Good Morning Friends,
I wondering if you are getting ready for Thanksgiving. Years ago we had huge Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners – 20 – 30 people. Now we will have a small gathering (it looks like 5 of us). I think we get caught up in the fallacy that a large and important gathering proves we are worthy of admiration; and simple and small, not so much.
I wanted to put in this classic Norman Rockwell painting as an image of the perfect Thanksgiving. Then I found that the title is “Freedom from Want” and it was painted in 1943 – the middle of World War II where everything was scarce and ration stamps were a part of everyday life. For me it has now gone for a commentary of what a perfect Thanksgiving should look like to a picture of hope in a difficult time. I can almost hear the voice over saying, “this is what we’re fighting for boys.”
All of this was to talk about what Jesus thought were good dinner companions in a time were there were incredibly strict rules about how you dined and with whom you dined.
13-14 Then Jesus went again to walk alongside the lake. Again a crowd came to him, and he taught them. Strolling along, he saw Levi, son of Alphaeus, at his work collecting taxes. Jesus said, “Come along with me.” He came.
15-16 Later Jesus and his disciples were at home having supper with a collection of disreputable guests. Unlikely as it seems, more than a few of them had become followers. The religion scholars and Pharisees saw him keeping this kind of company and lit into his disciples: “What kind of example is this, acting cozy with the riffraff?”
17 Jesus, overhearing, shot back, “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? I’m here inviting the sin-sick, not the spiritually-fit.”
Jesus calls tax collector to be a disciple. These Jewish men were most hated because of their work for the Roman oppressors. And well, they were tax collectors too; even in our society we don’t usually like tax collectors!
Each gospel says that Jesus ate with “disreputable” people. Good religious people did not associate with “those kinds of people. But, Jesus came to care for those no one else cared about. As this paraphrase puts it, “the sin-sick, not the spiritually-fit.” Jesus’ Thanksgiving table would have been an interesting place.
Who’s at your table? I have a friend, he and his wife have no children. On “big meal” holidays they would invite folks who had no one to share the dinner with to come to their house. It was usually older widows, unable to travel far with no children nearby. I have always thought this was one of the greatest images of Thanksgiving.
Here is one more painting by Norma Rockwell that I want you to see. It was painted on the Saturday Evening Post for Thanksgiving 1945. The war had ended, and it looks like this is one KP (Kitchen Patrol) assignment that the soldier is enjoying.
Peace, Mary