This past week Helen and I were at a formal fund-raising dinner for about a hundred people at one of our local resorts. We were having a grand old time when Helen noticed a friend who had not been seated yet. Helen went over to chat and learned that this friend was not actually registered to attend but had come to hear the entertainment, and so Helen did what any of you would do, she invited her to sit at our table with us. And that’s what happened: we scrunched around a bit and made a place at the table for one more person.

That little episode is not so remarkable, really, but in a small way it exemplifies a very real and ultimately a very major question: Who is invited to sit at your table? That was a question that often got Jesus into trouble with some of his fellow Jews. The two brief passages from Matthew and Mark are just some of the gospel references we have that tell us that one of the points of contention between Jesus and the religious leaders of society had to do with his choice of companions. Jesus was constantly welcoming people into his friendship that people of good religious standing refused to have anything to do with. He befriended political traitors who made money off their treachery, the tax collectors. He welcomed prostitutes, half-breeds, and all manner of folk who did not bother much about keeping to the complex system of beliefs and practices that the Pharisees understood to be essential to righteous living and right standing with God. He was even known to take care of the needs of the hated Romans, healing a centurion’s daughter. The gospels use a sort of shorthand to refer to the rabble that Jesus associated with, calling them “tax collectors and sinners.” That pretty much covered all the lowlifes of Jewish society in Jesus’ day.

This was not just a question of Jesus’ having a few unsavory characters as friends. Mark says “there were many” such folks who followed him. In other words, lots of folks that were not considered religious folks were responding to Jesus’ religious message. For the known religious people in Jewish society, that made Jesus’ a highly suspicious and even dangerous person. The issue had to do with access to God. What does it take to have access to God? Nearly every human religion has found a way to put a boundary around God and reserve God’s love for those who “deserve” it in some way or “earn” it. If Jesus welcomed friendship with such folks, then clearly, he was not from God.

The question often came up when it involved sharing a meal. “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” That question of who sits at the same table with who is a huge one for Jewish society. To eat at the same table was an unmistakable sign of acceptance, of fellowship, of friendship, with your table companions. You never did that with just anybody, and certainly not with people of less than sterling reputations. But Jesus would eat with anyone, because, as he said, “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” In other words, anyone and everyone is welcome at God’s table.

You would think that people who follow Jesus would have gotten that message by now. But that’s not necessarily the case. Many years ago when I lived in Dallas, one of the very first weddings at which I officiated was that of a young professor and a medical student who both attended the University of Dallas, a fine Roman Catholic institution. About half the attendees at the wedding were priests, which was rather intimidating to this rookie preacher. This young couple wanted to have communion at their wedding, and we did, but because of the restrictions of Catholicism, every single priest refused to take communion with the rest of us. Who is welcome at the table, and who is not?

This year we are focusing our spiritual attention on what Scot McKnight calls “The Jesus Creed.” I prefer just to call it the Christian Creed: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” We are learning how the love of God and love of neighbor finds expression in our everyday lives, as we pray, as we worship, as we simply live. For Jesus, to love God and to love neighbor meant that you never ever excluded anyone from your own circle of love and friendship because of who they were or what they might have done. Jesus welcomed everyone because God welcomes everyone. God’s table of fellowship is big enough for everyone.

But so you don’t think that Pharisees or Roman Catholics are the only ones to get that wrong, let me tell you about something called “communion tokens.” There was a time in the Presbyterian Church, both in the United States and in Scotland, when before the celebration of communion in a local congregation, the elders of that congregation would visit every single household. The purpose of their visit was to evaluate the parishioners’ knowledge of the Christian faith and the purity of their lives. If they passed muster, they were given small metal tokens, much like coins, that they would then exchange for the privilege of receiving communion. Some of the motivation for this system had to do with making sure that parishioners were taking the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper seriously, which is a worthy spiritual goal. But the practice had overtones that were not entirely healthy. Communion is a means of receiving God’s grace and not a reward for good behavior. Or to put that in a larger theological context, we do not have to get our act together in order to come to God, no, first we come to God and then by God’s grace we can get our act together!

How many of us have ever felt excluded from something, some group, some society, some circle of friends? We all have. How many of us have ever felt unworthy of God’s love, unfit to be counted as friends of Jesus? We all have. How many of us have excluded someone else from our circles of love and friendship, or excluded someone else from God’s love? We all have. But when we follow Jesus, we learn that God loves us and welcomes us into a relationship with him. And we learn that we must welcome others into our love as well. That is one reason Jesus gave us this table, his table, and invited everyone to this table, including you and me. The sacred supper served at this table satisfies our souls because it reminds us of this remarkable spiritual truth: God loves us. God wants us to love him. God wants us to love others. Until we learn that we are loved and that we can love others, we have not truly become the people God made us to be. God has given us nothing less than his love. We can give nothing less back to God or to others. Anything less than love does not satisfy. So come to the table, with everyone else, and be filled with God’s love, so you can share it with others.

Amen.

ⁱ Scot McKnight, The Jesus Creed, Paraclete Press, Brewster, Massachusetts, 2004, p. 11.