Paul Walker, “This Fellow Welcomes Sinners”

It’s just a short sentence, but it contains all of the gospel. “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” And, the sentence is a really a complaint. The religious types notice that, as our Luke passage tells us, that “all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus.” But not only does Jesus preach to them, he also welcomes them and eats with them. As I just said, the gospel is packed into the 1) welcome, the 2) sinners, and the 3) eating. So, let’s unpack it, shall we?

     This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them. Welcome. I mean, how important is welcome? Who doesn’t long to feel welcomed? That’s why when you invite people to your home, you should always be at the door – or even just outside the door – to welcome them. You actually say, “Welcome! So glad you are here!” And you give them a smile and a hug or a handshake.

     You usher them in and take their coat and hand them a drink and you sit them down and ask them about their day. You realize that it took some effort for them to come to you and you understand that they are carrying with them worries and burdens and woes. You want them to be able to leave those woes in the closet with their coat. You want to make them feel like they are walking into the Theme Song from Cheers: “Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name and they’re always glad you came.”

     This may sound like an instruction on manners. And manners are important. I loved a father’s instruction to his middle school son last Saturday at a UVA tailgate when the boy was shaking my hand. He said, “Give him 7 – 5 fingers and 2 eyes.” A firm handshake and steady eye contact. His son was looking at the fried chicken instead, which, of course is entirely forgivable, and one could easily argue much more important than shaking the hand of a minister on a Saturday morning.

     Manners are important but manners mean absolutely nothing if they are not rooted in deep care and concern for the other person – which is at the very heart of welcome. That is why it is SO important that we hear that Jesus welcomed people. And moreover, He welcomed the people that the religious types actively shunned – the “sinners.”

     This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them. So, let’s move on to the sinners. Now just sit tight with me here. There are 2 unhelpful strains of teaching about sin in the church. Maybe you grew up in a more fundy or conservative branch of the church that hammered on your worthlessness as a sinner.

     You endured sermons like the one in the great 1995 English Comedy “Cold Comfort Farm” in which Ian McKellen plays a fire and brimstone preacher who begins his sermon with “Ye miserable crawling worms. Have ye come, old and young, matrons and virgins, if there be any virgins amongst you, which is not likely, the world being in the wicked state that it is. Have ye come to hear me tell you of the great, crimson, licking flames of hell fire? Aye!’

     If you come from that background, you are likely to wince when called a sinner. But the other extreme is the more liberal protestant side of the church. You wince for different reasons. One of our young seminarians was doing an internship this summer at a church and she preached a typical Christ Church kind of sermon about sin and grace.  After the sermon, her support commitment, sidled up to her at coffee hour and said, “Um…well, we don’t really talk about…um…sin here. Ok, dearie? After all, we are Episcopalians and talking about that is in bad taste. Besides, we’re all very good people.”

     So, one extreme or the other does not help when talking about sinners. Maybe we can all find some common ground and rally around Britney Spears when she sang, “Oops. I did it again.” Who can’t say “oops, I did it again?” If Britney is too low brow for you, how about the Thomas Cranmer confession of sin that we say each Sunday in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer?

     We confess to God those things that “we have done” as well as those things “we have left undone.” Can anyone ever not relate to that prayer. Well, that’s what we mean by “sinner.” And those are the people whom Jesus welcomes. And if you are following me here, that means that Jesus welcomes you and me, the sinner.

     And our own Dave Zahl tells us why understanding ourselves in this way is a good thing in his explanation for writing his new book called “Low Anthropology”

     “Here’s the thing: by editing out the less savory stuff about our humanity, we also snuff out solidarity, empathy, and vulnerability. We snuff out love! Humor too. All of a sudden we think we’re the only one with problems. The only one barely hanging on. The only one who doesn’t belong. Thank God the truth of who we are is more comprehensive.”  And speaking of welcome, every single one of you is invited to his book launch at The Woolen Mills on Tuesday! See your bulletin for details.

     This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them. Now onto eating. Welcome is important, but eating is essential. Eating occupies everyone all the time. We love to talk about eating. And not gourmet eating. How doesn’t have their favorite go to order at Bodos? Chances are someone has asked you what that order is. (In my 30’s it was pastrami and swiss with sprouts, mayo and horseradish on sesame. Now in my late 50’s it’s a Cleo Salad. It used to be with chicken, but my 24 year old daughter won’t let me eat any non-local meat. My life is very sad now.)

     At the most basic level, we love to eat because food tastes good! Taste is crucial. And there is a reason that the psalmist says “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” Think about taste. You have to get right up close to taste. You can see, hear, smell, and if you are pushing something away at arm’s length, even touch from distance. Not so with taste. Maybe that is why the scripture today says that sinners were coming near to Jesus. And one more thing about taste. Everyone can taste. Not everyone can see or hear or talk or walk. Everyone everywhere can taste – rich and poor, old and young, matrons and virgins! Taste is for everyone.

     The point here is that Jesus, when He sits down to eat with the normal people, is saying God is for everyone. Jesus is for everyone. Come up close, all of you. His actual words are “I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again.”

     This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.  It is really in the eating that the gospel resides. Eating is so important, that after His Last Supper, Jesus surrendered Himself to be broken on the cross for sinners everywhere – so that we all could come near to God. Eating is so important that Jesus made sure we all eat together, every week, in His name as we remember His sacrifice for our sake.

     You are all welcome, as you kneel knee by knee next to your fellow sinner, hands open, mouth open, as you take inside yourself, into your most inward and secret parts, the body of Christ, broken for you. Eat this in remembrance that Christ died for you and feed on Him in your heart, by faith, with thanksgiving.

     Amen.