Creation 2 Year A

I’m sharing a painting with you this morning. It’s by the German artist Sieger Koder and is in the dining room of the German/Hungarian theological college in Rome. The German title of the painting translates as ‘The meal with sinners’ but in English it has become known as ‘All are welcome’. I chose it for lots of reasons, but at least in part because inclusion and a desire to live in a fairer society have been at the heart of my ministry for the past 28 years. I want to resist the easy title this morning and try to get underneath it to engage in a different way with what Koder is showing us.

There’s a verse from this morning’s reading from Romans that, for me, sums up much of what it means to strive to follow Christ. St Paul asks: Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? And he goes on to say: each of us will be accountable to God.

St Paul is calling us to account. It's easy to hear "all are welcome" as a message about other people — about making sure we don’t exclude people. This painting does show us that. But I think it's asking something much more challenging.
I want to suggest that each person seated round that table is not simply someone we're called to welcome. Each one is a picture of us — of who we are, or have been, or might yet be, at different points in our lives. And if that's true, then the accountability Paul speaks of isn't really about how we judge others. It's about how honestly we're willing to recognise something of ourselves in them.

So let’s take a closer look. Firstly the big picture, if you will. On the wall behind the table is a painting of the story of the Prodigal son. The father and son are embracing – referencing Rembrandt’s great painting of that scene. So the context is God’s love; God’s forgiveness; God’s capacity to reach out to us time and time again. It doesn’t matter who we are or what we have done, God reaches out in love.

And then we can take a look at the guests. We don’t have time today to speak in depth about all of them, but I’ll identify them so that if you want to reflect with the painting at a later stage, you have a starting place.

At Jesus’ right is the refugee and next to him we see a rich woman. Then a scholar, the joker, the beggar, the prostitute and the Jewish man.

The rich woman and the beggar are sitting opposite one another. Let’s just explore what that says to us. Our richness and our poverty are inevitably interconnected. How often, when we imagine that we are rich, do we discover our own poverty? How often, at times when we feel bereft and lacking resources do we find ourselves connecting with a source of richness that we didn’t know we had? We live in and by God’s grace. Left to our own resources, we routinely lead ourselves astray. Our lives become unbalanced; we quickly lose sight of the values that we aspire to follow. We believe the societal narrative that purports to understand what it is to be rich. The juxtaposition of those two characters serves as a reminder that at its best our theology challenges us to turn our thinking and understanding on its head. We are called to be accountable not to the world, but to God.

Now let’s turn our attention to the prostitute. Some of you will know that early in my career I worked with street sex workers. They were some of the most vulnerable people I have ever encountered. They carried scars, physical and psychological, and risked their safety on a daily basis. And yet, that vulnerability was what made them special. That vulnerability was the place where there was the potential to make a connection with the sacred within them. Obviously, they kept their vulnerability very well hidden from their customers, but if they allowed you alongside there were deep treasures to encounter. We also have learned many tricks to keep our vulnerabilities hidden from most people, most of the time. And yet, at those times when we take a risk and share even a hint of our vulnerability with others, we open the possibility that we will find a new way to connect, a deeper place of encounter, perhaps even a moment to treasure.

I can’t leave this painting without referencing the Jewish man on the left and the refugee on the right. I note that they are the people sitting at Jesus’ right hand and left hand. They haven’t been banished to the far end of the table, although they are very clearly the outsiders, even in the midst of outsiders. They are the people around this table who couldn’t even pass for being ‘one of us’. For me they speak about diversity and how we learn and are enriched by those whose lived experience is very different from ours.

The refugee has a bandaged hand. There are times when we carry physical injuries. And they are usually easy to see. There are times when we carry psychological injuries and we are often adept at keeping them hidden. Our scars tell something of our story. Our scars become intrinsic to the unique individuals we are. We may find out scars uncomfortable, but round this table, Jesus loves us scars and all.

The Jewish man represents many things for me, clearly including something about heritage, but this morning I just want to talk about the importance of respecting and valuing other people’s traditions and ways of connecting with God. This place, this way of worshipping, this very particular act of worship, is right for those of us who call this Cathedral our spiritual home. We have found ways to encounter our God through what we do when we gather both on Sunday mornings and through the week.

And others have found their, equally valid, ways to encounter God, which we may not fully understand. If we give people of other faiths the respect they deserve, we create an opportunity to learn. To learn about what is important to them and, in doing so, perhaps to realise what is important to us.

Each one of us has a place round this table. We come with our richness and our poverty; with our vulnerabilities and our scars. We come with what we know and what we don’t even realise we don’t know.
We come even when we feel that we don’t belong.
And like the father on the wall of the painting, God reaches out to embrace, to forgive, to welcome. All are welcome. The meal with sinners helps us to recognise something of who we truly are, to acknowledge a little more about ourselves, and regardless of how we feel about all of that, to respond to God’s unconditional and unfailing love.