September 21, 2001
© 2001 Grant M. Gallup
Proverbs 3:1-6 Trust in the Lord with all your heart
Psalm 119:33-40 Legem pone, Teach me the way of your statutes
2 Timothy 3:14-17 The sacred writings are able to instruct you in liberation
Matthew 9:9-13 I have come to call not the righteous, but sinners
During the first few years that I spent in Managua as liaison officer for the diocese of Chicago, I sent back to the States every couple of weeks an encyclical (round robin) letter which eventually ran into thousands of pages. It was called "Managua Saga", a pretentious name for a salamagundi of news, commentary, gossip, Biblical reflection, homilies, translations and (surprising to some) recipes, menus, and shopping lists. For I also reported on the "Canasta Basica", the basic food basket of the table of hospitality at Casa Ave Maria, the name of the various houses that I've lived in here, none of them far from the Embassy of Gringolandia. Some folks were delighted and others dismayed by the prolix content of Managua Saga, wherein I was forthright about life and love in this besieged city. Some thought my theology far out, my politics provocative, and some even dared to suggest I give less space to the topics of food and feasting, of mealtimes and menus.
In defense of my theological hot sauce and our Sandinista arroz y frijoles, I called to witness the patron saint of this day, Matthew--blessed Levi--who is still called conservatively both Apostle and Evangelist, 'though it probably took more than one person to compose the character. At any rate, both the Evangelist and the Apostle were also interested in food, in menus, meals, and especially in hospitality. Early on, the diet of John the Immerser is given in Matthew's gospel, and Jesus' refusal to turn stones into bread is told. Hunger and thirst are specially blessed when they are appetites for justice, and table salt is prescribed to add savour to life. It is fasting, not feasting, which is to be kept secret and done in solitude, and not fun and festivitiy, in Matthew's view.
The Reign of God is about much more than food and clothing, but the Heavenly Home Maker promises all of them if we set our hearts on justice doing. There are place-cards saved for all outsiders at the Inaugural Party of the Reign of God. And best of all, the first real sit-down dinner in Matthew's evangel is at his own house, at his own table, where he was Jesus' neighbor in the town of Capernaum, just down the street from the Tax Office where Matthew had formerly sat, in the collect for his day, "in receipt of custom."
Point number one to remember in this homily is that when Jesus walked past Matthew's desk that day and said to him, "Follow me" that what in fact happened was that it was Jesus who followed Matthew home instead, to his house for supper. Jesus went to the taxman's table, furnished with its disreputable guests--a hustler's cronies and connections. Tax farmers were the people of the puppet government, who had sold out to the Empire, helping Herod Antipas to skim off what they could, handling every day the hated coinage with the image of Caesar proclaimed as a god. Theologically, Jesus was identified with the Pharisees, and some of his fellow Movement peple--patriots--objected to his disciples that their rabbi had fellowship with dropouts and deadbeats, trimmers and scam artists. "Alumni" of the church, we might say, those who "used to be Episcopalians", as so many have told me, or "used to be" some other churchy thing, but it got to be too hard, or too boring (I understand!) or too irrelevant to how they made a living, scrabbled for survival on the edge of propriety or beyond the pale of decency, far from the Sunday school or its picnic grounds. They were not possessed, they were not demoniacs, they were not heathens, they were not even like the criminal on the cross, who won heaven one Friday afternoon. They were instead bourgeoisie and businesslike in their betrayal of the summum bonum, and they were denominated by the technical name of "sinners." And Jesus followed one of them home.
All in order that at the last they might follow him "withersoever he went." The foxes had dens, the birds of the air had nests, but the truly Human One had nowhere to lay down his sweet head. There is no reliable information as to where Matthew ultimately went with his followership of Jesus, but Persia has been mentioned, and it is said that his relics are in Salerno, in Italy, a long way from the desk at the customs house in Galilee.
The Pharisees, whose theological heads were not far from where Jesus' own head was, could not bring themselves to sit down with his glad and generous heart in the company of "sinners", sickos, schismatics and subversives. But Jesus said it was the sickos who needed the doctoring of a dinner date with him. Hospitality becomes in the New Testament the best medicine in the cabinet, and by the time the Revelation is fleshed out as Revolution, the inaugural banquets of Messiah would be seen as pig-outs with real crown roasts of pork on the table, much to Simon Pter's surprise upon peeking under the sheet that was let down from heaven. All the outcasts of Empire would be seated on thrones, like the World Court at the Hague, judging the conduct of nations, and turning the world upside down.
Did Jesus win them all? All the tax farmers, that day at Levi's table, before Jesus changed his name to Matthew, for he had seen him as "a gift from God." They were all pretty well off folks, we know, these tax farmers. Did they all abandon their junk bond morality of an evening? Probably not, but they were welcome anyway at Matt's dinner table, for he knew at once that following Jesus did not mean giving up his friends, those unrepentant and unreconstructed cronies. They had all been compromised by their investments, by shady deals, and probably even serving at their meals some non-union grapes, some Starbucks coffee, perhaps even some veal from caged calves or some rum from Cuba. Eventually, we know, Levi changed his ways, his name, his job, his life trajectory, and would be Jesus'dinner guest at the last evening in the Upper Room, in the city of the Great King.
The apostolate of hospitality: Jesus immediately accepts it, first time in Matthew's house perhaps, and maybe this is where the Lord Jesus himself learned how to be the host at dinner, who is "strong, loving, and wise", as Robert Hovde describes the style of the president of the eucharist. He says that no one ought to preside at eucharist who has no experience presiding at an ordinary table of hospitality, or who has never thrown a party for friends, or who has no manners for festivals and frolics. Jesus at once sees the connection of "hospitality" and "hospital." Why do you eat with such people? he was asked, why socialize with reprobates? "Because they need therapy" (so the Greek says) -- "because they need healing." They need the medicine marked "Mercy", they need a foretaste now of the coming re-assignment of seats, the shuffling of the courses and the guest list, and there's no time like right now to start nibbling at the hors d'oeurves and sipping the cocktails of the kingdom. Heaven is an acquired taste, we are told by venerable pilgrims to that land. We learn it over here on this side of Paradise, along with tasting the soup and salad of friends and family, the connections of the eucharistic buffets of ordinary life. The fast food of hell is always carry-out and eaten alone after it's gone cold in the styrofoam. Jesus quotes the prophet Amos or pretty close tries to, who heard God say, "I hate and despise the kind of parties that are solemn festivals of sacrifice without mercy, chant without charity, cacaphonus music without compassion. Give me a tumbler of water from the stream of justice, and a torrent of integrity bubbling out your baptismal font."
So the second point of the homily is to keep up the connections, make more synapses, use them all to jump to liberation. The author of Timothy Two reminds us that "tradition" is making connections, but not only connecting with the content of what we've been taught, but connecting with those who were and are our teachers. We are bidden to look to all those who hand us what we have and now to connect with those to whom we hand it. We hand it on redacted, as all recipes must be, refreshed and renewed as revolutions must be, to teach in new situations, for "new occasions teach new duties, and time makes ancient good uncouth".
Up the road from Capernaum, towards Parthia, perhaps, or Italy, or Evanston, or Managua, we continue to receive from Scripture and Tradition (for Scripture is itself a tradition of belief) the meaning of what we see in the Sacrament of this table, and find that it works anywhere in the world. For there is one Lord, one Faith, one Body and one Bread, and one Baptism.
Matthew began his gospel with only one family--one family in one place in one remote corner of the ancient world, but the genealogy of Jesus that he gives connects him to all the People of the Book: Jewish, Christian, Muslim. Jesus is related to us. We connect to him and reconnect to him and to each other when we eat of the one Loaf and share the one Cup of Commitment. Matthew takes the family tree back to Abraham, the Friend of God, but does not hide the horse-thieves and the bimbos, whose pictures we have often turned to the wall in our piety. Matthew ends his gospel with Jesus giving full authority in heaven and earth to US, some of us High Church Pharisees, some Fundamentalist Saducees, some of us Zealots and revolutionaries, some of us Republicans and Sinners, and all of us now invited by Jesus to follow him home.
FOLLOW ME, Jesus says. "Be like me" is what it means. But if we take Matthew for our model in response, it will mean taking Jesus to follow US to our homes and hearts, to meet our kind of people, our lovers and our loved ones, our family and friends. And then we can with him show the hospitality of heaven, and the healing power of love.
I said these things in the name of God: Father, Son, and Maternal Spirit.
GRANT GALLUP
CASA AVE MARIA
MANAGUA, NICARAGUA C.A.
gallup@tmx.com.ni
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