Last week, Alexandra Judd, a waitress at a restaurant in Charlotte, North Carolina, served a group of ladies who had met for lunch. After they left, she went to clear the table and discovered there was no tip. That happens sometimes. It’s disappointing, but unfortunately just part of the unpredictable work of an underpaid food service provider. But then, she looked at the copy of the ticket left on the table. In the line next to the word “tip” was scrawled, “Lev. 20:13.” And at the bottom of the ticket was written, “Praying for you!”
The Bible verse that substituted for a monetary tip is the Levitical pronouncement that “if a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death.” Alexandra is gay. It’s not clear how the women knew this. Perhaps they recognized her from her participation in recent rallies for LGBTQ equality, including one the night before against the North Carolina house bill that bars transgendered people from using the bathrooms of their preferred gender.
Why Christians ever quote the Levitical holiness code as a binding law is beyond me. These same people surely learned the basic teaching that in Christ, we are justified by faith and not by works of the law, but when that same law buttresses their own prejudices, they selectively quote it as though Jesus never came. (And besides that, the statute they cited says nothing about two women lying together!)
So what do we learn from this episode? Only that Christians are narrow-minded and cheap.
Alexandra was so offended that she took a picture of the ticket and posted it on Facebook, where it immediately went viral. A local TV station decided to interview her. She told the reporter that she once received a church pamphlet instead of a tip, but never expected an insulting note. On her Facebook post, she also rejected the offer of prayer, saying, “Don’t pray for me, darling! I have everything I could possibly want or need in my life.”
So not only have these women poorly represented the Christian faith; they have also managed to drive a wedge between this young woman and God. She hasn’t only been offended by judgmental Christianity. She has also rejected an offer of prayer with the assertion that she literally doesn’t need it.
Really? Even Jesus needed prayer.
Imagine how differently she would have reacted had her customers left a generous tip and included a note that they were praying for her. Would she not have been doubly grateful? If these women really believed their waitress needed prayer, why condition it with personal condemnation? Isn’t that kind of judgment up to God? Or don’t they trust God? Are they afraid of the possibility that their prayer for her to be “healed” of her sexual orientation might be met with the answer, “Leave her alone – what I have called clean you must not call profane”? (See Acts 10:15.)
This caddy effort at evangelism accomplished nothing good. It only made harder the efforts of other Christians to demonstrate and share the true love of Christ. So I’d like to say to Alexandra, “I’m praying for you. I pray that the small people who insulted you will not prevent you from knowing real Christian love. And I’m also praying that, before your rude customers do further damage to the witness of the gospel, they will experience that love, too.”
©2016 by J. Mark Lawson
What a nice article to read Mark and that is exactly why we are proud to call UCC of Bayberry our church and because of the love we feel from our church family!
Posted by: Carrie | 04/25/2016 at 02:42 PM