The Plate Is for Somebody They Disapprove Of

Tonight we are making a pot of pork and rice with fried plantains, and it is a dish that expects a table with people at it.

Here is the whole method in one paragraph. Cut a pound of pork shoulder into pieces and brown them hard in oil in a heavy pot. Take them out. Cook a chopped onion and a chopped pepper for six minutes with salt, then four cloves of chopped garlic, a big spoon of oregano and a spoon of cumin for a minute. Put the pork back with two cups of water and let it go on low for an hour and a quarter until it is completely tender and cooked all the way through. Add two cups of rice and three cups of hot water, salt it properly, lid on, lowest heat, twenty five minutes without lifting it. While it cooks, slice two ripe plantains on the diagonal and fry them in oil until they are dark gold on both sides, and salt them. Lime over everything. It feeds six, it costs a few dollars, and the plantains are not optional.

Now, the reason I am writing is not the pork.

It is the extra place you have been thinking about setting.

There is a person. Somebody the family has decided about. Maybe there was a genuine wrong done, and maybe it was only ever a rumor that hardened, and either way the position is settled now and everybody knows it.

And you have wanted to feed that person for a while. Not to make a statement. You just know they are eating alone, and you have a pot, and you have been unable to stop thinking about it.

And you have been working out whether you could do it quietly. Take something over on a Tuesday, say nothing, keep it out of the family conversation entirely.

The accusation He never denied

There is a complaint made about Jesus that He never once argued with, and it is the whole subject of tonight.

And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them. (Luke 15:2, King James Version)

Read who says it and what they say. It is an accusation. It is meant as one. And the specific charge is not teaching or healing, it is eating.

They understood exactly what a shared meal meant. To sit down and eat with somebody in that world was to say publicly that this person is acceptable company, and that is precisely why it made people so angry.

And He does not defend Himself. He does not say they misunderstood. He answers the complaint by telling three stories about things that were lost and got found, and then He carries on eating with the same people.

You are considering a thing Jesus was openly accused of, and God has never once asked permission before He sat down with somebody. Luke 15:2 has the charge stated plainly and never denied, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and puts it into a kitchen with an extra plate in it.

You have not gone soft on anything, and heaven has never once mistaken a shared meal for an endorsement of everything a person has done. It is written that this man receiveth sinners and eateth with them, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is standing in the room where the pork is browning.

Quietly is the option that costs the most

Now let me be honest about the plan to do it secretly, because I understand it and I think it is the worst of the three options available.

The three are: do not do it, do it quietly, do it openly.

Not doing it leaves a person eating alone and changes nothing in this kitchen either.

You are able to do this in daylight, and God has never once required a person to hide an act of welcome. Luke 15:2 has the eating done publicly enough to become a formal complaint and never once denied, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the shame out of a plain kindness.

Doing it quietly feels like the safe middle, and it is not. It means every meal has a secret attached to it. It means a plain kindness gets treated as something shameful, which teaches a man something about that kindness over time. And the person being fed can tell, because people can always tell, and being fed in secret carries a message of its own that nobody intended to send.

Doing it openly costs one difficult conversation, once. And then it is simply a fact about you, and facts stop being discussed.

Setting a place for somebody is not a verdict on everything they have done.

You are able to do this in daylight, and God has never once required a person to hide an act of welcome. The passage has the eating done publicly enough to become a formal complaint, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes the shame out of a plain kindness.

You have not stopped loving your family by feeding somebody they have written off. Luke 15 has Jesus answer an accusation with stories about search and recovery rather than with a defense, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a man from having to choose sides in a kitchen.

Set the place, and say what it is

Here is the practical part, and there are two halves to it.

The first is the meal. Cook the pot, set the extra place, and let it be an ordinary evening rather than an occasion. Nothing about it should feel like a statement, because the moment it becomes a statement it becomes about the family rather than about the person eating.

The second is the sentence, and you will only need it once. When somebody asks, do not defend and do not explain at length. Say something like: I am not arguing with anybody about it, I am just not going to let him eat alone.

That sentence does the whole job. It refuses the argument, it states the fact, and it leaves no gap for a debate to grow in. Say it once, calmly, and then pass the plantains.

You are able to say it in one sentence, and God has never once required a person to win an argument before doing a plain good thing. Luke 15:2 has an accusation answered with three stories rather than with a defense, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes one calm sentence do the work of an hour.