Doesn’t it seem sometimes that the people who are NOT religious are a whole lot more fun than the people who are? At times the church suffers more at the hands of its friends than at the hands of its enemies. It suffers more from the rigidly righteous than from the blatantly irreligious. There are those who in their self-righteous zeal appoint themselves as monitors of other people’s morals and delight in pointing their fingers at the failings of everybody but themselves.
Let’s face it: there have been a good many unattractive religious people. In his book “America,” Alistair Cooke tells of a time in the early days of our country when there was a Native American king who would not renounce his traditional religion to embrace the Christianity of the conquistadors, even when they burned him at the stake for his obstinacy. As he felt the first fires lap his body, he was for the last time offered the rite of baptism. He refused, saying he feared that, if he accepted, he might “go to heaven and meet there only Christians.” (Alistair Cooke, AMERICA, New York: Alfred Knopf, 1874 p. 36.) I can sympathize with the king. I have known some pretty unattractive people who call themselves Christians...haven’t you? People whose obnoxious and self-righteous zeal turns you off.
I. JESUS HAD THE SAME PROBLEM. The Gospels give the impression that Jesus felt much more at home with the outcasts of the world: a motley group of tax-collectors, unorthodox religious folk, and women of easy virtue, than He did with the more pious God-fearing folk. His harshest words were usually reserved for the religious people, not the irreligious ones. And not only does Jesus not condemn these people whom the world condemned, He invited them to dinner!
I gather from the Gospels that dinner with Jesus was often a rather rowdy and raucous affair. His meals were constantly interrupted by people coming and going, people trying to show their love for him, or their contempt for him, people asking him questions and trying to pick an argument. It is a wonder the poor man ever got anything to eat, at all!
For one thing, the wrong kinds of people kept showing up for dinner. As William Willimon says: “One of the things which angered Jesus’ critics was his choice of dinner companions. The Gospels tell us that they were a motley crew: tax collectors, Pharisees, harlots, common fishermen, assorted women.” (SUNDAY DINNER, Nashville: The Upper Room, 1981, p.45) This upset the Pharisees no end. Now, let’s be fair to the Pharisees. They are the victims of “bad press” in the New Testament. Actually, they were good people. St. Paul was proud of the fact that he was a Pharisee. Jesus admonished His students to listen to the Pharisees. (Matthew 23:2) He said, in effect, “Don’t do as they do, do as they say.” They had a great idea: the commandments of God must be put into practice in one’s daily life. Nothing wrong with that. The problem is: they thought that they had done it perfectly! And they couldn’t stop criticizing others who, in their opinion, fell short.
Mark’s Gospel tells us that one of the first people to respond to Jesus’ preaching about the Kingdom was a man named Levi. Now, Levi’s job was that of tax collector...not a popular profession in the best of times, and these were not the best of times. Tax collectors were considered treasonous, for they gave their loyalty to a foreign occupying power. They often skimmed their profits off their neighbors. You can see why they were unappreciated! The Pharisees peered in the doorway and saw the kind of people with whom Jesus was eating and they were scandalized! “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners,” they asked. (Mark 2:16b) Now, “sinners” here does not necessarily mean persons guilty of moral turpitude. It also referred to those who did not keep all the ritual laws of the strict Pharisees. The same people who got angry at Jesus for the company He kept, would be the ones we have been reading about in the newspapers recently who are rioting in Jerusalem over the fact that some movie houses choose to stay open in the Holy City on Friday nights, the Eve of the Sabbath. (God save me from fundamentalists of whatever stripe, be they Christian, Jewish, or Muslim!) To eat a meal with someone in Biblical times meant to have communion (fellowship) with that person. Therefore, one could never be too careful with whom one ate. It was a sign of breaking down barriers, offering forgiveness and love.
II. When criticized for His dinner companions, Jesus said, “THOSE WHO ARE WELL HAVE NO NEED OF A PHYSICIAN, BUT THOSE WHO ARE SICK.” (Mark 2:17) I’ve always wondered whether there was not a touch of sarcasm in Jesus’ words. Perhaps the sickest of all are the people who imagine that they are well.
In Jesus’ day in the Holy Land a clear distinction was made between people who were called “the People of the Land” and the “People of the Law.” The people of the land were the common people who did not observe all the rules and regulations prescribed by Pharasaic piety. The super-strict, ultra-orthodox people were forbidden to have anything to do with these common people at all. They could not speak to them, travel with them, be seen in their company or do business with them. William Barclay says, “To marry a daughter to one of them was as bad as giving her over to a wild beast!” (Barclay, DAILY STUDY BIBLE, MARK, Phila: Westminster Press, 1956, p. 50)
In the eyes of the Pharisees, the man who committed adultery and the man who ate pork were in the same category. If we do not realize this, we may not understand the criticism which the hyper-orthodox leveled at Jesus’ students when they complained that they did not wash before their meals.(Mark 7:1-4) That seems to us to be a reasonable request...to wash before meals. How often have we parents sent our children back to wash their hands before eating.But this “washing” had nothing to do with cleanliness. In Jesus day, the person who did not wash his hands the prescribed number of times in a very special and complicated manner before eating was not considered “kosher,” and that neglect was considered as serious as theft or murder. Jesus’ guests at table no doubt included many whose sins were serious. But it also included many whose sins, from our standpoint, seem trivial.
“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” (v. 2:17) Now, that almost sounds as though Jesus had no use for good people. Not so. A clearer understanding might indicate that in the eyes of Jesus, there are no good people. As Pascal said, there are only two groups of people in the world: the righteous who know that they are sinners and the sinners who believe that they are righteous. The point is not that Jesus had no use for good people. But the point is that the one for whom Jesus can do nothing is the person who thinks himself or herself so good that nothing needs to be done! Theologian Karl Barth once wrote: “Christians who regard themselves as big and strong and rich and even dear children of God, Christians who refuse to sit with their Master at the table of publicans and sinners, are not Christians at all.” (Karl Barth, THE CHRISTIAN LIFE, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1981., p. 80) Strong words, but they are echoed by our Lord Himself. “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” Jesus tended to be inclusive, rather than exclusive. That is what got Him into trouble.
Some churches practice “closed communion.” That is, only those who are bona fide members of that particular church may partake. That has always appeared to me as sort of a spiritual snobbery. I am glad that for Father Wesley, the “Holy Communion was not a self-congratulatory meal for saints, but rather a life-changing meal for sinners.” (Willimon, op. cit., p.5.) Wesley spoke of the Lord’s Supper as not only a”confirming ordinance,” (bringing strength to those who are already saved,) but also a “converting ordinance,” conveying God’s grace to those who most need it. As we watch Billy Graham’s crusades on television, and see people streaming forth from their seats in large stadiums to come and accept Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour, we may not realize that such a practice is relatively new: dating from the revivalists of the late 19th century. In the 18th century, when Wesley preached and people responded with a desire to enter into the Christian life, he invited them forward to receive the Eucharist. After all, Wesley reasoned, who ate with Jesus? Was it not the sinners. Some were harlots, some were church leaders; some knew they were sinners, others did not. But they were all sinners, nevertheless, and Jesus invited them to dinner.
Down through the centuries, following the practices of Wesley, Methodists have practiced “open communion.” The only requirement is a willingness to admit one’s need of God’s grace. There is an old story of an old man who went to church every Sunday. At the moment of Communion he always felt acutely embarrassed. There was something about the whole service, especially the prayer of confession, that made him feel very unworthy. As he knelt at the altar to receive the bread, his hands always trembled as he reached out for it. He hesitated, but the minister, knowing his mood and his reservations, smiled at him and whispered, “Take it man, it’s for sinners.” It is! Thank God! John Wesley’s brother Charles put it into a hymn: “Come, Sinners, to the Gospel Feast; let every soul be Jesus’ guest; Ye need not one be left behind, For God hath bidden all mankind.” Number 102. “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners,” said Jesus. “That’s why, wherever you find Me, you will find them.”
III. THEN THERE WAS THAT PROBLEM ABOUT FASTING. The disciples of John the Baptist made a big deal about it; Jesus’ disciples did not. And that, too scandalized the Pharisees. With the stricter Jews of Jesus’ day, fasting was a regular practice. In the Jewish religion there is only one day in the year when there is a compulsory fast: Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. But the stricter Jews fasted on two days of every week. Mondays and Thursdays. Now, fasting is not as serious as it sounds for it lasted only from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. and after that normal food could be eaten. (Barclay, op cit., p. 52) To His critics, Jesus said simply: “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is still with them?” Only Mark adds: “As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast.” (v. 19b) The image of Christ as bridegroom, which is used often in the New Testament, (Matt. 25:1-13; John 3:28-30; Eph. 5:21-33; Rev. 19:9) denotes joy in the presence of the Lord, and celebration of the fact that the Kingdom had already come into their midst.
This whole incident of wining and dining with Jesus tells us that the characteristic Christian attitude toward life is supposed to be joy. That comes, I know, as a surprise to many people. It did to me, when I first learned of it. The Presbyterians have a relatively new “Worshipbook” which contains this sentence at the beginning of the service of Holy Communion: “Friends: This is the joyful feast of the people of God!”(Phila: Westminster Press, 1970, p. 34) One Presbyterian pastor wonders at this and says: “Feast! Joyful! What do people do at a feast? The only meals I ever eat which are as quiet as the Lord’s Supper are meals in which everyone is mad at everyone else; or meals I eat all alone!” (Roland P. Perdue, “A Messed Up Table,” Master Sermon Series, Cathedral Publishers, 1979, p. 95)
Sometimes we speak of “celebrating” the Holy Communion. But the atmosphere at most communion services I have attended or presided over is more funereal than celebrative. And, of course, if the good news of the Gospel be true, even our funerals ought to be celebrative! Joy does not depend upon one’s circumstances. What happens to us is not as significant as how we react to what happens to us. I remember seeing a banner in a church which expressed it well: “Alleluia Anyhow!” The Presbyterian pastor to whom I just referred says “I am not suggesting that each celebration of the Lord’s Supper be accompanied with conversation and laughter. I am just suggesting that it is not correct for each celebration of the Lord’s Supper to be accompanied by silence and apparent joyless gloom, either! This is, after all, a victory celebration, a banquet in which we toast the Lord who was knocked down but who got back up and walked into the sunrise of resurrection and, thus, into our dark nights and brighter tomorrows!” (Ibid., p. 96)
Of all the services of Holy Communion over which I have presided or attended, only one or two stand out in my memory. It is not the solemn and serious ones, but the ones that were distinguished by a certain degree of levity. When I was Associate Pastor in Sturgis many years ago, it was Christmas Eve, and the Senior Minister and I were presiding. Near the end of the service, the Senior Pastor whispered to me: “I think we are going to run out of elements. You count the cups, I’ll count the congregation.” I did. He said: “There are 33 people left to commune, how many communion cups do you have? I said “16.” He said, “Get some more grape juice.” I said, “Where?” He said, “That’s your problem.” I tried to excuse myself unobtrusively, and went to the church kitchen where the attendants had carefully prepared the cups and bread cubes. It was closed down tight. What to do? Then I remembered that I had a half-empty bottle of grape juice left from a communion which I had a couple of months previously. What had I done with it? Oh, yes, I put it in (of all places) my filing cabinet. (Probably filed under “J.” for juice, instead of “WS”for wine.) Sure enough, there it was. But the cap was stuck on tight. How to open it? I reached into my pocket and extracted a pair of fingernail clippers. With that device I succeeded in prying off the cap. “Poof!” it popped off, grazing my cheek, leaving a visible scar, and smoke poured out of the neck of the bottle. I then poured the stuff into some little cups (ignoring the instructions in the hymnal which say: “The pure, unfermented juice of the grape shall be used.” In an emergency, you have to go with what you’ve got!) I hurried back into the sanctuary. The pastor looked quizzically at me, as though I had just performed the miracle of the leaves and the fishes. And, as it turned out, the choir got the old juice, and they seem to have survived. On the way up the aisle, the pastor whispered, “Where did you get the juice? “I’ll tell you later,” I said. After the service, when I told him what happened, he doubled up with laughter. I said, a Scripture verse occurs to me. “What is it?” “You have saved the best wine until the last!” (John 2:10) And so it goes. Let us be serious at Communion time. But not TOO serious. Wining and dining with Jesus is supposed to be fun. Alleluia, anyhow!