Welcome Table

I peeked in a little while ago to see how the Welcome Table was going.  That's a once-a-month meal hosted by this congregation where we also give out toiletries and gift cards for a local grocery store.  The numbers seem to get larger each month, and it was a huge crowd tonight.

The crowd is a very mixed group.  There are  different ethnic groups.  There are young and old.  There are individuals and families.  There are those who appear to be long term homeless, and there are those who may have just recently fallen on some hard times. 

I only recently moved to the DC area.  Homes right around this church are hard to find for less than $500,000.  I routinely get requests for rent assistance from people paying hundreds a month for a room in someone else's apartment.  As I watched some of these folks eating in our Fellowship Hall this evening, it struck me that many of them are our version of Samaritans.

Many of us think of Samaritans only in the context of the "good" one who now refers to someone doing a good deed.  But in Jesus' day, Samaritans were looked down on.  They were "inferior" in every way possible: ethnically, religiously, racially.  That Jesus lifts up a Samaritan as an example of how to be a neighbor to others is nothing short of scandalous.

But that happens in Luke's gospel.  In John's gospel we meet a more "typical" Samaritan.  She is surprised that Jesus speaks to her, worthless Samaritan that she is.  We learn that she had had five husbands and is now living with a man outside marriage. And even Jesus affirms that Samaritans are a bit wanting in the religious department.  And yet, she comes much closer to understanding Jesus than the religious teacher Nicodemus does few chapters earlier.

We Presbyterians are quite proud of being an educated denomination.  We make much of the fact that we require our pastors to study Greek and Hebrew so they can handle Scripture in its original languages.  And in my personal experience, we liberal/progressive Presbyterians are often even more taken with the idea of being educated, smart, and figuring things out.

I don't really have any grand conclusions from all this.  These are just thoughts bouncing around in my head right now.  The undesirables and sometimes despised of our day are eating just down the hall in a place led by a "religious expert," namely me.  And religious experts were befuddled by Jesus while an undesirable and despised of his day come face to face with God's great I AM and find new hope.

Sometimes it's hard not to hear Jesus speaking to me, as he did to religious experts of his day, saying, "Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you."

Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.