Pentecost 2A2023
Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
This is a story about a table.
My parents’ table has always been an open one. Especially on Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter, our table in my growing up years included not just our family but an elderly widow with no children from our church and the child-less newcomers to town who were different than everyone else. Small town Minnesota, you understand. I would come home from school to find my dad at the kitchen table drinking tea with Owan Tomawosa, a Hmong refugee from Laos, who had emigrated to our small town and who my dad helped to resettle. During the time that my friend Emily’s parents were going through a divorce, she ate at our house more often than she ate at her own. My parents’ table has always been an open one.
The gospel for today, this is also a story about an open table.
Jesus sits at dinner where the other dinner guests are quite the motley crew. In an age and culture defined by honor and shame, Jesus shames himself by inviting tax collectors and sinners to eat with him. Perhaps the Pharisees also sit at the table with Jesus, or perhaps they just spy this travesty from the open door. But they are not having it. As experts in religious law, the Pharisees know what is permitted and what is not, and they are keen to both follow religious rules themselves—as well as enforce them among others. Faithful Jews are not to defile themselves, and dipping into the same bowl of hummus or figs or bread with people stained by sin or traitorous work, like the work of the tax collectors, while also talking with them, while accepting them, while even calling them to join him in his ministry surely violates that law. To meet at the table, in Jesus’ day, establishes a close bond between Jesus and these tax collectors and sinners.
This is a story about a table.
The funny thing about this story is that, for many years, I considered my parents saints, opening their table to anyone and everyone. In the 44 years I’ve known my parents, every time I’ve asked if I may invite someone to dinner at their home, they have said yes each and every time. But the real-life story about their table is that, as a teenager, I decided I wanted to be like Helen, the elderly widow with no children—for she had been a business woman of profound generosity and community spirit and vision. The child-less newcomer couple became my parents’ closest friends in our little town and Joan my very first model of a female pastor. Knowing and loving and being known and loved by Owan Tomawosa changed all of our lives for the better, giving me a vision of a community undivided by race and culture during my formative years. And of course, I did not pity my friend Emily but instead rejoiced that her parents’ divorce gave us ample opportunity to put on plays and have sleepovers.
In much the same way, Jesus does not deign to eat with tax collectors and sinners. He wants to eat with tax collectors and sinners. He, in fact, calls Matthew, a tax collector, by name and commands Matthew to follow him. Matthew the tax collector becomes one of Jesus’ closest friends and co-workers. And when Jesus hears the grumbling of the Pharisees, he says: I have come to call not the righteous but sinners. This is probably confusing for both the disciples and Pharisees because why would someone want to hang out with sinners, but the joke is on the Pharisees and all those who look at others with disdain. For there are no righteous people among them, only sinners.
In our genuine desire to follow Christ, we may get lost in our own self-righteousness like the Pharisees. We may quite proudly proclaim: All are welcome at the table of hope while at the same time believe, perhaps unconsciously, that certain people deserve admittance at Christ’s table while others rely on Christ’s mercy to get there. But the joke is on us because around here, it’s sinners only who get invited. We’re all at the same table, and Jesus is the one who invites us. My colleague in my first call, the senior pastor, she would often remind us that the table of Holy Communion was open to everyone not because she said so, not because the church council said so, but because Jesus said so. In the same way, the altar, the table of this house, may be our table, lovingly created for Esperanza Lutheran Church 30 years ago, but the invitation to this table of Holy Communion comes not from me, not from the church council, not even from this congregation at large but from Jesus. It may be our table, but Jesus issues all the invitations.
Friends, he wants to eat with us. And in so doing, he invites us to join him in his work, to be his friends and co-workers in the gospel, even though we’re sinners, all of us.
This is a story about a table, and gathered around this table, it’s sinners only. That means you. That means us, all of us. Thanks be to God! Amen.