Ordinary 22

The Twenty – Second Sunday in Ordinary Time 2019 – Cycle C Sirach 3:17-18, 20, 28-29; Psalm 68; Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-24a; Luke 14:1, 7-14

Did you ever consider that Jesus was preoccupied with eating?

Why do I ask that?   Have you ever taken into account of how many meals Jesus partakes of that are recorded in the Gospels?  We always think about the Last Supper but what about all those other meals?   There are in the Gospel of Luke more references to eating, banquets and tables than in any other Gospel.

Gathering around a table with people for a meal is one of the key places Jesus used for teaching and for correcting but, and most importantly, for simply encountering people.

Consider the importance of eating together.  Does it not bind us more tightly as families and friends?  Isn’t there a certain equality experienced sitting around a common table?  Does not sharing a common meal over time allow us to be more our true selves?

If solidarity around a table is at the heart of Jesus’ ministry, consider the occasions that Jesus is recorded as dining.

Do you recall the wedding at Cana in Galilee?  And, how many parables does Jesus tell that deal with a wedding feast?  Remember the invitation to dinner offered by the tax collector Zacchaeus.  His dropping in unannounced with his disciples at the home of Martha of Bethany and her sister, Mary and brother, Lazarus.  A Sabbath meal with a Pharisee.  As you comb through the Gospels, most meals seem to be quite ordinary.

What is unusual, even disconcerting at times, is who Jesus eats with.

Publicly known sinners, political traitors, that is, tax collectors who often extorted more money from their own people to line their pockets, people who were self-righteous, friends – many of whom would fail him when it most counted, the sick, the power hungry, those with tendencies toward violence, observers and non-observers of the Jewish religious law and tradition, Gentiles, the emotionally crippled, the poor and the selfish, people controlled by money, the physically handicapped and disfigured, the lonely, and the spiritually dead.  And how many of these people were found among his own apostles and disciples?

What do you think about the kind of people Jesus dined with?

Can we understand why Jesus was known, as Matthew and Luke record, as a glutton and drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners?  You have to eat and drink with a lot of gluttons and drunks to obtain the reputation, don’t you?

Some of these meals were marked by people being suspicious of Jesus; people looking to entrap Jesus with his own words; questioning his judgement, as with the woman who washed his feet with her tears.

The theologian and liturgist, Nathan Mitchell writes: “It wasn’t simply that Jesus ate with objectionable people – but that he ate with anyone, indiscriminately”.  By eating with anyone regardless of social rank in society Jesus “recreated the world”.  He “blurred the distinctions between hosts and guests, need and plenty”, Jew and Gentile, women and men, saint and sinner, master and slave.  Instead of reinforcing society’s priorities, “Jesus subverted them, making the last first and the first last”.

Who sits at your family tables?  Who is invited into your home for a meal?  Who is not? Who do you allow yourself to be seen eating with in public?  Who do you not?

What is meal time like here at the Eucharist of Saint Mary’s Catholic Community? Who sits at our Eucharistic table? Who is invited into our spiritual home for this sacred meal?  Who is not? Who is made to feel unwelcome and uncomfortable among us? Who is feels unwanted? Who has left because of those unwelcome feelings?

All meals with Jesus, including this Eucharist, tell us about the Kingdom of God. And the Kingdom of God is characterized by an openness to all people so as to encounter them for who they are.

Jesus ate with objectionable people.  He ate with anyone indiscriminately.  Never forget that includes you and me.  Thus the Eucharist is still an opportunity where Jesus teaches us and corrects us and encounters us for who we are.