DELIBERATELY DIVERSE | by the Rev. Terry Pierce
Deliberately Diverse represents the individual thoughts and opinions of a group of Taylor friends who almost never completely agree about anything but are gratified by the opportunity to stimulate deliberately diverse discussions in our beloved community. Today’s column represents the thoughts and opinions of the Rev. Terry Pierce, vicar of St. James’ Episcopal Church in Taylor, not the Taylor Press.
I grew up the youngest of six children. We were a combined family, I joined when I was about five.
Some of my most potent memories are about table manners. How we ate, as we learned to sit down each evening as a family of eight, was a matter of some importance. Don’t chew with your mouth open and don’t talk with your mouth full. Also, wait your turn, don’t talk when someone else is talking and say please.
In Luke 14, Jesus is going to the home of a community leader for dinner and he gives the host a lesson about “manners.”
Jesus says, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind.”
In Jesus’ world, everyone knew their place in relation to the people around them. Place determined who was invited to the table and who was invited to speak. The economy was based on reciprocity and reputation. The point of a banquet in a reciprocal society is repayment — I host you and you host me.
We still live with expectations of reciprocity. Read “Miss Manners” for a few weeks as she advises how to function in a world where the expected reciprocity doesn’t occur or doesn’t occur with the flourish and regality expected.
Jesus’ direction about manners is complicated.
When you give a banquet, invite the poor, crippled, lame and blind to sit at your table and eat with you. And, sometimes when we are sitting at table with new companions, it takes awhile for everyone to get on the same page about manners. Some will be chewing with their mouth open and others talking with their mouth full, and some may not have washed as thoroughly as we would like. Jesus did not say it was easy to love our neighbor when he told us that is what we are called to do.
Jesus invites us to learn a new set of table manners for a new economy of love. In that new economy, we will be called to make sure everyone is fed and sheltered before we assess blame for why they aren’t fed or sheltered. In that new economy of love, it will not be possible for an elderly man to be left sleeping in the rain in a doorway or for a family of five to live in a car because we will not accept that we don’t have the power to change the world.
