“My thoughts are not your thoughts…” — Isaiah 55:8
Abandoned. Discovered in a cardboard box. Not the way a baby should begin life.
Adopted a few months later by Japanese-American parents in the early 1970’s, Shari’s new father always carried the residual memories of spending his formative years in U.S internment camps.
Never feeling like she quite belonged either, the cardboard box became a dominant metaphor in Shari’s life. “As an adopted baby from Korea, born into a Japanese family who spent their lives recovering emotionally and economically from wartime policies, I felt like I never really fit. I was always an outsider. I wasn’t welcomed anywhere.” Early narratives can have an outsized impact on one’s development.
Years later after a cancer diagnosis, just before her 50th birthday, Shari had a revelation. “I decided to flip the box.” Instead of a symbol of abandonment and betrayal, the flipped cardboard box became a dinner table—a place to invite others to join her in the breaking of bread. Action followed.
Shari developed a rather audacious plan. 50 meals. 50 strangers. 50 different states. Her guests: different political stripes, different religious backgrounds, different races, different ethnicities and different socio-economic backgrounds. All randomly selected. Over the course of a year Shari travelled to red states, blue states and purple states. Guess what? She courageously challenged her outsider assumption, she engaged in meaningful conversations with strangers and made 50 new friends.
“We owe the next generation examples of ways to connect,” she confided. “We’ve demonstrated far too many ways to divide.”
Flip the box.
Shari’s brilliant reversal and quest provokes a good question this Lenten season. What box do I need to flip? What narrative do I embrace that restricts my access to the abundant and more impactful life God wants for me? Perhaps Jesus can help.
Nobody flipped the box quite like Jesus (he also flipped a few tables, but that’s for another day). Jesus took common sense, logical, worldly assumptions and flipped them upside down. Why? Certainly not to be a kill joy and burden his followers with guilt. Instead, Jesus flipped the box to expose illusions and false promises that rob us humans of full, purposed, abundant and hope-filled lives.
In Jesus’ vision, uneducated fishermen could become leaders. Despised tax collectors could become dinner guests. Ethnic outcasts could become heroes in his stories. Poor widows could become examples of audacious faith. Those who made mistakes could be forgiven and begin lives anew.
In Jesus’ vision humility, not hubris, was modeled. Service, not lordship, was exercised. Grace, not judgment, was celebrated. In contrast to the ubiquitous voices of our day, Jesus turns things upside down, offering uniquely different ways to live our lives.
A Greek philosopher once described first century Christians to Emperor Hadrian this way: ‘They love one another. They never fail to help widows. They save orphans from those who hurt them. If they have something, they give freely to the one who has nothing. If they see a stranger, they take him home and are happy as though he were a real brother.’ Quite the compliment. Probably not the description he would give today.
So we pause and reorient ourselves to the ways of Jesus again this Lent. Not the way I would naturally live my life. A reminder is needed. We try our best to live into this unconventional and, at times, unpopular vision. And even though Jesus’ path led to a brutal death on a cross, we draw hope that the story doesn’t end at that moment. God flipped the box.
Bruce Main
PS. Shari Leid captured her journey in a new book called Table for 51.