have their suspicions confirmed – he had contempt for religion; he had lost his sense of what was right; he was condoning sin by dining with sinners.

But our passage today is powerful because it affirms once again that faithful life is not simply about table manners, but compassion. Faithful life is not fundamentally about obeying lots of rules about mealtime and meal behavior (though that may be helpful sometimes). Faithful life is about living with love and generosity and extending ourselves in selflessness. It really matters with whom you eat. Then, Jesus says, you will be blessed. 

In other words, he gives new and deep insight to that Middle Eastern proverb. I saw them eating and I knew who they were.  Jesus wants us to sit around the table, even this Lord’s table, or the fellowship table in the Chapel; but sitting around the table always invites us to consider who is at our table, and what we do with our fellowship. Do our tables reflect our compassion for the needy? What does our mealtime say about us? Are we extending ourselves to the less fortunate, or just feeding our own faces? Are we eating for ourselves or does our eating move us to feed the world in love and hope, in generosity and caring. Jesus indeed knows the importance of real table fellowship and how sacred it can be. And he challenges us to think about OUR table fellowship, with whom we eat, because that will reveal much about faithfulness. We cannot just say our church serves the poor. Jesus wants us to think about our own tables, and our own lives. Do we see God in everyone? Are we extending ourselves in love and service to others? It is so easy and tempting to keep to our safe selves, to carry on with people we know, to think we are religious because we belong to this church. And Jesus challenges us: are our lives more and more shaped in the way of caring, and hosting, or doing for others? It matters with whom we eat.

Since I am just back from Malawi, so much of my thinking and praying continues to relate to Malawi. In Malawi, food is precious. Most of the people in Malawi spend their lives trying to grow enough food for their families. This can be a real problem, a regular struggle. Imagine if your health and wholeness were dependent on how well you could grow crops, enough for your family. This is what life is like in Malawi. Almost everyone, no matter what other work they do, also works in the fields, trying to grow maize and other items, because in most families there is not enough money to go and buy all the food you need. And you never want to depend on others, considering the chance of drought or other problems, to provide for you. So, year after year, almost everyone grows crops for their own eating, even city folk.

And since food is so very precious, the sharing of food and table fellowship become most important. So the Malawian way, whenever it can be done, is to offer your food to others, people who come to visit, people who are passing through. The sharing of the table, and food, becomes for Malawians a key ingredient to sharing life. If and when you share your table, you are good and hospitable. It matters with whom you eat. Your sharing, your table fellowship, whom you invite to your table, becomes a measure of your faith, which is Jesus’ very point.

This is also the very reason that the church, and all faithful ministry in Malawi, greatly involves food. Most of the places we visited with our mission partners included the feeding of other Malawians. The Ministry of Hope, a ministry for orphans and vulnerable children, has numerous feeding centers where needy children gather at midday, where volunteers prepare and serve ample portions of nutritious meals for the orphans and vulnerable children. This ministry has other programs that offer structured play, or Bible study, or fellowship. But the main ministry stems from the feeding program. The children line up, maybe 100 people in a line, (we saw this, took pictures of this) waiting for the food. These are orphans and vulnerable children. This is ministry at its best – I saw them eating and I knew who they were - it matters with whom you eat.

So Ministry of Hope feeds people; and in so many other places the church feeds people – the hungry, the desolate, the troubled, the forgotten. It is part of Presbyterian school programs. It is part of the hospital’s work – they cannot just tend to medical issues, they have to help people eat; so they train new mothers how to keep a garden, and send new patients home with seeds and baby chicks. That is what blessed life looks like – not rules about the table, not over-emphasis on cleanliness and righteousness, not simply church going. Blessed life means helping people eat, making sure everyone, especially the needy, can get to the table.

And we easily miss the point on those things: who are we eating with?  What does your dining table look like? Who has eaten there recently? Who has received food from your hand? Anyone? And have the troubled, the broken, the needy? Or is it just ourselves, just our friends, just people like us? Hebrews reminds us: “do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers,” remember those less fortunate, Let mutual love prosper among you. If our tables are not extending to the less fortunate, we are drifting from Jesus’ way. Want to work on your relationship to God? It matters with whom you eat. That is at least one measure.

I have been reading a new book in recent weeks. It is entitled, It’s Really All About God. This book is written by Samir Selmanovic, who grew up in a culturally Muslim family in Croatia, who converted to Christianity while he was in the then-Yugoslavian army, and who went on to become a pastor and now serves in NYC. With his religiously diverse background, Selmanovic makes the point that our ongoing and sometimes violent power struggles over who owns God and what God wants for the world and its peoples are serving neither God, nor humanity, nor our planet. He says that our religions have become “self-serving God-management systems.” If we are to survive, and thrive, authentic believers of all religions need to see that it’s really about God. We need to see God in all people. God who is about all of us cannot be owned by any of us. And any religion that inspires its people to hate, cannot be following God. We cannot – none of us - love God and despise others. We are not loving God when we box others out. The only way to work out our relationship to God is to work on connections with others, especially those who are not like us. And that is Jesus’ point here.

This book by Selmanovic speaks powerfully to my heart in light of recent tensions about religion, and politics, and things like a mosque at Ground Zero, or who has a claim to ML King’s legacy, and so many other divisive issues. So often our tendency is to become increasingly polarized and full of alienating certitude. Here is what Christian pastor Selmanovic asks: “Is a God who favors anyone over anyone else worth worshipping?” Throughout our history, this is where our religions have often taken us. But in a world where people different from us are increasingly all around us, we have to build bridges across our divisions, not walls. We have to open our hearts and arms, not swing our fists or shoot at each other. And Jesus even makes it more specific. Do not assume the place at the head of the table. Do not just eat with your friends. Do not think acting religious makes you blessed. No, you are blessed when you extend yourselves to others, especially the lowly, the needy, the hungry.

What might Jesus say about our eating and our compassion? When we gather around the meal table, are we mostly seeking to keep and hold the places of honor? Or are we thinking about the world and how so many have so much less? There is no getting around that expectation from our God: for those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves and serve others – they will be exalted.

I saw them eating and I knew who they were. It matters with whom we eat. We are not just people who pray and praise God in this place.  We have to be, as I understand it, people who serve God, who care about poverty and hunger – who keep feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, extending ourselves in compassion to orphans and vulnerable children, and the struggling people of Pakistan, and so many other places, and who seek to change things for the better for healing and hope in the world. We are people who know God’s love and care and blessings.  We are to be people who share those blessings with all the world. Alleluia.  Amen

Prayer of Commitment: In light of your great love, your steadfast faithfulness, O Lord, we commit our lives to loving, serving, following Jesus Christ. Amen

Alex Evans, Pastor, Second Presbyterian Church, Richmond, VA preached this sermon during morning worship on Sunday, August 29, 2010. This is a rough manuscript.