Lectionary readings
You may remember my friend SooJin, who visited here last May to witness the baptism of our daughter and her goddaughter Jihae. This past week SooJin walked her five-year old daughter Sxela to kindergarten. There are pictures of them walking to school and of Sxela sitting at her table, of the cubby where she places her backpack. There’s another photo that SooJin took last week, of Sxela in a pretty blue and white dress. It is this dress that my friend SooJin wore when she arrived in the US from Korea, adopted at the age of five after being taken from her mother 31 years ago. As she put it, she is so happy to pass on this dress to her daughter without passing on the trauma that this dress represented through much of her life. SooJin has been able to give to Sxela this beautiful dress without the horrible trauma that she once associated it with and I think it has to do with how tenderly and lovingly she cares for her daughter. Sxela knows that she is loved unconditionally by her mother and father, SooJin’s love for Sxela so palpable at every moment. It is this love that has brought healing to SooJin: as she cares for her daughter, she is caring for the child that she once was, a child who so needed to be loved and cared for in the way that SooJin cares for and loves Sxela. It’s a truism that we parent not only our children but also the vulnerable child that we once were and still are, the inner child.
I think that one of the reasons why we are still so enthralled with Jesus, even after two thousand years of hearing these stories, is that somehow Jesus doesn’t forget these truths, truths that many in his day and in ours tend to forget. Call it an exceptional intuition, or a divine gift: somehow Jesus remembers that all humans are born as extremely vulnerable creatures, that we remain very fragile beings despite all our efforts, and that our lives end in vulnerability and weakness. Jesus remembers what those in his day and you and I in ours try very hard to forget, what you and I work so very hard to avoid. So I imagine Jesus watching this scene at this banquet, of people jockeying for position around the table, of invited guests sizing themselves and each other up to figure out who’s where on the social pecking order, with a bit of bemusement and perhaps some sadness. Over and over he has been trying to get people to live into and live out the gospel, the good news, that God is on the side of the poor, the imprisoned, the blind and battered. Over and over he has shown through his storytelling and his own life that God’s table is one where the marginalized are brought into the center of social life. And why? Jesus is very clear: the good news to the poor and the marginalized is not charity, it is not the haves helping the have-nots, it’s not about the privileged deigning to help paternalistically those less fortunate. No, God’s banquet, where not just all but especially the outcast, the social pariahs, are invited and welcome is one where we learn that in caring for these we are actually caring for, being tender to, ourselves, whom we once were and whom we will certainly become if we aren’t there already.
Mind you, in this gospel lesson there is nothing wrong with what the Pharisee is doing. True, members of his sect have been tussling with Jesus over theological and legal matters in 1st century Judaism, but he has the presence of mind to invite Jesus to a dinner feast with other illustrious, well-respected members of the community. From what we read, he’s been nothing but gracious to Jesus, and the guests at the dinner aren’t really ill-tempered people either. I would venture to guess that most if not all of us would want to be just as well-mannered as those who are at this dinner with Jesus: wear appropriate clothing to the party, hold your wine glass and sip just so, know enough trivia to engage in entertaining small talk, greet hosts and fellow guests with just the proper demeanor. If you and I were hosting this party, you and I might worry about who sits where too, which muckety-muck would get along with which village elder. But there’s something that Jesus notices, something that he remembers, that this Pharisee and his guests, with all their good intentions, have forgotten somewhere along their lives as they worked their way up the social ladder. Somehow, as they gained greater stake in their social world, to become the leaders, the movers and shakers of their community, the responsible ones, the respectable ones, they forgot that they once started their lives in weakness and vulnerability, and that someday they will become once again weak and vulnerable.
“But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” It’s not, Jesus is saying, that the poor and the disabled are so very different creatures from the well-to do and the able bodied, that the Pharisee has more in common with his rich neighbor than the poor homeless person on the outskirts of town. No, Jesus is telling this host, and reminding you and me, we are never very far from those we consider the down and out, we are all a step away from being poor, crippled, lame and blind. Those of us who are getting on our years know this all the more, much more palpably: as our bodies weaken, as limbs and organs start failing us, as we become less “productive” economically, we seem to lose our social value in a society that rewards ableness, productivity, respectability, power. But health, power, status, wealth, Jesus reminds us, are all temporary way stations to the village that we all are heading toward: the village of the sick, the disabled, the poor, the outcast. That is our fate; this is the reality of our common humanity. And so when Jesus implores us to invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind, he’s reminding us that in feeding those who are already in that village, we feed our future selves, and we invite a new way of relating to each other where we feast together not in our shared respectability, but in our shared weakness and vulnerability.
For you see, sisters and brothers, it is in the weak places, the marginal places, the poor places, where God dwells, not just the geographic places, but those places in our hearts and souls that are weak, that are despised, that are disabled. God dwells there too. Roman Catholic theologian Jean Vanier discerned this reality of God’s dwelling when in 1964, he invited two men to live with him. Troubled by what he saw was the sending away of people with mental and intellectual disability into asylums where they were forgotten by society, Vanier invited Raphael Simi and Philippe Seux to leave this institution and to live with him and a Catholic priest in a small town in France. This communal residence was the founding of L’Arche, or the Ark, a place in which people with disabilities and those who assist them live in community, sharing life together, developing friendships as members attend to their changing needs. At L’Arche, people with disabilities, especially with those who are extremely vulnerable due to old age or multiple disabilities are lifted up and supported, all to “highlight the unique capacity of persons with disabilities to enrich relationships and to build communities where the values of compassion, inclusion and diversity are upheld and lived by each person.” L’Arche, Vanier reminds us, isn’t charity, and it isn’t benevolence, but a community that is a sign of shared humanity: as the disabled are given the same human dignity as the able-bodied, the table is set, not because of shared respectability, or wit, or cool, but in honoring each other’s fragilities, we set a table of tenderness that is really God’s approach to God’s world.
When we invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, to our tables, we invite our future, fragile selves, and in doing so we begin our journey to the village of vulnerability that is all our futures. But we do more than that. When we invite those already there into the center of our lives, we begin to build in our lives the house of love to replace the house of fear, the house of hospitality to replace the house of respectability. We begin the work of building God’s reign here, now, for God’s people—the poor, the disabled, those whom we will someday become—so that when we find ourselves entering that village, who will be greeting us but our brother Jesus? With table set, food and drink prepared, all of God’s children sitting there, he will say to you and me in his most tender voice, “Come, dinner is ready.”
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