For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves. – Luke 22:27

Today’s Scripture Reading (November 19, 2017): Luke 22

In 1865, Lewis Carroll, who was actually mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, published “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” The novel is an excellent example of nonsense fiction, to which anyone who has tried to read the story can attest. Nothing is quite what it seems. But the book begins with Alice trying to read a book with no pictures. She gets drowsy at the tedious task, and then notices a rather strange sight – a white rabbit with a waistcoat and a pocket watch muttering something about being late. Alice decides to follow the peculiar Rabbit down the Rabbit Hole.

More than 150 years later, going “down the rabbit hole” remains with us about anything that we consider to be bizarre. Often it is used as a warning, as in “we don’t want to go down that rabbit hole.” But the bizarre nature of Carroll’s original adventure stays with us as we keep the phrase alive.

Anyone who has genuinely tried to blank out the things that we think that we know about the Bible and just read the pages, especially when it comes to Jesus’s teaching, recognize that Jesus seemed to teach from the “rabbit hole.” I recently had a conversation with a friend about the nature of the Gospel message. Specifically, our discussion centered around the idea that the Gospel insists that we stand on the street corner yelling “repent for the end is near” to anyone who passes by. It goes along with our misconception of Jesus healing someone, or forgiving someone, and then commanding them to “go and sin no more.” The command to “go and sin no more” would seem to be more ours than Jesus’s; it makes sense to us. If “Jesus always said it” means twice in all of the Gospels, then we are right. But it was not Jesus go to response, and one of Jesus’s two “go and sin no more” moments is found in a disputed text at the beginning of John 8. (Both incidents of Jesus saying “Go and sin no more” are found in the Gospel of John, the other is in John 5, and it did not happen at the time of the healing, but rather later when Jesus met the man in the Temple. Jesus exact words raise some other questions in John 5. He said “Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you” (John 5:14b). The origin or reason of the warning is a bit of a mystery, but Jesus seemed to continually lead his followers “down the rabbit hole.”)

And maybe no more “down the rabbit hole” than at the Last Supper. It is John that gives us the story of Jesus washing the Apostle’s feet at this final gathering of Jesus and his friends, but Luke also acknowledges Jesus’s servant attitude in this moment. In his instructions to the disciples, he acknowledges what we all know. If you go to a dinner party, greatness is found sitting at the table, and not among those who serve. We get that. We may not all be great who sit at the table, but the recognition is that the honored guest sits at the Table. But Jesus twists this understanding and sends us “down the rabbit hole.” Jesus stresses that he came to serve.

What would happen if, at the next White House dinner, the President of the United States rose from his seat at the table and took the water jar from those who are serving and then went around the table pouring beverages in their stead? What would happen if he then ran back into the kitchen and started to happily carry out the plates, with the meal so expertly laid on them, to the guests who had gathered? It would be a moment that would send the press corp. “down the rabbit hole.” (It might also change the direction of his presidency.)

Jesus says, “I know that he who is great sits at the table, but I have come among you as one who serves.” And the reality is that if Jesus comes as one who serves, then we can rise no higher than the one we profess to follow. The disciples were “one who serves” – and so are we. Also notice that according to Jesus, greatness is still sitting at the table. We are not great as we serve, we serve greatness because this is our mission. And serving is more important than being great.  

Welcome to the rabbit hole.     

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: John 13