Lunch Period in the Kingdom

Perhaps it’s different for middle schoolers today, but when I was in what we called "junior high," the most nerve-wracking period of the day was the lunch period. You went through the serving line, got your tray with the little sections in it (one for carrots, one for mashed potatoes, one for mystery meat) picked up your half pint of milk, and walked through a sort of passage way into the dining area. Then came that moment of agonizing decision. Where will you sit? More specifically, with whom will you sit?

By the window is the table of nerds. You can’t sit with them, even though they are liable to be the most interesting people in the lunchroom. Your twin sister has already noted a nerdy tendency in your personality, and has warned you to repress it. The nerds are off limits.

Equally forbidden are the hoods. These are guys with ducktail haircuts, held in place by gunk that comes in jar. "Hair grease," we called it; hence their alternate name: greasers. Greasers wear T-shirts with the sleeves turned up and (Horrors!) – blue jeans. Not pastel shirts with matching socks and standard khaki trousers – but plain white T-shirts with the sleeves turned up and jeans. To sit with greasers is to commit social suicide. What’s more, they might beat you up after school.

Time is running out. You cannot be seen to be indecisive. Though it may appear that people are looking at their plates and each other, you know that in fact everyone is watching you. You must appear nonchalant.

Today might be the day to try your luck with the "Popular People" that is, the In’s" The In’s are cool. They wear the right clothes. They have locker loops on the backs of their pastel shirts (known affectionately as "fruit loops.") You sister is without doubt an In. She always was. Always will be. She has an intuitive sense of what fits and what doesn’t. Of course, you can’t actually sit with your sister. She’d kill you. But you might sit in her vicinity.

No, not today. Too risky. Better to dine in obscurity than to risk outright rejection. You sit at the table in the corner with the unlabeled. Neither nerds nor greasers nor in’s. The silent, vanilla majority.

Table fellowship was also a crucial issue in the Jewish culture of Jesus’ day. Not only were you known by the company you kept, you were defined by the people you ate with. If unclean people ate at your table, you could become unclean, even if you yourself scrupulously adhered to the ritual laws.

Suppose, by some horrible oversight, a prostitute were to be seen dining at your table. You might never live it down. Or suppose a tax collector showed up for dinner. A tax collector is both a collaborator with the Roman occupiers of Israel and a cheat. Everybody knows that tax collectors get rich by collecting more money from their neighbors than they pass on to the Romans. Might as well invite a skunk to supper.

But those are extreme cases. You had to be careful about sinners in general. Most sinners were not obvious cases like prostitutes and tax collectors, but – (Let’s just face it) poor people. People who had to work all day and didn’t have time to pray. People who were so busy trying to survive that they didn’t have a proper appreciation for the finer points of the law. Call them "those less fortunate than ourselves," or just call them "sinners." It all amounts to the same thing.

You might drop a few coins in the poor box at the temple. That’s only right, but it wouldn’t do to be seen dining with people like that.

A meal back in Jesus’ day was more than a way to fill your stomach. It had sacred associations. To invite someone to a meal was to invite them into intimate relationship. You ate out of the same bowl, drank out of the same cup, shared the same loaf. Then, at the end of the meal, you prayed to the same God. To be a dinner guest was to partake in the holy. You can’t take chances with that.

It’s no wonder, then, that Jesus’ meal-time habits caused such a ruckus. Not only did he accept dinner invitations from tax collectors and various other sinners, he himself seems to have played host to them.

The scribes and Pharisees in today’s Gospel reading have a point. Would you listen to a preacher who’s having an affair with a church member? Would you listen to a senator who was caught playing tappy-foot in a restroom stall? Would you listen to a rabbi who breaks bread with riffraff and bloodsuckers? Of course not! We religious people have a certain standard to maintain.

Jesus overhears the grumbling. (I doubt the scribes and Pharisees were very subtle.) He could have called them names – "stuck-up bible thumpers," for instance, or even "downtown Presbyterians," but he doesn’t stoop that far. Instead he tells them three stories, two of which we just heard.

The first story is about a shepherd with a flock of 100 sheep. When he counts them at the end of the day, he discovers one is missing. So what does he do? He leaves the 99 to fend for themselves in the wilderness, and searches for the lost sheep until he finds it. When he does, he lays it on his shoulders, and carries it home, rejoicing all the way. When he gets home, he calls all his friends and neighbors together and says, "Rejoice with me. I have found my one lost sheep. Isn’t that fantastic news!"

Clearly, this is a shepherd who has been out in the sun too long. What shepherd leaves 99 sheep in the wilderness just to find one lost sheep? I ask you, is that prudent? Is it responsible? Is it cost efficient?

"Which one of you would not do the same?" Jesus wants to know. Well, none of us would do the same. We’re not that crazy.

If that’s the case, Jesus implies, you don’t understand how the kingdom of God works. "Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance."

Next, just in case the men in the audience don’t get the point (which they probably don’t) Jesus tells a female version.

A woman has ten silver coins. That’s ten day’s worth of wages for a day laborer – not a trifling amount. She loses one coin. What does she do?

Stand back, brothers and sisters, it’s spring cleaning time now, no matter what the season. She hauls the furniture out into the yard. She shakes out the rush matting on the floor. She looks into every pot and cooking vessel. She even checks the "job jar" her husband hasn’t opened in six months.

It takes a lot of hunting, but she finds that coin. And when she does, she calls together all her friends and neighbors and invites them to rejoice, too. "Look at this! I found my coin! Rejoice with me!"

Surely, even if we’re still scratching our heads about that shepherd, we can picture this woman’s joy. I’m still looking for the silver cross Andra gave me for my ordination. I lost it 20 years ago, but when I find it, I’m going to rejoice like nobody’s business.

Well, says Jesus, that’s the scene in heaven when one sinner repents, when a single person who’s in the "out crowd" is brought into the "in crowd" of God’s embrace.

Jesus mentions repentance, but I’d like you to notice something about these stories. Sheep don’t repent, do they? They do get lost, however, and have to be found by a shepherd who drops everything to search for them. Coins don’t repent, do they? They do get lost, however, and have to be found by the person who turns her whole house upside down until she sees it, glinting in some forgotten crevice.

These aren’t repentance stories so much as they are hunting stories. And they’re less hunting stories than they are party stories. In the end, they’re about rejoicing – as at a wedding feast, or a banquet, or an ordinary meal where every place is filled, and no one is left out.

"People will come," said Jesus, "from east and west, from north and south, to sit at table in the kingdom" (Luke 13:29). The meals Jesus ate with sinners and tax collectors point toward that kingdom. They are sacramental in the same way the meal he shared with his disciples in that Upper Room the night before he died was sacramental.

We call this sacrament "The Lord’s Supper" because Jesus is the host, and because, when we eat and drink, we remember him. But this meal is more than an re-enactment of the Last Supper. It’s a recalling of all those other meals that Jesus hosted – to which he invited scribes and Pharisees, sinners and tax collectors, rich and poor.

In this meal the lunch room of my middle school memory is transformed. No longer are there multiple tables, each for some subset of the whole – a table for the "in’s," a table for the "out’s," a table for the confused and ill-defined. No, there is one table with one host.

Now, if you don’t like that arrangement, obviously you have never felt lost. You’ve never been the one cut off from the ninety-nine, wandering in the wilderness as the sun goes down. You’ve never been hungry for the bread of acceptance.

There are some Christians who insist that the gospel of Jesus Christ is all about what we must do to get a seat at the table. We must make say the right creed, make the right confession, join the right church, hate the right enemy. That doesn’t sound like gospel to me. It sounds like lunchtime at Pearl Watson Junior High.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is about God’s longing to begin the banquet and God’s hunt for those who haven’t yet been seated at their place at the table. Some day, the gospel says, all the sheep and all the coins will be found, all the nobodies will be somebodies, and even the scribes and Pharisees will rejoice with the angels of heaven.

And why not? Because God is God, there more than enough for everyone.