Jesus said, “The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and “sinners.” ‘

Jesus is here contrasting his kingdom of God method to his cousin’s John the Baptist’s way.

“The Son of Man came exegeting Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 and correcting the doctrinal errors of the Pharisees, and all the other factions in Israel.”

Oh, I’m sorry. That’s the USAmerican evangelical approach to social change. “Preach the Word!” It’s too bad our Supreme Example didn’t use that approach.

Daily meals became Jesus’ “dangerous” method. He welcomed marginalized people to eat with him. They gladly did so at the cafe table called The Kingdom of God. They laughed and swapped stories and had a rousing good time. Jesus’ disciples had numerous side conversations with the cultural-culinary-religious police about “Why does your master welcome and eat with these kind of people?” Talk about meal-time excitement!

Whoever thought that bread could be a weapon for change? Can’t you just imagine Jesus with squinted eyes staring down an upstart Pharisee and in a Clint Eastwood-like, raspy voice saying, “This here is a Zebulun 6″ diameter loaf of fresh-baked, butter-topped, .45 caliber wheat grain bread…and I don’t know how many bites are left. Feeling lucky, punk?”

Whoever thought an ordinary table of people could be the place where heaven and earth meet?

Whoever thought that eating together with the most unsavory of friends would reshape a nation’s vision of holiness?

I marvel at the Jesus Way: creating a national storm with bread, fish and wine, not with swords, F-16’s and bunker-busters.

“As oft’ as you quote this verse and preach this Bible text and argue stringently for justification by faith alone, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” How does that verse go again?

We have changed from the Jesus Way.

People at the margins might not be able to follow our fine, finessed, exegetically precise, “inner logic” trails to getting right with God, but they sure do know how to eat. And they’ll eat with Jesus when he invites them. It was the spiffy, religious know-it-alls who were “too good” to mix with the dusty riff-raff. “Why do you eat food with unclean hands? Why do you eat food with homosexuals, terrorists, racy women and social rejects? God just wouldn’t eat with people like that.”

Jesus of Nazareth, gritty as he was, was and is and will forever be God.

Here’s the clincher. Some of you will have to bite your tongue. There’s no record that they had “to repent” to eat at Jesus’ table. The fact that they came–tax-collectors, prostitutes, lame, blind, diseased–and ate and enjoyed Jesus’ welcome was repentance enough.

Now, I didn’t say that they didn’t ever change, did I? I said there’s no evidence that they had to change before they came to the table. There’s a word that is really loved and lived by those in the margins. It’s the word grace. Grace. Embracing Grace.

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When Jesus broke bread, he broke Israel.

With his meal-time habits, Jesus was speaking a new language and introducing a new world.

USAmerican culture has gutted the social significance of daily meals. With the TV dinner and the fast food chains, we eat like we live…with a sound and fury signifying nothing. Once in a while we arrive at a table with 3 forks, 3 glasses, two spoons and two knives and we freeze up. This is no ordinary meal. Which fork do we use first? A china plate with 3 long green beans with a “glaze” on them and a piece of meat the size of a postage stamp with a purple flower next to it shows up. “Who needs 3 forks for this?” We begin to fantasize about a “Big Mac.”

In Jesus’ day a meal was a controlling cultural map. Who was eating with whom? Where? and What? And who was in charge? –all said something significant about social relationships. Powerful social code was telegraphed. It was what anthropologists call “the language of meals.”

Are you one of us or one of them? Every meal in Jesus’ day was an answer to that question. Meals portrayed legitimate and illegitimate social relationships. “This man (read “scum bag”) welcomes ’sinners’ and eats with them” (Luke 15:1-2). Who was clean and unclean? Who was pure and who was polluted? Meals answered these questions.

Add to this Israel’s history with God around meals—complaining about water and quails—eating and drinking at the golden calf—picking manna up daily—the periodic holy feast days—staying pure in Babylon (Daniel and his friends)—you get the picture. In Israel your meal-time habits showed whether you were close to or far from God. The “Lord’s Table” was every meal you ate…or it was not His table.

Meals kept tribes together, clans united, families close, a nation identified. Meals were an expression of law-keeping or law-breaking. Eatingness was close to godliness.

Enter radical pastor Jesus and his new code. His meal-time good news message. He was subversively, non-violently redrawing Israel’s cultural-spiritual map. He offered new, happy redefinitions of who’s pure and who’s polluted. He didn’t have to say a lot. All he had to do was host a meal and break the bread and pour the wine. By these actions Jesus literally broke Jewish society apart, even family members had to chose (or not) to be in the new social structure Jesus was creating (see Matthew 10:34-39).

Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.”

Jesus said, “I say to you that many will come from the east and the west [despised Gentiles], and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Jesus said, “The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and “sinners.” ‘

Jesus, then, by his meal-time associations reconfigured the kingdom of God for all to see. He was amazingly courageous and intensely controversial. I wonder if most of his followers developed ulcers. “Can you believe what he is doing?” I hear Peter saying to John. “We are all going to die.”

Every meal Jesus ate in his ministry was a transformative expression, a here and now enactment of the presence of the kingdom of God.

Grace…amazing, gutsy, pass-the-potatoes grace.

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The Chinese have a proverbial question: Is it edible?

The proverb is not about food. It’s about ideas, concepts, principles. If an idea is “edible” that means it is practical, it becomes part of life. It’s not theory; it’s concrete here and now.

Jesus was edible. “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood… .” And, “This is my body given for you.”

Jesus didn’t change the margins with ideas. He changed the margins with concrete actions. His meal-time practices were “provocative theatre.” You could see the people, smell the food, hear the laughter, dip into the same dish with Jesus. You could actually live in the kingdom of God with Jesus. The last first, the least the greatest, the child the proto-type disciple. You could breathe deeply the grace of God and see shame flee away forever.

Following Jesus was, by his culture’s standards, an R-rated action movie, not a purpose-driven Bible study.

We don’t read about Jesus critics saying, “This man welcomes sinners and gives them new ideas.” We read, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

With a kazillion “kingdom of God” ideas and concepts percolating on the world wide web, the church won’t see one person converted. Are the ideas edible?

Jesus did things. He broke bread with a violent fanatic and invited him to be a team member (a zealot); he called a tax-collector to be his follower and then ate with that tax-collector and all his traitorous friends. He allowed a known prostitute to touch him at an important and very public social gathering. He touched lepers and dead people. He spit in dust and made mud. He whipped animals out of the Temple. He ate lots of meals with marginalized people.

American Christians want an inedible version of the kingdom of God. We want nice ideas to prop up our materialistically smothered lifestyle. A nice, santitized idea of the kingdom that won’t get dirt under our fingernails or snot on our clothes or blood on our hands.

We’d rather “believe” in Jesus than eat and drink him. That “meal” creates, just as it did when Jesus first offered it, a response of “this saying is too hard for us.” Why?

It’s concrete, not conceptual. It’s strangers at our Martha Stewart tables. It’s sick people sleeping between our Downy softened sheets. It’s being in very hot places without air-conditioning. It’s eating with people who don’t know the Bible or Jesus or Billy Graham or Mother Teresa.

Jesus was edible. More Chinese than American.

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Jesus at the Margins– Part 2  Shame

Jesus made being marginal central.

He did it primarily by his meal-time practices.

In Jesus’ day the Jewish culture operated on the power of shame. Social relationships were arranged hierarcially with those closest to God–the High Priest–then priests, Levites, obedient Jews on down to those most removed from God–Gentiles, shepherds, tax-collectors, prostitutes and generally the am ha ‘aretz, the “people of the land,” the illiterate human trash. You were kept in your place by stringent social shaming.

For example, Simon the Pharisee invited Jesus into his home and then immediately proceeded to exert the power of social shame (see Luke 7: 36-50). By deliberately humiliating Jesus before all his guests, Simon sought to put this upstart “prophet” from Hicksville, Galilee in his proper place.

Oops. Shame does not work on Jesus. Rolling with Simon’s shame punch, Jesus proceeds to interpret a redeemed prostitute’s actions for Simon and the guests. All the shame meant to slime Jesus boomeranged onto Simon. At a meal.

To be marginalized in Jesus’ day meant to be shamed. Publicly humiliated and socially ostracized and spiritually scorned. You were considered, not just someone who did bad things, you were a bad, unclean person. To up the ante, the social shame declared that you were cut off from God. You had no place at the holy table. You were an outsider. You were gutter trash. You had no identity other than to be the foil for “the righteous ones” who said things like, “God, I am so glad I’m not like that tax-collector/same sex-oriented person/abortion-minded woman/alcoholic/Hezbollah terrorist over there.”

Jesus prepares his table. The thing you never felt in his presence was shame. You felt welcomed. You felt honored. You felt joy. You felt included. You felt valued. You felt family. You heard “my friend” and looked up and saw that Jesus meant you.

“But I, I am…a very rich tax-collector.”
“I am a…furious zealot with blood on my hands.”
“I am…am an unclean woman with an issue of blood.”
“I am a smelly shepherd.”
“I am a desperate prostitute.”
“I am a lonely leper.”
“I am a hated Roman centurion.”
“I am a despised Samaritan and immoral woman.”
“I am am ha ‘aretz.”

Jesus looks at us and smiles. He raises his hands and blesses the bread from the earth and the wine from the grape. He blesses as only a Good Host can bless. By the time he stops, we really don’t care what we are, but who he is. And one thing he is, he’s for us, not against us.

Jesus, as host, says, “Hey, Deborah and Matthew, separate a little bit. We’ve got to make room for father Abraham when he shows up. Good. You guys, there, make a place for Isaac. Alright. Let’s eat.”

Dark shame flees into the night in the presence of Light. Sadly the fleeing shame seeps into the crevases of graceless hearts turns into homicidal hatred. Shame hates being shamed.

“This is my body given for you” …and they felt no shame.

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Jesus at the Margins- Part 1 (from the archives)

I’ve been ruminating again about Jesus’ life with the marginalized of 1st century Judaism. I’m going to ponder in print some of my thoughts.

We often think that Jesus left his surburban bungalow on the green hillside of Galilee and went into the big city and sought out the disadvantaged. How good of Jesus to condescend and go to the marginalized, the outcasts, the rejects, the down-trodden. What a model of servant-leadership. I wonder if my shiny Hummer can navigate the narrow inner city streets?

Wait a minute. Jesus, himself, was born into and lived in the margins of his society. He was the ultimate outcast, the “sinner,” the man with disreputable beginnings and unholy (read illegal) practices.

Good news. Jesus changed the margins. He dared to draw new lines of acceptance with God the Father. Jesus paradoxically made being marginal central.

Imagine that I announce to my Northview neighborhood that teenagers on the verge of getting their driver’s licenses can meet me in a local school parking lot at a certain time. I will train them for free how to start a car, drive and park a car, learn to operate a manual shift, change a flat tire, check the oil, etc. I get approval from every authority interested and the area folk think, “How nice. That old, grey-bearded guy is helping our kids prepare to drive. And he’s doing it for free.”

One day, however, the teens come home, jumping for joy.

“Mom, Dad, I got my driver’s license today!”

“You what? Let me see that.”

“Yeah, the old guy who’s been training us issued our licenses today. Isn’t that wicked?!”

“Hey, settle down. This 3 X 5 card with a polaroid picture taped to it isn’t exactly a driver’s license.”

Word gets out and soon the Michigan Secretary of State sends some authorities to check out this unusual and illegal behavior. Teens are being arrested for driving with a lumpy 3 X 5 card as a valid license.

“Uh, Reverend Frye, you can’t just issue driver’s licenses like this. We appreciate your help getting the teens road ready and all that, but you can’t issue a license to any of them. That is the job of the State of Michigan.”

Jesus is famous for his meal-time habits. His eating habits are one of the most reliable and uncontested features of his life. Jesus ate with people in the margins. For a God-fearing Jew, he ate with the wrong people. But that in itself could be tolerated. “Birds of a feather flock together. He eats with ’sinners’ because he’s a ’sinner.’ “

What got Jesus in trouble was issuing licenses, so to speak. He said, “At my table, you are sitting right in the middle of the Kingdom of God. Eat up. Drink. Laugh. The kingdom is for you!!”

“Uh, Rabbi Jesus, we’re from the Temple…you know, the big one in Jerusalem. You just can’t go around telling people, especially these people, that they are in the kingdom of God. That’s the priests’ job.”

Jesus with a furious twinkle in his eye says, “Oh, no, my Temple friends, you’ve got it all wrong. It IS my job. And I’m doing it.”

At Jesus’ table Deborah, the prostitute, passes a bunch of grapes to Matthew, a tax-collector, and the cups of wine spark laughter (for Anne Lamott laughter is “carbonated holiness”). Deborah and Matthew wonder aloud what they will ask Abraham when they sit at the table with him. Jesus had said that they would eat with their ancestors in the faith.

“I never knew there was a place at this table for me,” Deborah says quietly. “I don’t look like a Pharisee. I don’t talk like one and I, for sure, don’t act like one. I never did learn to talk ‘Pharisee.’ “

“Nor I, ” says Matthew, “but here we are! In the middle of the Kingdom of God.”

Bread, fruit, lamb and wine. Laughter. Heaven and earth meet at the table.

Who’s marginalized?

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Milly Bauer is one sharp lady. One day when a friend and I were sipping coffee and crunching on mouth-watering Milly cookies at her kitchen table, she told about a loving practice she maintains to celebrate her love of Don. Don Bauer and Milly were married for 51 years before Don passed away. Each year that they were married Don, of course, gave Milly a gift on her birthday and at Christmas. Are you ready for this? Milly told us that each year on her birthday she buys a gift for herself from Don. At Christmas, she buys a gift for herself from Don. This sweet ritual has become so routine that when Milly’s children gather for her birthday or at Christmas, they expectantly ask, “Mom, what did Dad get you this year?” My friend and I sat amazed as she told us, seeing the twinkle in Milly’s eyes and hearing the fondness for Don in her voice.

Is this not one of the most creative ways to keep an enduring love enduring? Milly says that she doesn’t know of anyone else who does this. My friend and I had never heard anything like it, either. Just think: this gift exchange is not just between Milly and Don, but between a beloved father and thoughtful mother and their children. “What did Dad get you this year?” Milly says the upside of this ritual gift-giving is that she now gets exactly what she wants from Don. Funny lady. I don’t know if Don can see this simple, but significant ritual twice a year, but if he does, “I can only imagine,” as the song goes, the smile on his face as he laughs and the love for Milly in his heart blazing strong.

A regular practice keeps the fire of love alive. Once a month, on the first Sunday, we, Fellowship Evangelical Covenant Church, enact a similar practice of love. The gift-giver is Jesus and he hands to us the broken bread and offers to us the redemption cup. As we celebrate the Lord’s Table, the Giver reminds us of how much he loves us and what he did to demonstrate that costly love. Though I am privileged to speak at the Table, I must never forget that the True Host is the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is truly present and active. At the Table, grace is the air we breathe and forgiveness and life are the gifts we enjoy. Jesus’ invitation is as enduring as his love. “Come, eat this bread and drink this cup in remembrance of Me.”

The Table is more than a Christian history lesson we must not forget. The Table is a place of meeting where authentic love is given and received. The Table is about persons in relationship, just as Milly’s ongoing gift exchanges are about an enduring love between a husband and wife. We ask Milly, “Why do you do this gift exchange?” We don’t expect Milly to say “Well, so I don’t forget Don.” How could she? She does it to experience and enjoy the love that still exists between her and Don. Don is not present, but he is alive. That’s the Christian hope. A wonder of wonders made possible by the body and blood, the bread and cup, of the Lord Jesus Christ.

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