You're Invited!

Scriptures: Jeremiah 2:4-13, Hebrews 13:1-16, Luke 14:1-14)

Today’s reading from Luke’s Gospel makes me glad we have a coffee hour after church most Sundays...because listening to it might make us hungry. It’s centered around eating – which, in Jesus’ time as now, can be an act with great social significance. Consider how, in our culture, eating dinner can mean anything from a holiday dinner with family, to a big mac purchased at the drive-through at McDonalds which we eat in the car, to pizza with some friends while watching a football game on TV, to lunch in the company cafeteria – with or without coworkers - to a “dinner and movie” date, to a dinner as part of a job interview, to a meal after a funeral. Just as it was in Jesus’ time, so it is now - food is a huge part of our culture.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is invited to the home of a Pharisee for dinner. We’re told this dinner is taking place on the Sabbath. Before we, the readers of Luke’s Gospel, can become too comfortable in commending the Pharisee for his hospitality, Luke slide us a word of warning – he tells us that the Pharisees are watching Jesus closely. So the atmosphere at this dinner is tense – this feels perhaps more like dinner with a job interviewer than like pizza and football with your buddies.

And, from the viewpoints of his host, Jesus’ behavior at the dinner is a bit like that of the proverbial bull in a china shop. He’s not especially careful of offending his host; in fact, as often happens in the Gospels, in his truthtelling, Jesus is pretty much devoid of tact. A person with dropsy is there, whom Jesus heals – but not without first getting in some digs at the Pharisees about the propriety of healing on the Sabbath. He makes some tactless observations about fellow dinner guests who are jockeying for the seats nearest the head table. And then he all but tells his host that he invited the wrong dinner guests, that he should have invited the poor, the lame, the blind, and the maimed. I wonder if, by now, the host is regretting having invited this troublemaker named Jesus.

Jesus cautioned against jockeying for the best seats when we’re at a banquet. I can make personal testimony to the hazards of accepting that invitation to “come up higher,” of being in a prominent seat, being “on display”. When I was more active in leadership in the Philadelphia Association, I visited a number of independent churches, many but not all of them African-American, seeking affiliation with the United Church of Christ. When I visited, I always tried to slide into a back pew. But often, especially in African-American churches, there’s a tradition of having a representative from another congregation or church body sit up at the altar – so I’d get that invitation, “friend, come up higher,” which I have always found incredibly uncomfortable. After all, what if I start to I start to fidget or I sneeze, or I get a nosebleed? Or heaven forbid, what happens if I doze off during the sermon? Probably one of my most awkward experiences was in visiting a church in North Philadelphia, in which it was the church’s custom for the pastor and any other worship leaders to process in – not just walking, but in a sort of choreographed, synchronized strut, almost a combination of a march and a line dance. They insisted I join their procession – but I have two left feet, so I ended up feeling – and looking - like a drunken Mummer as I stumbled my way up to the front….and things just went downhill from there.

But beyond that individual jockeying for position, larger, more prominent congregations face hazards from which, perhaps, we’re safeguarded here at Emanuel. More prominent congregations are blessed with abundant resources, and their names can open doors for them in the community. But there’s also a hazard of pridefulness, of feeling entitled to certain considerations because one is a pastor or lay leader or member of a prominent, “tall steeple” congregation. “We deserve such and thus, because we’re First Church.” Congregational identity can move away from being centered around Christ, to being centered around the church’s reputation. It’s a subtle form of idolatry. And if misconduct occurs, larger churches may be tempted to sweep things under the rug, so as to avoided damaging the church’s reputation. At least part of this dynamic touches on what has taken place in numerous incidents of child abuse, among the churches, protestant, catholic churches, orthodox, independent. So along with the frustrations of being the small neighborhood church that we are, there are some benefits as well – we are what we are, and we will be whatever God calls us to become. We don’t have to pretend to be something we’re not, but rather we can just be the people God is calling us to be.

Jesus tells his hosts, when throwing a banquet, to invite the poor, needy, and handicapped. Now normally when we spread a banquet, we invite our friends, or people we would like to be our friends, people we would like to impress. At a wedding banquet, for example, the bride and groom may invite their close friends, but if it’s a well-off family, the parents may invite business associates and other people with whom they wheel and deal. But once again, Jesus is turning upside down – or more likely right side up – the ways of the world. Remember that all this – the dinner party, the healing of the man with dropsy, and Jesus’ teaching – took place on the Sabbath. The Sabbath was and is intended as a time of rest, of healing, of restoration. Many of these same poor, needy, handicapped people would have been barred or at least put off at a distance in going to the Temple on the Sabbath to worship. But Jesus is doing away with all these distinctions of class and socioeconomic position: All are invited. All are welcome at the table, especially those who are hungry, those who are needy, those who rarely get an invitation anywhere, except maybe to hit the bricks and go elsewhere. We’re to offer our hospitality, not to those we want to impress, but to those who truly need it. This is what Sabbath healing and restoration looks like.

For in truth, Jesus is making a larger point about the Kingdom of God. Many Jewish writers envisioned the Kingdom of God as a wonderful feast, to which the worthy would be invited. A few verses before today’s reading, in a portion of the 13th chapter of Luke that’s not in today’s lectionary, Jesus is preaching about the Kingdom of God – or to use inclusive language, the Reign of God. Someone asks him, “Lord, will only a few be saved?” And then Jesus goes on to talk about the heavenly banquet – where many who assumed they were on the invitation list – because they are always on every invitation list – find the door – a narrow door, Jesus tells us - shut against them, while, many others from the north, the south, the east, and the west come and sit down to dine with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the prophets.

You’re invited! I’m invited! We’re invited! This is the banquet to which God invites all of us, and to which God commands us to invite others. We’re invited! Make no mistake: there will be a motley crowd at the heavenly banquet. When we hear and respond to God’s invitation to the heavenly banquet, we bring our baggage along – our limitations, our brokenness, our sinfulness. But as we walk with Jesus, our lives are transformed so that we can leave our baggage and our brokenness behind.

You may remember this line from the musical Mame: “Life’s a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death.” Indeed, many are starving – physically, mentally, spiritually – for the life Christ offers. You may have heard the sermon illustration – I know I’ve used it at least once or twice – about a man who had a near-death experience, and was given vision of hell and of heaven. In hell, people were seated around a banquet table, overloaded with the tastiest, most appealing food imaginable. The people were equipped with long spoons – too long for them to reach their mouths with them. So the people around the table starved in the midst of plenty. In the man’s vision of heaven, he saw the same table, same abundant spread of wonderful food, same long spoons with which people couldn’t reach their own mouths. The difference is, in heaven, while nobody could feed himself, everyone all fed each other.

My prayer is that people will come to Emanuel Church from the north and south and east and west, and that our time together is like that heavenly banquet, where longtime members and new members alike feed and care for one another. May it be so among us. Amen.
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Feeling spiritually hungry? Come visit us at Emanuel United Church of Christ, 2628 Fillmore St (off Thompson). We worship at 10 a.m. www.emanuelphila.org