For Sunday, March 6, 2016 – Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
One of his best known stories, the one about a father’s grand celebration over the return of a renegade son, comes by way of Jesus responding to a complaint. A growing number of the region’s outcasts has been congregating around him. He is as apt now to be found hanging out with tax collectors and a dappled array of sinners as to be discussing theology with scholars and scribes. These elite educated ones, who serve by keeping an eye on what is right and who is wrong, begin to complain and grumble against Jesus and his practices, making the worst accusation they can muster: “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” Need they say anything more?
They know the power of food, how it binds people together or tears us apart. To follow Jesus is to be part of a spiritual story that can be traced on a trail of crumbs, from the first bite of Eden’s fruit to harrowing times of famine and starvation to the awe of mysteriously multiplying loaves to the most shocking command of all: “Eat my body, drink my blood.” Look at the sharing of food in any family, church, neighborhood, nation, world, and you will see much more. Food is an emblem for who has power and who must beg, a sign of what we believe about sharing, hoarding, squandering or depriving one another of life. With whom will we eat today?
The runaway son, trapped in famine, is hired to feed a herd of pigs. Adding insult, the pigs eat better than he. If only he could be one of them, he thinks, one of the despised, eating what they eat, rather than starving for forgiveness and home. At the edge of complete catastrophe, where newness tends to break in, he finds his humility and humanity. Ready now to be in the lowest position, ready even to be punished, insulted, despised, he returns—and is welcomed with a joyful feast. Jesus knows what it costs to become bread for each other, to openly, deliberately, boldly, break barriers and extend the table. To disturb the peace is his way of making peace; to stand accused of eating with the despised—meaning every single one of us—his great joy.
