When I was a kid growing up, my father had a thing about washing your hands before dinner. Now that seems like a reasonable ask, many people have that rule. It’s a cleanliness rule, for good reason. So one evening, around the table, when my father saw how dirty my hands were, he got annoyed and told me to go into the bathroom to wash my hands, so I did what many children do when they’re told to go was their hands. I marched straight to the bathroom, closed the door, and let the water run for 30 seconds as I stood there waiting for what seemed like an appropriate amount of time to pull the wool over my father's eyes. But my father, was older and smarter, and he checked my hands again and seeing that I had done nothing, he got so angry, that, according to my sister, he threw the bowl of spaghetti up in the air. I do not remember that part, but I’ve learned over the years that each one of my sisters remembers things very differently. We have our own versions of our history.
But we agree he was a fanatic about hand washing. Which is probably why to this day I’ve never been good at it. The pendulum swung in the other direction.
That doesn’t mean I don’t have a line when it comes to table manners. And I discovered this on Friday when I was quite cranky. It was my first day without a fever, the dog needed a walk, I needed a little sun, so I met a friend at Rustic bakery. As I sat waiting for my friend to bring me my quiche, I could feel this couple next to me, with NY accents. Normally, when I feel well, I would engage, oh where you from, I’m NY too, etc. But as I said, I was cranky. I had to cancel my plans to go see my son Morgan for his birthday. I didn’t feel good, and out of the corner of my eye, I see that this person has taken her plate, provided by the bakery, not a to-go plate but a real plate and was encouraging her full-sized poodle to lick the crumbs from the plate.
And maybe because I was cranky, or maybe because they’re accents threw me back to a different time and place in my life, I turned and said: “That’s a little over the top don’t you think?” She said, “What letting him lick off the plate?” I said yea, it’s a public restaurant where many people will be eating off that same plate.” She said they wash it at 180 degrees, the germs, if there are any will be killed.” That’s when I realized I was too tired to really care anymore so I said ok. And then I felt bad, so I asked her where in NY she was from and we had a nice exchange.
Table manners. What we, each of us understand as acceptable and unacceptable will vary from home to home and table to table.
But this was not as true for the Israelites who had an entire system of cleanliness and un-cleanliness, purity and impurity. It was a system that was built around holiness. And it was not reserved for temple time, it was an entire system of living. The system lives in great detail in the book of Leviticus and some of it makes some sense, and some of it makes no sense, but it was built around the idea of how you lived in relationship to God.
And the holy was not just temple time, it was about how the house ran, who you interacted with in town, who came over, who you related to, touched, what you ate and drank, what time fo the month it was, etc. It was a way of life for an entire people and it was born out of a desire to be close to God.
And it lived in People, Spaces and Times as seen here in the picture….
Temple picture…Holy of holies…
And I mention all of this because it’s so important to understand the gravity of what's happening in this story. Its what we call the greatest hit story, so great it’s told in even greater detail in chapter 10 and then again in chapter 11. And there are several instances where Paul talks about circumcision and table manners.
In today’s stay here comes Peter and the Apostles and they’re messing it all up. But Peter does this brilliant thing, he meets them where they live by pointing back to God. This is God’s doing, he Says. God spoke to me in a dream essentially saying God created all things clean, and who am I to argue with God. Peter is putting to good use the scripture we heard a few weeks ago, in chap 5, we must obey God over human authority.
So here in lies the heart of the problem. Life is built around a search for holiness, then and maybe less so today, but it’s still at the heart of all of our desires. We just, like a people long before Christ, want to be close to God, to what is holy, what is pure and what is sacred. It’s not enough to just believe God is all around us, we have to practice living a life that embodies the values that we understand God is asking us to embrace. If we want to understand our lives we have to understand our lives in a relationship a God created a world. We must see ourselves as part of a greater whole. God calls us to a sense of connectedness. Not to be separate from the world, but to live in it as a part of it.
This table represents the very heart of how we should be living our lives out there. In communion with all people. Yes, even the ones we don’t like. Because this table belongs to God.
And over and over again especially in Luke and Acts, we are given this message profoundly clearly. Everyone is welcome around the table.
Last week Babette, who thanks to Andy’s market is arranging all these beautiful fresh flowers, said, I put some flowers on your table. I said, what table, she said your table. I said you mean the communion table? Every communion I start by saying this is God’s table, it is not yours and it is not mine.
And the reason that’s so important is that there should always be a higher standard, something greater than ourselves and our own understandings calling us into new ways of living.
Our job is to live out there what we practice here. So what is happening around our tables out there? How are our table manners? Are we requiring clean hands? Are we throwing spaghetti or letting dogs eat off plates?
Are we including everyone as we are called to do or are there moral absolutes, places we’ve drawn lines?
Do you have a line you draw in the sand? What are the rules around your table? Who is welcome around your table?
Table is a metaphor for a way of life. That is to say, who are you welcoming into the place that lives at the center of your being?
My neighbors at San Quentin? Anti-vaccers? Immigrants? Trump supporters? Trump Haters? Gay people? Transgender people? Evangelicals?
God’s table welcomes all people. If I’m living the way God is calling me to live, it means god’s table manner supersede my own. And that’s just not easy. It’s at times painful to let go of what has defined us, especially if what’s defined us has made us feel safe and secure and close to God.
Which is why this question became so important. Mary Donovan Turner asks…
"Does including the new or different mean that we are letting go of the values that have always defined us? Or do the values that define us compel us to to be more inclusive and open?”
That question has stayed with me all week. Some people hear that and it’s a slam dunk. I don’t hear it that way. I hear the question differently. because we must have some standards. Especially now, in a society where all standards seem to have fallen by the wayside in exchange for a whatever floats your boats, tell it like it is, forget manners altogether, and say whatever you like because we have freedom of speech? Where are the values that used to define us when we spoke so highly of the greater good?
That’s why I sympathize so greatly with the jews in this story. Their way of life is being threatened. Can you imagine, being a grandparent back then and your grandson who you raised as your own decides to start following Peter? So you son throws him out of the house because his new way of life threatens your livelihood, your families place within society, and you never see him again. Friends start to drop out of your life because they are practicing something new and unclean. People start taking sides and society suffers.
Sound familiar. this isn’t just a story about back then.
All religions preach inclusivity, not just Christians. We know this, scripture and the biblical story tells us this again and again in endless examples. It lives at the heart of the entire Bible. And we must ask ourselves the question- who is God calling on us to sit around the table with? Who are we refusing to eat with? For me, it’s the evangelicals who are preaching that LGBTQ people are unclean. Those are the people I want to throw the spaghetti at. Who is it for you?
Now, once you’ve got them in your mind's eye, listen. God is telling you there’s a higher value that defines us. And God is calling on us to eat with, to listen to, to be in dialogue, in a relationship, to love. I may or may not get there in this lifetime, but that’s what we sign up for when we call ourselves Christians like it or not. That doesn’t mean we have no voice, no convictions, no higher standards, and morals, it simply means, we are called to the table with them. And the table lives at the center of everything we believe as Christians, as people, as a nation, and as a world.