Chaos in the Lunchroom
Luke 14
September 2, 2007
Steve Hammond

There are commentators on Luke’s gospel who say that you can reduce its narrative to three categories, Jesus is on the way to dinner, Jesus is at dinner, or Jesus just left dinner. There is a lot of eating that goes on in Luke, and we are looking at another one of those eating stories this morning.

  There is probably no way we can truly understand the importance of the role meals played in first century Israel. Meals were about a whole lot more than eating or hospitality. Social order was worked out at the meals Important topics, or at least topics the guests deemed important, were discussed. People were watched closely at the meals to see if they performed well by observing the religious and social customs. This story, in fact, mentions at this meal everyone was watching Jesus’ every move.

  There was a pecking order to the meals. The most important people sat at the front tables and carried on most of the conversation, and everyone else was expected to listen. Lesser guests sat at tables farther back, and some people were allowed to only watch what took place. Everyone knew their places and stayed there. Except for Jesus, of course.

  It was a big deal to be at the dinner, toward the front. The only thing I can liken it to is the lunchroom in your stereotypical middle school. As most of us are painfully aware, there is a social order that is precisely worked out in most school cafeterias. The popular kids, and they and everyone else knows who they are, take precedence over everyone else in the lunchroom. No one would imagine the seventh grade outcast pulling up a seat at the table where the most popular kids congregate. It just isn’t done. Everybody knows where and with whom they are supposed to sit.

Jesus wouldn’t have done any better in the middle or high school cafeteria than he did at most of the dinners we read about in the gospels. Not only would he have sat wherever he pleased, but he would have encouraged everyone else to do the same.

  Jesus was more than a bit tired of all the distinctions that were so prevalent in his culture. He was intent on breaking down the walls that divided men from women, Jews from Gentiles, masters from slaves, rich from poor, and all the other distinctions that remain important to us.

  Jesus knew we were all equal before God and each other for, at least, a couple of reasons. One is that we all share the same DNA, though I don’t think he talked much specifically about DNA. But Jesus did talk about the fact that we are all human beings, created by the same God, all connected to each other.

  Jesus wasn’t about to let people reside behind their walls of religion, nation, gender, status, and income. Those things that we place so much stock in were, for Jesus, ridiculous distinctions that have no place in God’s realm.  
 
  People got real upset with Jesus because he hung out with what they considered the wrong people, women, tax collectors, poor folk, the outcasts. But Jesus didn’t see those folk as any different than the wealthiest, most connected, and pious of the lot. People were just people to Jesus. And that was such a radical thing. So radical that the lunchroom enforcers killed him.

Jesus also knew there was something else that linked all human beings. Our need. Rich or poor, black or white, straight or gay, man or woman, we all have some very basic needs we share.

  We need forgiveness for our guilt and our fear, or as the Apostle Paul says it, we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We all know that. We know about our alienation from God, each other, and even ourselves. We are lonely and hurting with the kinds of wounds only God can heal. We all share that. We don’t have to keep hurting each other, rather we are here to help each other heal.

  We share the need to know that God really, really does love us. We talk about that all the time, but this was new territory for Jesus. He came along saying that God loved everyone regardless of where they were born, how much money they had, what their gender was, how religious they were. This was new stuff to the dinner crowd.

  And Jesus knew that we need each other. God created us to live with one another, not apart from each other. All these divisions we cling so tightly to cut us off from what we need, each other.

  So Jesus wasn’t about to go along with all our prejudices, all our divisions, the need to live behind our walls, because he knew that was bad for human beings. What folk did at banquets in his day is the same that goes on in school cafeterias today. It was a metaphor for what troubles us, what brings so much pain and heartache and death to our world. Like the people at the dinner parties in the first century, the kids in the lunchroom are just acting out what goes on in our world. If you can separate yourselves from one another around the banquet table or in the lunchroom, it isn’t too much of a leap to start killing each other because that person is of a different religion, lives in a different country,  or is a threat to me and my kind.

So Jesus had a solution for the banquets, anyway. He told his host at this party that the next time he has such a shin dig he shouldn’t be concerned about inviting the rich or elite, but poor folk and the outcasts. That was turning everything upside down, because suddenly giving a big feast isn’t about ingratiating yourself to the popular kids, but connecting with people who don’t have much to offer other than themselves. It won’t help business, or strengthen anybody’s social status, but it would get you into the kind of stuff that God does, including humility.
 
Can you imagine what would happen if everyone just ate at whatever table they wanted in the school cafeteria? That’s the vision Jesus has for us, chaos in the lunchroom. The popular kids don’t congregate at the one table, the gifted and talented kids at another, the jocks at another but everybody just finds someplace to sit in the cafeteria and enjoy whoever it is they are eating with. Any kid could sit anywhere, and be accepted at any table. That would disrupt the whole social order, and shake up everything at school. But that’s what Jesus was always looking to do, shake up things for the sake of the Kingdom of God.

This meal thing was real important to Jesus. The night before he was killed, he was at a banquet with the men and women who were his followers. And he told them, and us, to keep eating together, and to remember him when we did.

  And what do you suppose he wants us to remember? That everyone is invited to the meal. When we eat together, whether it’s around the communion table, or the tables in the Community Room, Jesus wants us to remember that he came to tear down the walls that divide us, to expose our divisions for what they are, tools of Satan. He wants us to remember we come to all our tables with each other in the same condition, in need of God and each other. Our call is to keep causing chaos in the lunchroom.

  It’s no surprise that the culmination of the age is pictured as a feast. Jesus likes to eat. Always has, always will. But at that banquet there are not going to be some seats that are better, or some people that everyone wants to share a table with. And Jesus surely isn’t going to be looking for the dignitaries, because that will be a category that no longer exists, or maybe everybody is a dignitary.  
 
  School cafeterias are tough places. They are living parables of the kind of world that we have created for our children. Churches, at times, aren’t much better. The Church has been as strident as most institutions in maintaining separation between people in this world. Contrary to everything Jesus taught, and often in his name, we have created a whole list of people who aren’t supposed to be at the banquet, or sit at our table.  

  But things don’t have to stay that way, Jesus says. We just need to remember him and who he ate with, and how he wants to eat with us, sit at our table.

We read that the first followers of Jesus ate their meals together with glad and joyful hearts. Jesus brings chaos to the lunch room so something new can be created.

  We’ve experienced that chaos in this congregation. We eat a lot with each other around here. And our eating together downstairs or around our own dining room tables is as sacred as the meal we are about to share in this room. The most surprising people end up at the same table and we remember Jesus who brings all of his wonderful chaos into this world and our lives.