Chances are, if you grew up in the American South, then you likely found yourself gathered around someone’s table most Sundays.  Southerners are known for, among other things, such hospitality.

For me, it was my granmother’s handmade round oak dinning room table.  We’d squeeze in each week around plates of pot roast or fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, corn, and a homemade cake or pie with the occasional cobbler during the summer months.  Many, but certainly not all weeks, we’d have guests over and they, by and large, looked, acted and thought much like everyone else around the table.

There was one rule that seemed to govern the weekly rhythm of gathering: mind your manners.  Before the meal we were to wash our hands, place our napkins in our lap, and bow our heads as the prayer was said.  During the meal we were to chew with our mouths closed, not talk with our mouths full, not complain about the food, and watch what we said above all else.

We learned through example what passed as table talk and what didn’t. Here’s a brief list of permissible topics: Sunday’s sermon, church gossip, Alabama football, gardening, the weather, and the less controversial portions of our family history.

Here’s a brief list of forbidden topics: Politics.  

That’s it.  Because for a family of white southerners we were largely alike in every way except in our political opinions.  So politics were off the table.

This is, on the whole, not a bad way to gather, but this, despite serving as the formative example of table gathering for much of my life, is not hospitality.

Hospitality, in the Kingdom of God at least, does not attempt to dissolve our differences in the name of civility or good manners.  It freely acknowledges them, positions ourselves around them, both physically and ideologically, and when necessary challenges them.

There is no better example of this than a story found in Luke 7.  Here, Jesus is gathered at the table with the religious leaders of his day and a lone woman deemed a social outcast.  Jesus is accused of having bad manners by his host for failing to wash his hands, and for his apparent unawareness of who this woman is.  The religious leaders think it’s rather obvious.

Perhaps, instead, Jesus is simply following my grandmother’s rule of minding his manners and pretending the differences don’t exist.

Neither is the case.  Instead, Jesus turns the tables on the religious leaders by acknowledging not only the sinfulness of the woman, but that of the religious leaders as well.

It turns out the one thing they both have in common at the table is the only thing no one wants to talk about!

Here’s how Jesus demonstrates a fundamental principle for the church today: He has traded in his manners in order to practice better hospitality.  

Christians talk often of an abstract form of hospitality failing to realize that a notion of hospitality unwilling to challenge each other is really no hospitality at all because it signals we are only wanting to sit at table with an idealized version of our guests rather than our guests as they are.

Imagine if the baker had said to the gay couple, Let’s eat cake together.  Tell me more about why it is you want me to bake the cake, and let me tell you what my reservations are about baking such a cake and so on.

Imagine if the owner of the restaurant in Virginia had pulled up to the table with officials from the current administration and asked to talk about what’s going on and why her staff is having difficulty with the decisions being made around immigration and other policies.

Imagine if you found someone in your city or church with whom you disagreed and said, come over to the house this week, let’s eat and let’s better understand each other.

Forget for a moment whether or not a person or an establishment has the right to refuse service to an individual or entity.  What if those in the Kingdom of God gave up such a right in exchange for the opportunity to sit next to those with whom they disagree and talk over cake and champagne or fried chicken and a coke?  What if we saw *The Table* we gather around each week, the one where we pass the bread and cup in our churches, as practice for gathering around a table with others in our city?

Surely this is why hospitality and the table matter to Jesus.  Surely this is why the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God is more than just an abstract idea to be rehearsed in religious gatherings each week.  Surely they matter for times such as these.

This week, may we practice better hospitality, may we lean into the things with which we disagree, and may we come to see it as a form of resistance against those in our world who would try to make us mind our manners.