The “original” Original Pantry in downtown Los Angeles opened in 1924, and has been open ever since. When the first location was vacated in 1950 to make room for a freeway off-ramp, the short order cooks, busboys, waiters and waitresses finished with the lunch crowd, then moved one block east to serve dinner at the “new” location on the corner of South Figueroa and 9th Street, where the Pantry sits today.

Clark Gable was a regular back in the day, and as the story goes, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Lucille Ball once ate there at the same time, although at different tables.

Eighty seven customers can be served at once; that’s 2,000-plus each day. On the morning I stopped in, the cast included three parrot-headed punkers who had probably not yet been to bed, a well-dressed middle-aged couple in a silent stand-off, and a filthy woman at the bar who muttered to herself over the din of dishes.

Their coffee cups kept getting filled, just like mine did – and the food kept coming out of the kitchen, one heaping platter at a time.

I watched and was reminded that grace is a meal, taken over and over, made possible by a single, once-and-for-all offering.

It’s served up in place that never closes, for an odd collection of humanity that always changes, with a constant supply of nourishment that never ceases. No star treatment for anyone. The same unblinking, even-handed service for everyone. The oddest table-mates imaginable. And the smoke coming off the open grill filling the dining hall with the smell of sustenance and soot.

Never closed. Never without a customer. Isn’t that just like the mercy seat of God?

“For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying ‘This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws upon their heart, and upon their mind I will write them,’ He then says, “And their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.” (Hebrews 10:14-17)

At the cashier’s cage near the door of the Pantry, everyone, rich or poor, famous or nameless, pays his tab. The floor before the cage is worn down from the shifting feet of so many diners, exposing layer after layer of dirty linoleum.

Still, I wouldn’t have been surprised had the cashier in the hooded sweatshirt smiled at me and said, “No charge, honey. Yours is already covered.”

“Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin.”

Alleluia and amen.

© Leigh McLeroy 2002