Neill Morgan
Sermon Delivered October 7, 2007
5The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 6The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. 7“Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? 8Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? 9Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? 10So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’”
A Place at the Table
“Come here at once and take your place at the table!”
That line, spoken to a slave, was a laugh line for Jesus. But, I couldn’t help noticing, nobody laughed when I read it just now. Somehow, this parable seems to have lost its humor between the time Jesus first told it and now. It’s not simply that stories of slavery aren’t funny. It’s that stories of owning a slave or being a slave don’t connect to our experience in the same way. When Jesus asks “Which one of you would say to your slave . . .” it is immediately obvious that this parable is aimed at different people who lived in a different time. This opening line does not give us anything we can take hold of.
For those of us who are not descendants of slaves, it’s hard to understand the visceral and violent reaction of the African American students in Jena, Louisiana. When told with the visual symbol of nooses hanging from a tree, “You have no place at this table,” it dredged up for those students the suffering of their ancestors. It reminded them of their grandparents’ grandparents who had no place at the table. It reminded them of their grandparents whose efforts to get a place at the table were fought with high pressure fire hoses and attack dogs. It reminded them of their parents who were the first generation to have a place at any table in the cafeteria of a racially integrated school. That table under the tree that seemed to the group of white students to be their hangout felt to the black students like another table that this generation was being told, “You have no place here.” If we take each group at their word, which we have no reason not to, the nooses on the tree were just part of a schoolyard territorial spat between one clique and another to the white students. But, for the African American students, that symbol of nooses hanging on the tree was loaded with the violence against generations of their ancestors. They hung there not just as symbols of territorial claim, but as symbols of the injustice that came with the message, “You have no place at this table.”
So, to understand what Jesus was saying with this parable requires that we enter a different world. In this different world, it is acceptable that some people own other people. As hard as it is to imagine for those of us who live in a nation that suffered so much to put an end to such a barbarous practice, the gospel asks us to imagine. Imagine what it would be like to own another person. In that world, you own one slave who works your fields and tends your animals. He does it because you own him. Either you paid money for him or somebody owed you money and gave you this slave as payment on a debt. It’s very likely that the debt he pays with his sacrificed freedom is not his own, but his father’s or grandfather’s. Most likely, he has been a slave since he was born, or at least, as long as he can remember.
So, this slave works for you because it is all he has ever known. He works in the field, and then he comes in the house at supper time, washes up, and works in the kitchen. When you and your family are fed in the dining room, only then will he go back to the kitchen, fix himself some supper, and sit down out of your sight and eat his own supper.
Just thinking about being part of such injustice makes me shiver, makes me want to go take a shower. But, this is the world in which Jesus and his disciples lived.
And, if you and I were among the first listeners of this parable, when Jesus asked, “Which one of you would say to your slave after he comes in from the fields where he has been plowing or tending your sheep, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’?” we would have laughed. We would have laughed at the absurdity of such a thing. A place at the table? For a slave? That’s a wild idea!
“No, of course not,” Jesus says. “You would tell him to serve you, then serve himself, right?”
And we can almost hear the disciples say, through their laughter, “Right! Of course! That’s the way the world works.”
And then, Jesus does a mischievous thing. He started out putting the question to us as the Master, the owner of the house and the slave, “Which of you would say to your slave . . .” but then he pulls a quick one on us.
“So you also, when you have done all that you are commanded . . .”
Voila! . . . suddenly, we’re the slave, not the Master.
I dare say, even if you are a teenager who feels like a slave because you have to load the dishwasher, none of us here is a slave to another human being. Though the institution of slavery unfortunately survives in the form of human trafficking of children and immigrants for sexual gratification, it is not a recognized legal part of our everyday life. We live as a free people.
But, no matter how free we are, this parable’s turn is haunting. It’s disturbing because when it becomes an analogy for the relationship between God and us, it hits home. No human being can rightfully own another, but God can and does. The One who created us, gifted us, and calls us has every right to expect our service. No matter how far removed we are from the master and slave relationship, this part makes sense. God is our creator and Master and we are God’s Creatures. We belong to God.
No matter how competent, faithful, and obedient we are in our lives and our ministry, we cannot demand a raise, or a place at God’s table. God does not owe us anything. When we live faithfully, “We have done only what we ought to have done.”
Jesus tells this parable in response to the disciples becoming overwhelmed by the demands of discipleship. When he tells the disciples what it looks like to live faithfully in community, he paints a picture of a community that takes care of its little ones, its literal children and its spiritual children, newcomers in the faith. It watches out for them lest they stumble. Disciples correct and reprove one another and then forgive each other all day long, seventy times seven times a day if needed.
That’s hard. That’s such a high bar, how can we ever reach it? “Increase our faith,” the disciples say. And Jesus says, “All you need is the faith of a mustard seed,” his “If you had” is the positive condition, “If you had and you do.”
With the faith you have, the faith of a mustard seed, you can move mountains, Jesus says in Matthew and Mark, and you can move a deep-rooted tree, he says in Luke, and give it a new home in salt water. In other words, he tells his disciples, “you have all the faith you need to do what God calls you to do.”
When Martin Luther King, Jr. first went to the Whitehouse to ask President Johnson to support the Voting Rights act, President Johnson told him, “It’s not going to happen during my presidency. We used up all our political capital passing the Civil Rights act. There’s no way I can pull together the support necessary to pass this Voting Rights legislation.” As many mistakes as we can see he made in retrospect, President Johnson understood politics. He knew what he could do and what he could not.
Martin Luther King, Jr. did not. He didn’t seem to care about what was politically feasible, he just knew what God was calling him to do, to speak out for justice, equality, and freedom for all people regardless of race. So, he kept doing that even when his goal was politically impossible.
Four months after President Johnson told Martin Luther King, Jr. that the Voting Rights legislation was impossible to pass, President Johnson signed it into law with the support of congress. What had happened between those times? Selma, Alabama. You’ve seen the footage of people marching across the bridge in Selma, being driven back with water cannons and attack dogs. Those images changed the nation, galvanized people on the side of racial justice and equal access to the ballot box, and forced a change of direction for both congress and the Whitehouse.
What is it in your life that is impossible? What is it that God is calling you to do, but the very thought of it seems as impossible as moving a mountain or uprooting a forty-foot tree and replanting it in the ocean?
Is it a strained relationship that needs the kind of grace Jesus described to the disciples, with the perfect balance of correction and forgiveness?
Is it speaking out in the face of injustice, when that may mean stepping on the toes of people you love, your very own family and friends?
Is it giving up an addiction to which you have become enslaved?
Or, is it a complete renegotiation of financial priorities, the kind of shift that Jesus called for in the rich ruler, away from the things that do not last and into the things that give us that deep joy of heaven’s treasure?
The way things are seem like the way they shall always be. When we pursue our own agenda, even our successes can taste like ash on our tongue, and our failures can be emotionally devastating.
The power of faith, even the faith of a mustard seed, is that when we discern what faithfulness looks like, and begin taking steps to become more faithful, we are not alone. No matter how impossible it may seem to reconcile that relationship, to speak out, to reorder our lives, to give up that addiction, God will not ultimately be defeated. Ever.
The table under the tree in Jena, Louisiana captured the attention of the nation and even the world because, I think, it speaks to the continuing divisions of our culture, our nation, and the world. There are tables everywhere that cannot be shared.
The tables full of food in Darfur from which the government officials eat freely are off limits to the starving children, the little ones and the weak ones. The tables where peace is negotiated are occupied by the Burma government, but fenced off to any representative of the people who will not give up her right to speak her mind and heart.
The tables of negotiation for peace in the Middle East are split between Israeli and Arab, between Jew, Muslim, and Christian. And in Iraq, between Sunni and Shia and Kurd. The tiny minority Christian population of Iraq is hardly even mentioned.
North Korea, Iran, Tibet, the list goes on and on. It is still against our human nature to look across a cultural divide and say to another, “Come here at once and take your place at the table.”
Today we defy human nature. We say “No” to those defensive instincts that seem harder to overcome than it would be to move a mountain or uproot and replant in the ocean a forty-foot tree.
Today, on World Communion Sunday, we affirm that Christ invites us all to this table. The very One to whom we belong, the Master who has every right to say to us, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’ is the very One who took the towel, washed the feet of his disciples, who took bread and blessed and broke it, the One who said, “Come to me all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take. Eat. Drink of this, all of you. All of you.”
“Come,” Jesus says, “and take your place at the table.”
Thanks be to God. Amen.