Gonzaga lecture focuses on Jesus’ table manners
On the eve of his death, Jesus broke bread with his disciples and said: “Do this in memory of me.”
His command has a deeper implication than simply celebrating the Eucharist, said Patrick McCormick, professor of religious studies at Gonzaga University. Jesus’ instructions at the dinner table also should challenge the way we live.
It means “practicing God’s justice towards neighbors, strangers and enemies alike,” he wrote in his latest book, “A Banqueter’s Guide to the All-Night Soup Kitchen of the Kingdom of God.” Jesus called his followers “to show hospitality to the poor, to welcome sinners and outcasts as friends and to become the servants of the lowly and downtrodden.”
Jesus’ “radical” challenge to extend friendship, hospitality and service to all people – no matter who they are, how much money they make or what they look like – will be the focus of McCormick’s lecture on Thursday titled, “Jesus’ Table Manners: Etiquette for a Revolution.”
In the same way that civil rights activists helped integrate America’s lunch counters in the 1950s and ‘60s, Jesus introduced a revolutionary set of table manners, McCormick said. And those manners serve as “a recipe for revolution,” a set of instructions that challenges the American status quo, “dismantling head tables where masters lord it over servants and setting up a banquet where no one is hungry or excluded, where there is no Jew nor Greek, no slave nor master, no male nor female – but all are one in Christ.”
McCormick’s talk will be based on his latest book, in which the Gonzaga professor takes Jesus’ teachings at the table and uses them as a guide for all aspects of life. He uses the metaphors of bread, table, body and sacrifice to show the moral, social and ethical implications of Jesus’ commands.
Jesus – who spoke out for the rights of children, the poor, lepers and other outcasts – challenged the politics of the Roman Empire and the temple leaders, he said. His salvation doesn’t just entail individual souls, McCormick said; it also means a transformed community.
“His table manners challenge our personal behavior, our politics and economics,” he said.
An expert in Christian ethics, McCormick served for 14 years as a priest with the Vincentian order and received his doctorate in moral theology from the Gregorian University in Rome.
During his lecture, McCormick also plans to discuss the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the responsibility of Christians to take action.
“New Orleans is a challenge to the Christian identity of this country,” he said. “How do we respond do an entire city that has been destroyed? If we are truly a Christian nation, what are we going to do? … In the Old Testament, God’s judgment was against the rich who didn’t take care of the poor.”