[Opening exercise: Turn to your neighbor and share a story when you most felt the stranger, the “odd one out,” sitting at a table to which you were not welcome and did not belong.]

W e’ve been focusing since September on our Homecoming theme, “Finding Our Place at the Table.” Listening together to these stories from the Gospel of Luke, we’ve noticed the way in which Jesus welcomes all sorts of people to the table with him, without distinction or exception– every one has a place at the table! But once they are at the table, Jesus challenges them to live their lives in a new way, sometimes offending both guest and host in the process. It’s appropriate that so much of this instruction takes place at the table because in the ancient world, even more so than today, the table was where social distinctions were established and reinforced. In the homes of the rich, the dinning area was not private, but open to the public, so people could see who you were dinning with, giving you the opportunity to enhance your social status by inviting people that would bring prestige to your household. (Well, maybe things haven’t changed all that much after all. Isn’t that why they have photographers at society parties? So everyone can see who the host invited?)

     Did you have trouble remember a story when you were the stranger at the table? I thought of the cafeteria tables when I was in junior high. Anyone else remember what that was like? Kids not only sat in their little friendship cliques, based mostly on what elementary school you attended, but even more, kids divided by race and social class. We had a pretty diverse school racially where I grew up, and though there were seldom tensions that caused serious problems, but there wasn’t much mixing at the cafeteria tables. The white kids sat together. The black kids sat together. Even the Jewish kids kind of sat together, though I often sat with them because my best friend in junior high was Jewish. But I sure remember that first day of school when I wasn’t sure which table I could sit at, which table would welcome me.

     Some people live their whole lives that way. Nameless, faceless people who are never at the table, living their entire lives invisible to most of the people they see. So Jesus tells the story of Lazarus, who was certainly one of those people. Only here’s the thing: Jesus gives Lazarus a name. He doesn’t begin the story by saying, “There was a certain poor man who lived by the gate of a rich man named Dives.” No, he begins “There was a rich man who dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at this gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores.”

     Names conferred status in the ancient world, and it immediately told Jesus’ listeners who had status in the story and who did not. In fact, this is the only one of Jesus’ parables in which any of the characters are named. And the one named is not the rich man but Lazarus, the one with nothing. Ironically, Christian tradition has done what Jesus did not, by referring to the rich man as “Dives.” Dives, in fact, is not a name, but simply Latin for “rich man.” In the parable, only poor Lazarus has a name, and its meaning is significant. Lazarus means “God saves.” We know where Jesus’— and God’s— sympathies are from the very beginning.

S ometimes we read a lot in to this story that is not really there. We aren’t told much about the rich man or Lazarus except their economic station. We are not told that Lazarus was righteous or that the rich man was evil. Only that the rich man lived in sumptuous wealth, and poor Lazarus was so poor, hungry and destitute that he could not even chase away the dogs that came to lick his sores. The problem is, Lazarus gets more attention from the dogs than from the rich man.

     The parable names that divide as a fixed, wide chasm, where no one can cross from one side to the other. Or, to put it more accurately in the context of the parable, the time to cross the chasm is now, while you’ve still got a chance.

     Ashley sent me an article from The Washington Post this week about Anthony Fauci, a doctor at NIH who is being honored for his research in infectious diseases, especially AIDS and HIV. Dr. Fauci was one of the first researches who focused their work on AIDS, at a time when gay men were dying by the thousands and no one knew what to do about it, and worse, the federal government didn’t seem to care. The group ACT UP, led by the writer and activist Larry Kramer, began staging protests outside his office, angrily demanding that he do more. The tactics, The Post reported, were attention-getting: smoke bombs, staged “die-ins,” chalk bodies drawn on sidewalks. But Dr. Fauci actually read the leaflets that others were throwing away. And when police officers moved to arrest the protesters, Fauci stopped them and invited a small group to his office to talk. “He opened the door for us and let us in, and I called him a hero for that,” Kramer said later. “He let my people become members of his committees and boards, and he welcomed us at the table. You have to understand that he got a lot of flak for that.”

     Flak indeed. It could be a summary of Jesus’ entire ministry. He opened the door and welcomed people to the table, and got a lot of flak for it. For Dr. Fauci, the protestors outside his door moved from a nameless angry crowd to people with names who were grieving over the loss of those they had loved. Things change when you know someone’s name. Perhaps a place to begin for each of us is where the parable begins: with names. We work hard on Sunday morning to call each other by name, which is why we ask everyone, even those who are worshiping with us for the first time, to wear name tags. But that is even more important when we are serving with those outside our congregation, whether in Open Table or WIN, it’s just more difficult. You have a very special opportunity to do just that this coming Saturday, when the Pilgrimage is holding its Pilgrimage Service Day. Not only will you have an opportunity to serve, but at the end of the day you will hear from a panel of homeless and formerly homeless persons– not nameless, faceless poor people, but persons who you will get to know by name. Of all the things that the Pilgrimage does with the dozens of church groups that stay in the Pilgrimage each year, giving them an opportunity to know a handful of homeless people by name is, in my mind, the most important.

     One of the names we have come to know through the National Coalition for the Homeless is David Harris, who has been a frequent speaker with Pilgrimage groups and has become the Pilgrimage’s Poet in Residence, and often leads poetry writing workshops for Pilgrimage groups. Many of David’s poems have been published in Street Sense, a newspaper created and sold by homeless vendors. Last month Street Sense published a book of their poetry, and several are by David. I’d like to read two of them. The first speaks of the gap. The second speaks of the gap overcome.

      The Least Among Us

      Look at the faces

      of the least among us-

      three bright-eyed girls

      skipping rope behind a chain link fence

      on a field sown

      with rusted needles

      and shards of bottles,

      a young mother

      kneeling with a scrub brush

      washing away

      years of grime,

      a stooped old man

      trudging a grocery cart

      bearing all the artifacts

      of a full and turbulent life,

      swollen feet

      bursting out of rotting shoes.

      Look at the faces

      of all these

      mothers, sons, wives, grandfathers.

      Do not offer

      scraps of moldy bread

      or threadbare garments

      worn by six generations of bodies;

      do not offer

      pockets full of spare change

      or tears

      of leftover pity.

      Look at the faces

      of the least among us,

      see how they mirror yours-

      you who are

      a sister, daughter, cousin, son,

      friend

      to someone

      just like those

      who wander deserts,

      looking for

      a drop

      to quench their thirst.

      Panim el Panim (Face to Face)

      this moment

                is so priceless and strange;

                      you sit before me, your bright face

                      shining at me

                      as you

                            visit the desert

                            where i live;

      you sit

                lost in my words of sorrow and loss

                      tears swim behind your eyes

      behind your still, pale face, i imagine

                the great stone house,

                perched on a hilltop

                      where you must live;

                      your searching questions to me

                teach me of the distance

                      between your home and mine.

      but space evaporates

                as we sit together, face to face,

                exchanging hope.

      after our communion

                you sleep in peace

                laced with newfound restlessness

                i return to my desert

                      which you’ve seen for the first time.

      As later days unfold

                you march

                      through the deserts and jungles

                      of your hometown,

                      seeing through new eyes,

                      aware and unafraid.

[Closing exercise: Using the index card provided, identify one “nameless” person you encounter during the week, and vow this week to learn that person’s name– and to invite them to learn your own.]                                   ✞

© 2007 Jeffrey K. Krehbiel