Aug. 29 Sermon: Luke 14:1, 7-14
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
Holy Covenant UMC
August 29, 2010
Rev. Kate Hurst Floyd
Luke 14:1, 7-14
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Imagine with me that you are hosting a dinner party. You have spent weeks preparing—cleaning the house, planning the menu, going over the guest list, cooking the dinner. And then when people arrive you are a gracious host—making sure nobody’s drink glass is empty, that the volume of the music is just right, that the trays of appetizers remain full.
You’ve put much effort into making this a pleasant experience for everyone. And then, as everyone is seated at the table, one of your guests begins to criticize you. Begins to criticize your guest list—telling you that you shouldn’t have invited the people you did. The people that are sitting right there next to him. How would this make you feel? Probably pretty uncomfortable—I know I would be. Others in the room would be uncomfortable as well. We’ve all had the experience of sitting around the table, engaging in polite conversation, when someone—that guy—we all know one of those guys—says something that moves the conversation from polite to candid. From nice to challenging (often it’s when a family member brings up politics or religion). And it’s hard to know how to react.
Well, this is what’s happening in our gospel lesson from Luke. Jesus has been invited to dinner, at the home of one of the Pharisees. And instead of making polite conversation, he attacks his host for inviting his friends, siblings, and rich neighbors. Where are his manners? Emily Post would not approve. We all know the rules—dinner is not the time to make everyone uncomfortable. Save that for a lecture, a classroom, a debate in a boardroom. Dinner is time to be comfortable.
This is a scene that is familiar to us—sitting around the table at a meal. It’s hard to imagine any scene more ordinary than a meal. Meals are basic to human life, across time, history, and culture. We all need to eat to survive, so meals are universal. Of course, the customs, type of food, and way of eating varies greatly throughout the world. But the human need to nourish ourselves with food, often in the company of others, remains constant. In our own lives, we eat 3 meals everyday, routinely, often without thinking much about them.
So this scene isn’t very dramatic….Jesus is merely sitting down, eating a meal. The gospel is more exciting when Jesus is extraordinary—when he’s performing miracles—walking on water, healing the blind with the touch of his hand. When he’s transfigured on a mountain with Moses and Elijah. But this isn’t the kind of scene we have in our gospel lesson for today. Nobody is raised from the dead, no demons are miraculously cast out. No miracles here, just an ordinary meal. Mel Gibson wouldn’t make a movie out of this scene.
So what is Jesus doing, this extraordinary man, this man of miracles, spending his time eating a meal? And talking about meals? Making a social faux pas—criticizing his host. Aren’t there more important things with which to be concerned? More important things than the guest list at a dinner party?
After all, this is the section in Luke where Jesus is on his journey to Jerusalem, the place where he will be crucified. And he knows this. On his journey to his death, Jesus is concerned with making sure his disciples and his followers understand his message, what he came to earth to say and do be. He knows it’s crucial that they understand what he represents, so that when he is gone they will continue to tell his story and spread his message to the world.
He spends his time on this journey contrasting the world as it is with what the world should be. What God wants for our lives—God’s vision of the kingdom. It’s in this section that Jesus tells the parable of the rich fool, who is greedy and stores up his grain instead of sharing it and living in the moment. He admonishes the Pharisees and the lawyers—those with great power and influence in society. He tells them it is hypocritical to be so concerned with the outside of the body when they are greedy and selfish on the inside. He admonishes his disciples to not compare themselves with those who “sin more”. No, he tells, them, we must first point the finger at ourselves, and repent.
He recognizes the world as it is—consumed by money, power, and status; full of those of us who are quick to judge others without looking inward first; a place where selfishness reigns over benevolence to one’s neighbor. Sounds a lot like our society.
And Jesus is here giving us an alternate vision, of how the world can and should be, when we follow him and bring God’s vision to earth. God’s world, he teaches us, prioritizes relationship over status, equality over greed, peace over power.
What an important message! So time is clearly of the essence—Jesus is on an urgent mission to make sure his followers are able to follow him when he is gone.
So why does Luke take the time to tell us about an ordinary meal? In the middle of this important journey.
Let’s take a closer look at our scripture passage for today. Jesus is eating a meal, on the Sabbath, at the home of a Pharisee, a religious leader with great power. There were other pharisees dining along side him. It’s in this setting that he directly addresses his host. He tells him not only who he shouldn’t invite—those who are like him—but he also tells him who he should invite. The poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind. What do all of these have in common? They represent the most vulnerable in his society. Those without great power. And it’s not just that these people were dependent, but they were social outcasts.
So here we have Jesus calling on the one with the most social status to invite those with the least status to the table. To be in relationship with the most vulnerable. And he’s not telling him to go to a shelter and feed the hungry; to make a donation to a society that helps those who are sick. No, he’s telling him to invite these outcasts into his day-to-day, ordinary life. To be a guest around the table for his daily lunches and dinners, to really get to know these people. Talk about uncomfortable.
And we, like the Pharisees, live in a world divided by social barriers, whether we are conscious of them or not. And Jesus is reminding us to look for those barriers and knock them over.
There’s a dinner party that happens in Atlanta, where I used to live, once a month, that invites people from different social backgrounds. This dinner party occurs at the Georgia Justice Project. The Georgia Justice Project was founded by a former partner from a huge and wealthy law firm who decided to answer God’s call to do something different with his law degree. They take a holistic approach to criminal justice—it’s a law office that serves the poor, through trying to meet all of their client’s needs, including addiction, financial, and other needs. Their goal is to help their clients change their lives, not just deliver legal services. One of their projects is that they’ve started a lawn care business, and when their clients are out of jail they are able to find employment and get back on their feet.
Each month, GJP has regular dinners for their clients and their families. The staff, clients, and family come together at the dinner table. The idea is to create community and offer support, a means of fostering long-term supportive relationships, which is one their goals.
The current director, Doug Amar, tells a story about a dinner that happened a few years ago. about fifty people were sharing dinner. Doug was sitting beside Meg. Meg is married to Bill, a GJP client who had been out of prison for about a year. As they were eating, Meg started moaning – the kind of sound people make when they have eaten something incredibly delicious. “Um, um, um.” Doug looked at her and she made the same sound. “Um, um, ummmm!” The intensity was growing. Meg is a good cook. And to this dinner she had brought her famed potato salad. “What is it?” Doug asked, thinking she was commenting on the food. “Your potato salad sure is good.” He told her.
“No, it’s not that,” Meg replied. Then solemnly, deliberately, she said slowly, “I am having dinner with A LAWYER!”
Doug was taken back.
He took his status for granted—he interacts with lawyers everyday. He doesn’t routinely think of himself as someone with great power. But it took stretching outside of his comfort zone—sitting down at a meal with someone from a different sector of society—to realize what power he had. This woman never imagined she would be in relationship with a lawyer. Sure, she’s interacted with lawyers, but never had a meal with one.
And this is the power of the table—the ordinary table, the place where we eat every day. The table is an equalizer—we eat the same food, drink the same beverages, sit around the same space. It’s an intimate gathering—we have no choice but to make eye contact and conversation.
Doug realized in this moment how crucial these meals are, and continues to have them each month. Because his legal service work is certainly important—
But it’s sitting around a table, in relationship, where true transformation occurs. Where God’s grace is present, where we glimpse the kingdom on earth.
And isn’t this what Jesus is calling us to do? To be in relationship with those outside of our comfort zones, to stretch beyond social boundaries.
And we are called to do this in the ordinary, in the daily. When we’re scarfing down a sandwich, or sitting at the cafeteria table.
God’s grace is present in the ordinariness of our lives. Isn’t this what the incarnation is all about? God, the holy, the divine, more extraordinary than we can imagine…..comes to earth as an ordinary human being. With flesh and bones, born in a manger, to a young mother and father without much to their name. God came into the world crying and bloody, just like each one of us.
And this is what’s happening in our passage from Luke: Jesus calls on us to bring God’s kingdom into our daily lives, into the meals we have on a regular basis. To set God’s table wherever we are. Maybe this is an actual table—being in relationship over a meal—but his invitation extends to all aspects of our lives.
Wow! What an overwhelming task. What a bold call. Are we really capable? Us, mere humans, to help bring God’s kingdom to earth?
Well, the good news is, Jesus isn’t asking us to emulate his miracles—to walk on water ourselves, to cure blindness with the wave of our hands, to bring people back from the dead. He’s asking us to bring the kingdom vision—God’s vision—into our everyday lives. To sit at the table together. To talk and listen to each other.
And this means that we will have to stretch beyond our comfort zones. But what if we lived our ordinary lives as if every action were an opportunity for God’s grace to break-in?
Think with me about the things we do everyday, and imagine the possibilities when we open ourselves to new relationships.
*When you drive to church on Sunday, do you just bring your family, or do you open your car to someone who is unable to get here on their own?
*When you’re sitting in the school or office cafeteria, do you invite someone outside of your social group to join your table? Who works in a different department that may not carry the same status as yours?
*When you leave your office for lunch, who from your workplace do you invite to come along?
*When we look around in our day-to-day lives, does everybody at our dinner table look like us? Have the same life experience? What about in our social lives, our workplaces, our church? Is everybody like us, or to we gather and really listen to others, especially those with less privilege?
When we move beyond what makes us comfortable, we are often surprised by the grace of God that breaks forth.
It’s a difficult call, this call of Jesus, to go against the rules of the world, of culture, of what our society emphasizes every day. The disciples failed over and over again, and so do we. For two years, in my last church, I gave out sack lunches every week, to hungry people who come to the church. On occasion I sat down with someone and talked, but that was rare, and I never in those 2 years actually sat down and ate a meal with someone who came in for outreach. They took their lunch somewhere else and I ate alone in my office or went out with a colleague. It’s difficult to do.
But the good news is, we worship a God who knows that we’re vulnerable, and broken, and who invites us to the table anyway. Not in spite of our vulnerability, but because we are loved and valued in the kingdom of God. Because God’s grace knows no bounds. And because we know this radical love, in the midst of our brokenness, we can’t help but spread it to others, to share this extraordinary, divine love in our ordinary lives.
Let’s again imagine that we’re hosting a dinner party. This time we invite Jesus to be our guest. The rules are far different when we allow him to be our guide instead of Emily Post. It means that we will have to go outside our comfort zone. Invite people who don’t make our lists. The rewards for being uncomfortable far outweigh the risk— when we set the table with openness and compassion, nourish ourselves with relationships, quench our thirst with the good news of the kingdom. When we live our lives this way, we can hear Jesus saying “whenever you do this, do this in remembrance of me”.
And this is the greatest comfort of all.
Thanks be to God! Amen.
photo by zobeiry
Tags: Kate
