Latest / Pulpit to Pavement / 10 04 2026 Breaking Bread: At The Table With Jesus -Week 1 Who Gets a Seat
Transcript
- Deb: Today's scripture reading is from Luke 5, verses 27 to 32. The text will be on the screen, or you may follow along in your Bible. If you do not have a Bible, we would love to give you one as a gift from us. Just raise your hand and an usher will see that you get one. And I will tell you that on Thursday night when Carolyn and I were up here with the women cleaning, one of them saw. the Bibles and said, Can I have one of those? I said, yes you can. So we're so glad that we're able to provide a Bible to those who want one. So make sure if you want one, raise your hand and Larry will be more than happy to give you one. After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. Follow me, Jesus said to him, and Levi got up, left everything, and followed him. Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples. Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners? Jesus answered them. It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. The word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Kayla: Thank you, Deb. There's something about a table. Yes. Some of our best memories happen around them. Birthday celebrations, coffee with an old friend, meals with family where everybody's talking at once and someone inevitably spills something. But tables aren't just places where we eat. Tables are places where stereo stories are shared. Barriers are torn down and people can connect. And when you begin reading through the gospels, you discover that Jesus spent a surprising amount of time around a table. And what I want us to really take notice of is that Jesus doesn't just eat with his friends. Who remembers what lunch at your high school was like? Now, if you went to a high school that had a student body of 30, it might not have looked like this, but I went to a high school that had a student body of 1500 ish. And so when you went into the cafeteria and you scanned the room, you immediately identified the jock table. Right? The drama club table, the band table, the cool kids table, and the not so cool kids table. There was an unwritten, unspoken seating chart. Most of us knew which table we belonged at. And more importantly, we knew which table we didn't belong at. But what we find in the Gospels is that Jesus didn't just sit at one table. He ate with his friends, but he also ate with strangers, religious leaders, people everyone else called sinners. He fed hungry crowds. So some of Jesus' most powerful ministry didn't actually happen in synagogues or on mountainside. It happened at a table. And that's what we're going to explore over the next few weeks. In this series, we're calling Breaking Bread. We're quickly approaching the season where we will spend more time at a table. Yes? We have Thanksgiving coming up, Christmas dinners. So during the season, we're gonna pull up a chair, so to speak, and look at some of the meals Jesus shared because when Jesus sat down at a table, there was usually A shift. There was a disruption in the seating chart. Someone was welcomed that wouldn't otherwise be welcomed. Someone was challenged. Someone was forgiven. Someone was changed. And often someone's assumptions about God and about other people were turned completely upside down. Because for Jesus, the table was really never about the food, right? For Jesus, the table was about who was sitting around it and also who is missing from it. As I said last week, we live in a world that is increasingly divided, divided into different tables, much like high school. Sometimes when I look at the way People draw lines in the sand with other people. I just want to scream, what are we in high school again? We gravitate toward people who live like us, who think like us, who vote like us, and see the world like us. And we determine who belongs at our table and who doesn't. But then Jesus shows up. And Jesus has a habit of pulling up chairs for people that are uninvited. So throughout the series, we're going to ask you know, what happens when we sit at the table with Jesus? Who does he welcome? Who does he talk about? What does he challenge? And most importantly, what happens to us when we take our place at the table? Because I suspect we'll discover that Jesus isn't simply inviting us to come and eat. He is inviting us to be changed. And today we begin with. One of the most surprising dinner parties in the Gospels, a dinner hosted by a man who the most respected religious leaders would have nothing to do with. His name was Levi. We know him commonly as Matthew. When Jesus sits down for dinner in Luke chapter 5, there's no seating chart on the wall. But everyone in the room knows who is supposed to be. At the respectable religious table, and Jesus completely turns the table, so to speak. It starts out by saying Jesus went out and saw a tax collector named Levi. What everyone else saw was a tax collector. They saw his reputation, they saw his profession. Tax collectors were despised not simply because people dislike paying taxes. Matthew sat at a toll booth. And levied duty on merchandise that came through. And since tax rates were not crystal clear, it was easy and common for tax collectors to sort of set their own rate and pocket the difference. And we don't know if Matthew did this, but even if he was honest in his work, the Jews still saw him as defiled because he worked for the Gentiles. And so he represented betrayal and corruption. But when Jesus went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, Jesus didn't see a tax collector. He saw the person of Levi. We tend to reduce people to categories. We talked about this last week. Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, addicted, divorced, gay, straight, rich, poor, immigrant, hypocrites, church person, non-church person. Before long, we stopped seeing the person. And we start seeing the labels. But Jesus has an incredible ability to see beyond the worst thing people know about us. And this really should make us pause and ask, who have I stopped seeing as a person? Because I think I already know their story. Jesus said, follow me. And Levi got up, left everything, and followed him. You'll notice Jesus doesn't say, clean up your act and then follow me, right? Leave your profession and follow me. Prove that you're serious and maybe we'll talk. He simply says, follow me. Before Levi goes looking for Jesus, Jesus goes looking for Levi. And that tells us something about pervenient grace, the grace that comes before we realize we need it. But don't miss the other side of the story. Grace does change Levi. He does get up. He does leave his old life. And he follows Jesus. Jesus welcomes us as we are. But his invitation is never one that for us to remain exactly as we are. The table is not a reward for people who already have gotten everything right. The table is a place where sinners encounter the one who changes them from the inside out. It goes on to say, then Levi had a great banquet for Jesus at his house. So when Levi experiences this grace, he immediately makes room for someone else. You know, he doesn't enroll in religion or theology classes. He doesn't become an expert evangelist. He just simply throws a dinner. And he invites his friends and coworkers to join them. Now you might be thinking, I I thought we're supposed to invite people outside our circle. But Levi and his friends were on the outside of the circle. And you'll notice what Jesus does. He shows up. He comes to the dinner. He is willing to enter Levi's circle. The Pharisees and the teachers of the law had a problem with that. And they asked, why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners? So there's the tension. The greatest resistance comes from people who think they deserve their seat. They have earned it. The Pharisees and the teachers, they aren't criticizing Jesus for teaching sinners. He they're criticizing him for eating with them. Because sharing a meal implies relationship, acceptance, belonging. So their concern is essentially, Jesus, do you realize who you are associating with? And I think Jesus' underlying response is, Yeah, that's exactly why I'm sitting with them. Most Christians would never put a sign outside their church saying certain sinners aren't welcome here. But many churches do communicate that. Even unintentionally. through disapproving looks and stares, through rigid expectations and legalism, through assumptions that about, you know, what someone must change before they can belong to us. Have we ever confused being comfortable at Jesus table with owning Jesus table? I think we have, even if we don't want to admit it. Because once we've been sitting at the table for a while. We we forget how we got there. We were invited by grace too. And Jesus explains exactly who the table is for. He says, it is not the healthy who needs a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. So the scribes and the Pharisees saw Matthew and his friends as condemned sinners. But Jesus saw them as spiritually sick patients. He compares himself to a physician. You don't go to a physician because Nothing needs healing, right? Jesus welcomes sinners because sinners need healing. And the church isn't a trophy case displaying people who got it right, who got it all together. It's more like a waiting room filled with people who know they need the great physician. The danger comes when the patients start pretending like doctors. Or when a patient looks across the room and says, What are they doing here? And Jesus answers essentially, the same thing you're doing here. They need me. So who gets a seat? Levi gets a seat. His questionable friends get a seat. And remarkably, we get a seat. Not because we've earned one. Not because our sins are less severe than someone else's. Not because we've been Methodists for 50 plus years. Not because we know when to sit and to stand and to say amen. We get a seat. Because Jesus invited us. He saw the person of who we are and values us infinitely. Who are making room for? Maybe this empty chair represents someone who doesn't know yet that there's room for them. Someone who assumes that church isn't for people like them. Someone carrying a past they're ashamed of. Someone who has a lot of questions and doubts about faith. Someone who has been judged by Christians before. Someone whose life looks nothing like ours. So let's go back to that high school cafeteria for just a moment. Nobody had to put signs on the tables, right? Nobody had to hand you a seating chart when you walked through the door. You just knew. You knew where you belong. You knew where you didn't. But what do you think would happen if Jesus walked into your same cafeteria? I don't think Jesus would be nearly as interested in finding the right table as we are. I think Jesus would look around the room for the person who is sitting alone. For the person everyone else has decided was too different. The person whose reputation had already determined where they were allowed to sit. And then I think Jesus would pull up a chair for them. The religious people had already decided where Levi belonged, and it certainly wasn't at their table. But Jesus looked at the man everyone else had written off and said, take a seat. And before long Jesus was sitting at a table surrounded by Levi and all of his friends, the very people everyone else thought Jesus should avoid. And friends, that is the kingdom. Jesus is constantly messing with our seating charts. He keeps putting people together who aren't supposed to belong together. He keeps sitting with sinners and outsiders and people with messy stories, and thank God he does. Because eventually we have to realize something. We are not the cool kids deciding who gets to sit at Jesus' table. We are Levi. We're the ones Jesus looked at with all our baggage, all our failures, our sins and our mess, and said, Come, there's a place for you here. And once you've been given a seat, you did not earn. It's awfully hard to tell someone else they don't deserve. Who is one person you can make room for this week? And not necessarily invite them to church first. Because I think it's important to build relationship with somebody before you invite them to church. You know, invite them first to coffee or lunch or dinner, just a casual conversation. Because you'll notice Levi's first act after following Jesus wasn't getting people into the synagogue. It was inviting them to the table. And sometimes that's exactly where discipleship begins. Who among you is standing on the edge of the cafeteria wondering whether there is any place they belong? Who is waiting for someone to scoot over, pull out a chair and say, You can sit with me? Church, there should never be an unwritten seating chart in the kingdom of God. There shouldn't be a church people table and an everyone else table. There's just a table. And at the head of that table is Jesus. And maybe one of the most powerful, powerful things you can do for the kingdom is to stop guarding our tables and start pulling up more chairs. Because somewhere out there is somebody who has spent most of their life believing they don't belong. And maybe God is sending you to be the person who looks at them and says, Hey, there's a seat right here. Come sit with me at the table with Jesus. Grace is not about deciding who deserves a seat. It's remembering that none of us deserved ours and then making room. For someone else. Let us pray. Gracious Jesus, thank you for seeing us as you saw Levi. Not simply for what we have done, where we have failed, or the labels others have placed upon us, but as people you love and people you call. Thank you for making room for us at your table. Forgive us for the times we have forgotten that our seat is a gift of grace. Forgive us when we have drawn lines you never asked us to draw. When we have judged who belongs and who does not, or when we have failed to make room for someone who desperately needed to experience your love. Remind us that we are all people in need of the great physician. Heal what is broken within us. Change what needs to be changed. And having received your grace ourselves, teach us to extend that grace to others. Give us eyes to see the people others overlook, hearts willing to welcome them, and the courage to pull up another chair. And may our church always be a place where people can encounter Jesus, experience grace, find healing, and discover that there is room for them in the family of God. In the name of Jesus Christ, who still calls sinners. Welcomes strangers and makes room at the table, we pray. Amen.