Bibliography: Finding Christ, Finding Life: Reconciliation
In 1967 Columbia Pictures released a movie called “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?” Set in the 1960’s, this comedy tells of a dinner party given by a bride’s parents to meet her fiance‚ and his parents. The comfortable middle class existence of the bride’s white parents is disrupted when they find out that the groom is black. Nor are the groom’s parents, also invited to dinner, happy to find that their son is going to marry a white girl.
Today interracial marriages are somewhat more common place. I’m not sure to what extent, particularly here in the deep south, they are accepted. But you can imagine how radical the idea was in the 1960’s and how radical this movie was when it was made. The dinner would have been a strange and awkward meal, indeed.
Paul writes to a group in Corinth who are dealing with some radical concepts. You see much of life at that time was ordered and measured by how well one knew one’s place and kept it. In fact, the better job you did of keeping to your status and situation in life, the more you were respected. It seems rather bizarre, but following this reasoning on down, there was a way in which to take pride in your poverty, or enslavement, or inferior position in society.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense to us now, but that’s the way it was back then. However, Jesus Christ and the Christian faith changed all that for believers, because if you believed in what Jesus said and did and represented, then you understood that salvation was open to everyone no matter who they might be. And if you believed salvation was open to everyone, then you also had to change your ideas about how you treated one another, about how you related to one another, and about how worth was determined in the individual.
For example, here in the Corinthian church were some top class wealthy citizens. But by their faith in Jesus Christ, there were also some who were very poor. In the Corinthian church there were slave owners. But by their faith in Jesus Christ, there were also some who were slaves. In the Corinthian church there were lots of men. But through there faith in Jesus Christ there were also women. And you have to remember this was long before the Emancipation Proclamation and the Women’s Suffrage movement. Further more there were people who were Jewish as well as Greek citizens of the Roman Empire who each would have believed in their own way that the other was heathenistic, backwards, primitive people.
These people were called to worship together and to share the Lord’s Supper together which they did regularly when they gathered together for worship much in the same way we do every Monday evening.
Can you understand how radical it must have been, how overwhelming it was for these people to put all of these differences aside and worship together? They just couldn’t do it. Even within their faith in Christ they found ways to set themselves apart, to make themselves appear better than others.
Do some of you remember the story of when Jesus celebrated the Lord’s Supper with his disciples before he was arrested and put on trial for sedition, how he began the evening washing the disciple’s feet? Servants and slaves did that sort of task. It was degrading and embarrassing. And Jesus told the disciples that anyone who wanted to be his follower had to be a servant like he was being. These folks in Corinth were having real trouble understanding how to come together on that level. They were use to gaining status, not losing it, and they were having a tough time letting go of that and coming together. What an awkward and uncomfortable meal the Lord’s Supper must have been.
So there was division and factions within the Corinthian church. To this situation Paul sends a message calling for reconciliation.
“No longer do we judge anyone by human standards..”
In other words, they can’t follow those same old class distinctions we always have.
He points out that at one time they tried to judge Jesus that way. Remember he was just the poor son of a carpenter. But Jesus was the Son of God. His resurrection has proven this. So anyone who wants to join with Christ, believes in Christ has to do away with the old way of thinking and has to think in a new way.
Paul points out a couple of things to the Corinthians. He reminds them God has sought people out. It was God who sought a way in which to have a relationship with humanity. It was God who through Jesus dealt with our sin. We as humans didn’t do that. In fact we as humans couldn’t do that. The saving grace of Jesus Christ is a gift from God.
Further more, God made no difference between us. “God was making all human beings his friends through Chris,” Paul writes. God did not follow class distinctions and determine that some were more worthy of having their sins put right than others.
“So we plead with you on Christ’s behalf: let God change you from enemies into God’s friends.” Paul writes. Now notice, Paul didn’t invite them to let God change them from God’s enemies into God’s friends. The invitation is for them to stop being enemies to one another.
Its not just about what we believe. Its about how we treat one another. And its not just about how we treat one another in here. Its also about how we engage with people out there. Paul says to them, “Christ has given us the task of making others our friends also.”
So what does this mean for us? How are we suppose to respond to this meal? That’s what Paul is talking about - how we come to the Lord’s Supper Together.
Well, in Luke’s record of Jesus’ life, Luke has recorded a story Jesus tells of another meal of reconciliation. It’s a story with three characters - a father, an older son, and a younger son. The younger son has said some pretty cruel and hateful things to his father, turned his back on his family, and left home. He gets himself in to some pretty desperate and despicable circumstances and finally decides it would be better to return home under the most deplorable of situations that living the hovel of a life he is living. So he begins to make his way back some to make some kind of peace with his father, not expecting much out of the reception or that he will be welcomed home with a warm reception. He is expecting many restrictions on his interaction with the family based upon his previous behavior.
Meanwhile, his father and older brother have remained at home.
The older brother is about being everything his younger brother is not. He is diligent about his responsibilities. He is about being the most responsible son a son can be. There is not an area in his work or family life that has gone neglected. And through all of this, the father waits for the younger son to come home. He looks down the road everyday with longing, wanting so desperately to see his son’s figure coming over the horizon. I bet it is with disbelief that finally one day what he has wanted for so long actually comes true and there is his young son coming home, coming back to where he belongs.
Any father who had been treated the way he had been treated had the right to wait on the porch with smug indignation, savoring every minute until the young boy should come to his feet, groveling for forgiveness.
But the father doesn’t do that. Like many parents, he is just so happy to be reconciled with his son that he runs out to meet him, to hug him and greet him.
So jubilant is he at his son’s return that he orders a feast to celebrate to be held in honor of his lost son who now is found.
However, everyone doesn’t respond this way. Over here is another son - the older brother who feels his brother has been dishonorable. He has behaved very badly and disgraced the family. And all this time, he-the older brother- has done all he can to uphold the reputation of the family name. He has demonstrated time and time again his devotion to his father and family values by living a committed life-style.
His father’s reception to his disgraceful younger brother he feels as a slap in the face for all he has worked for and stood for. And now, he is expected to come into the house and sit down with the family to this celebrative dinner for this younger brother he feels doesn’t deserve, doesn’t appreciate, and a dinner in which his participation in would be false and phony.
Now what an awkward and uncomfortable meal must this meal be?
*****
Sitting down at the table with other people is one of the most intimate things we can do. It is possible for us to eat together with other people we don’t know or like and manage to stay disconnected and separate from, if we really want to. We have gotten good at pretending about our feelings and beliefs, but I don’t think its all that easy to sit down to eat together when we disagree or feel really uncomfortable with those we are suppose to eat with, without awkwardness and tension for anyone at the table.
We have spoken tonight of a situation focused around a meal in which ideas and understanding about race relations plays a major role in the identity of every person at that table.
We have spoken of two meals, faith based in nature - one Jesus had with his disciples before giving himself up for crucifixion and one in which the new Christians began to celebrate together in Corinth - in which the very manner and ways we shape our identity and interact with one another is called into question. In short, people were called to embrace people outside of their comfort zone. They had to rethink what it meant to be a follower of Jesus.
We have also spoken of a meal of reconciliation where a family is reunited and made whole again, where relationships are healed, and where presuppositions about those relationships are challenged when a wayward son returns home to his wistful father and resentful brother.
Lets paint the story of a modern drama. And as in all our other stories, lets have the setting be a dinner, a banquet, a feast. As we look around the setting lets put our characters in. To be a dinner, there must be a host. Who is the host who has put this feast before us. Who is it who desires to feed us - to give us comfort by filling us up, to make us feel warm and welcome through the intimacy of fellowship?
God is our host, and through Jesus Christ he invites us to the table. Guess who’s coming to dinner? We are invited. Do we come? And in what manner do we come? Perhaps we come as younger prodigal son returning home.
Von Unruh tells a story of the time his family returned to church after a long absence:
“Twelve years ago my wife and I wandered into a church down the street from where we lived. Up to that point in time, I had never even considered attending that church. The only time I had ever heard the preacher of that church speak was at my sister’s baccalaureate. He was a strange-looking guy dressed in what looked like a white bathrobe who went around waving a can of salt in the air, now and then pouring out little mounds of salt onto the school stage and urging all the graduate senior to be the salt of the earth.
“But we were desperately hungry for some spiritual nourishment and actively looking for a new church home. Besides, it was the closest church to where we lived; so we went.
“There for the first time in my life, I discovered how famished I actually was. I, too had been demanding my inheritance and spending my future apart from God. And when the invitation to the Table was given, I discovered the holy importance of gathering in living faith around the one Table of God.
“There I watched little children hold hands and dance and skip their way toward the Table, wearing big smiles on their faces. I watched as old men hobbled on canes and women held on to each other’s arms. Still others depended on walkers as they made their way slowly but with great purpose and resolve toward that same Table. I watched young men and women in the prime of their lives bow in humility at that Table. I watched as a diverse congregation was melded into one body by a common meal of bread and wine that was being eaten.
“I had always taken that meal for granted, but no more. As I wiped tears from my eyes, I knew in that moment how much I wanted to be a Christian. I wanted desperately to share in the intimate holiness of that sacred meal. For as I watched the procession that morning as a spectator, I felt the most overwhelming sense of loneliness and emptiness I have ever experienced in my life. I didn’t even know those people who were congregating around that Table, and yet somehow I knew that they were my long-lost family. I longed to be one with them in a way I had never even dreamed was possible before. I wanted to be embraced and loved by them. I wanted to hold out my hands to Jesus, just as they had, and to receive in returned the blessed body of Christ. That’s the kind of holy union that occurs around banquet tables at which Christ is present. That is the holy gift of reconciliation that God shares with his children over supper.”
Maybe some of us have homecoming stories like this one. Maybe we can relate to that feeling of loss and loneliness. Perhaps that desire to be hugged by Jesus, the longing to become part of the family we can relate to.
But then there was another sibling, wasn’t there? Von Unruh paints a picture of this character in our drama as well:
“There is more to Jesus’ story than a single child gone amuck. There is a second, elder son who is just as unappreciative of his home as the younger sibling. He may have stayed home, but he too despised his father’s character. In the end, he was as prodigal as the younger son.
“One sad thing about our churches today is that there are as many prodigal elder children sitting within them as there are prodigal younger children who have left. The trouble is, they have yet to realize they too are prodigal, not realizing that God has given them their work in the church as signs of love to share with others and to help others mature in faith.
“ We begin to take for granted our relationship with our Father.”
In other words, we forget to look behind us at those who are looking through the windows contemplating coming in the door. We don’t realize or don’t want to think about how what we do in here helps someone out there to come in.
Or maybe, like the movie plot we began with this evening, we’re not sure we can sit down to dinner with them at all. Maybe the issue we have to over come is race or maybe it isn’t. Maybe its economic status, or maybe its life-style patterns. Or maybe its needs and desperate situations. Just like Corinthians, we’ve gotten good at dividing to a wide variety of groups and factions.
In our modern drama, there is the father the host, the younger prodigal son, and the elder prodigal son...but there are also those standing in the door behind us, waiting and wanting to come in.
Earlier we asked what Paul’s words to the Corinthians mean for us. What are we to make of the meal? How are we to respond?
Some of us need to come home. Some of us need to hear the invitation and come home to be reconciled with God.
Some of us are home in body, but need to come home in heart. Some of us need to begin to love one another. Some of us need to lose our divisions and factions. We need to be reconciled with our family, our brothers and sisters in Christ.
But we also need to remember Paul’s words when he says we are called to be ambassadors for Christ. When we recognize this particular element as defining who we are as Christians, it changes a lot about us. It changes our motivations about how we divide up our time. It changes the priorities in the activities we engage in. It calls us to consider not only how we interact with God, not only how we interact with one another, but how we interact with those who are outside our circle and those who are different from us.
In our drama, there is the younger son, the older brother, the father, and many more waiting hopefully at the door.
You may have heard - Easter is coming. We move closer to celebrating the one defining moment in our identity, to worshipping the one person who makes us who we are.
As we do, we must pause and consider Paul’s words and what they mean for how we live and who we claim to be.
As we approach Easter morning, guess who’s coming to dinner? In Jesus’ name, Amen.
