Epiphany - A reflection at Open Table #lgbtqia+ #comeasyouare

by the Revd Louis Johnson on Sunday 17th January 2021

Reading:Matthew 8.5-13

Hello everyone, it’s a pleasure and a privilege to join you this evening, and I’d like to begin by thanking Open Table for asking me to come and speak, it feels like a real honour, and I’ve been so excited at the prospect of being here with you. When the invitation to speak was extended, I was offered a choice of texts from the lectionary readings for today, although I was encouraged to consider the passage we’ve just heard from Matthew 8 as, and I hope Warren doesn’t mind my quoting him, there is ‘loads in the centurion's servant, especially with Jesus transgressing cultural boundaries!’ Well, decision made then, although, to be honest, I didn’t need much too much encouragement as I was similarly drawn to the radical aspects of this episode in Jesus’ ministry. But what is it that is radical about this episode?

As Warren suggested, one aspect of this is Jesus’ apparent recognition of the clarity of faith of a Gentile, in seeming contrast to the faith of many of God’s chosen people; there is also the proclamation that the Good News of God’s salvation, expressed through God’s relationship with Israel is, in fact, open to all; and there is a note of warning against complacency, a reminder that the life of the Kingdom is about God’s gift, grace, and open invitation, not membership of a club in which human beings decide who is in or out, and this is something that is expressed through the seemingly radical willingness of Jesus to heal the centurion’s servant. But when I was re-reading the passage in preparing this reflection, something else struck me as being transgressive and radical, namely, that the centurion, a member of the ruling class of an occupying force, would go to Jesus for help, a voice from the margins of a subject nation. Perhaps one of the most strikingly radical things about this passage is that it relates a meeting of worlds, a coming together, an encounter between cultures in which there is movement and boundary crossing from both sides, a moment of relationship between Hebrew and Gentile, between God and humanity.

And God uses this unlikely situation to proclaim the Good News, Jesus not so much bringing the gospel as pointing to its emergence, making those around Him aware that the Kingdom of God is already there, already at work, opening people’s hearts to perceive the work of God in their midst; and, for me, this speaks into the work of Open Table. I remember the first time I joined in worship at Open Table, on zoom, in the summer just passed, not long after starting my curacy with St Luke in the City; I’ll admit I was somewhat nervous beforehand, not apprehensive, but full of anxious questions: would I fit in? Would I belong? Would I feel welcome? In other words, I was full of the kind of anxieties that I tend to be burdened with in all kinds of contexts, church or otherwise, the types of fear that, I imagine, most of us experience in one situation or another. And what did I find at my first Open Table? Well, I found church: a place where it is safe to bring your fears, where it is comfortable to feel uncomfortable, where you can belong in feeling that you don’t belong, where it is ok to not feel good about yourself, because you’re held, together, in a love that is bigger than your fears; I found church as gift and grace, not a group where people are in or out; I found a congregation, not a club, something open and vulnerable, not controlled and guarded, a place of protection, not policing; I found a community gathered around word and sacrament, a community formed by the Holy Spirit, journeying together, a community of radical welcome and openness, of unqualified invitation and inclusivity; and although this might beg the question as to whether welcome, openness, invitation and inclusivity should be radical at all, perhaps particularly in a church context, I think that the experience of God’s love always feels radical, somehow, in some way. And this is why I think that our reading today speaks resonantly into the work of the Open Table community, because Open Table is church and, as church, it is like Capernaum: a site and space for radical encounter and relationship, with God, and with each other – and a place of radical healing.