Have you ever been the ‘rowdy table’ at a wedding reception?
It was obvious early on in the reception that we were the rowdy table. It was a small venue and crowd, maybe 80 people. We were situated in the corner, perhaps in the hope that our presumed loudness and craziness would not be so noticeable. Unfortunately, it had the reverse effect. The two corner walls amplified the laughter and lively conversations as effectively as if they had put a microphone in the middle of our table. We were respectful – quiet when the toasts were made, attentive to the meal prayer and words of welcome from the father of the bride. We even held it together when the bride and groom both spoke to the assembled crowd. But the rest of the night, our table was “the place to be” even though we were the folks who had the least social status in the room. With the exception of me, everyone else was still in college or grad school at UMSL, – not exactly the Ivy League people of the world.
What was different at our table that night was not that we didn’t care about our noise level – we did. But we weren’t ‘observing ourselves interacting.’ We were just enjoying each other’s conversation, not trying to one up each other with stories or impressing each other with our exploits. There were serious conversations. Words of consolation spoken and received. Laughter at stories we told about ourselves. Explorations about where life might be taking people in terms of service and giving of themselves. More laughter at bad jokes. (those would have been mine mostly) And, when people commented that we were ‘certainly having fun’ the universal response was: “Pull up a chair and join us.” Some did. Others were aghast at the thought.
But here is what I think was going on at that table and how it ties into today’s readings. There is a freedom that happens when you are simply present to the moment and the people around you. When ‘you’ are not the focus of the evening, but what happens between you and among you, then you know a joy that is spontaneous and enthusiastic and freeing, and you will always be the life of the party, you will always be the rowdy table.
THIS is what Jesus notices at that meal he was attending. We are told that the people were ‘Watching him closely.” So, he is watching them back. And here is what he notices. People were SOOO caught up in the Honor game of his day, so caught up in having to have places of honor and sit with the important people and make sure that they didn’t say or do anything that would be embarrassing that they could not be themselves. This preoccupation with honor breaks up THE BANQUET that God always wants to provide. God is always inviting us to a sacred meal where we will know joy and peace and love. But the false humility of being important, the “honor game” interrupts our ability to enter the banquet.
So Jesus interrupts the interruption. Trying to get them to think as he does, as a servant, putting other’s needs before one’s own, he says: “Take the lowest spot.” Put aside that preoccupation with “being somebody, or being noticed or being important,” and just enjoy the banquet. When you are free just to be yourself and be present to the moment, you will laugh loudest and longest and hardest anyway. And to make sure his audience ‘gets’ it, he goes a step further. “Stop keeping score of who is in or out. Invite people into your world who can’t pay you back, who can’t improve your ‘social status’ – but folks who could probably teach you a lot about life and dependence and reliance on others that is a part of a healthy spiritual life – the poor and blind and cripples and lame.”
Whether it will be a while before you are part of a wedding banquet, or now that we are in STL wedding weather season and you have many invitations on the horizon, Jesus bids us to learn what it is to be a part of the ‘rowdy table’. Enter this week into EVERY CONVERSATION and EVERY ENCOUNTER THAT comes before you. Don’t be looking over the shoulder of the people at the school pick up lanes. Don’t worry about what anyone might think about who you are talking to and what about. Rather, enter into the depth of the reality of each moment, each gift, each person. Be present to each person, each gift encounter that God is putting into your life this week. Enter into the banquet that God is always throwing for each of us – here at this table, here in our community, here in our lives. And who knows, if you do that, you might be surprised. You might just be the ROWDY table that everyone else wants to be a part of…