A Place at the Table 8-31-25
A Place at the Table
Heb 13:1-8, 15-16; Luke 14:1, 7-14
Heb 13:1-8, 15-16
Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured. Let marriage be held in honor by all, and let the marriage bed be kept undefiled; for God will judge fornicators and adulterers. Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” So we can say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?” Remember your leaders, those who spoke the word of God to you; consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Through him, then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.
Luke 14:1, 7-14
On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely. When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
Prayer - Lord of All, we confess that we struggle with following you. We tend to look after ourselves and our needs, even when we are in church; you force us to consider the needs of others.
Keep telling us that we are not only those who have received your gifts, but also those of us who have an assignment: to invite all to your table. Forgive us when we act as if your open table is our possession, as if your invitation is exclusively for us. Stay with us, Lord, keep working on us, continue to speak to us, push us, judge us and refocus us until we are the disciples whom you deserve. Amen.
As you guys know I was in Montana last weekend for my daughter’s wedding. And for each of the wedding events, we ate like kings and queens. Thursday night was the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner at an beautiful country club in Whitefish. We ate on the porch overlooking Whitefish Lake – a beautiful evening setting in which we chose between trout and steak. There were around 40 of us in the wedding party including family and participants. The special drink for the evening was a Huckleberry Lemonade which was tasty to say the least. After the meal, we enjoyed a cookie dough souffle with chocolate ice cream. Yum!
Friday evening was another event – Welcome to Montana – and it was the first time in my life where I wore cowboy boots and a cowboy hat. And I had to laugh because I’m 100% sure I wasn’t the only one. In fact, one of the guests actually had his cowboy hat on backwards – the fashion police gave him a quiet heads-up and he quickly turned it around correctly. As Kent, my son-in-law to be welcomed most if not all of the wedding guests to Montana at a downtown saloon, he laughed that it was the largest collection of Jews, Blacks and Gays wearing cowboy attire in the history of the state. We enjoyed BBQ, chicken and waffles, beans, slaw and a peach flavored whisky sour. Like Thursday evening, it was a banquet for all of us.
Saturday was the grand finale – a beautiful outdoor setting for the 150 guests gathered in a field with magnificent Glacier National Park in the background. An enormous tent was erected on site for the reception and after-party. The gentleman who hosts the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating contest had been hired to emcee the wedding reception. Kent’s father wanted to hire him immediately for the Golden State Warriors. My wife and I were assigned to table 1 directly across from Kent’s father and step-mother, along with several other immediate family members on both sides. The meal was extravagant with wine and champagne for all. The setting was amazing and it was an event that may very well show up in Vogue magazine for weddings. A banquet like none I have attended.
All of this is pretty ironic in light of our gospel passage this morning where Jesus uses a banquet as the setting for an important lesson. After telling a story about banquets, Jesus makes explicit what may be implicit in the story when he directly declares, “All who lift themselves up will be brought low, and those who make themselves low will be lifted up”. Jesus, who, though he is the Son of God is also the lowly, humble servant, commands us to join him in his lowliness. He tells the guests at the Pharisee’s dinner to take the lower, more humble seats rather than the places of honor at the table. Jesus is a guest who doesn’t mind being critical of his fellow guests. Makes one wonder why these Pharisees kept inviting him to their homes for dinner!
Moving from behavior of the guests to the hospitality of the hosts, Jesus pronounces, “When you give a banquet, invite the poor, crippled, lame, and blind.” A dinner party for folks whom we don’t know, those who can never repay our hospitality or invite us? What sort of etiquette is this? Jesus’ commands violate our cultural mores and challenge conventional behavior.
Noting the guests scurrying for seats at the head table, Jesus urges a topsy-turvy etiquette. “When you go to these dinner parties, don’t scramble up to the best seats. You’ll look like a fool when your host arrives, and says, ‘You aren’t supposed to be sitting up at the head table! Go down to table number twenty-two!’
Then the host calls out, “You, at table twenty-two, yep you looking so self-effacing and humble, come on up to the head table.”
Jesus’ advice for seating at banquets: Always take the least prestigious places so that, when your host gets there the host will say, “Move up!” and will say to those on top, “Move down!” And then prickly guest Jesus turns to his host and says, “And when you give a dinner, don’t invite your friends and cronies. They will of course try to pay you back. Tit for tat. Instead, when you give a banquet, invite the poor, crippled, lame, and blind. And you will be blessed because they can’t repay you”. In saying this to both guests and hosts, Jesus turns upside down our most cherished values and widely practiced social ethics.
Luke doesn’t say, but I do wonder how Jesus’ attacks were taken that night at the banquet table. I bet that there are some of you who may be negatively reacting to Jesus’ table etiquette. Let me not put words in your mouth, I push back, as both a guest and host. I’ve worked hard, studied hard, sacrificed, paid high tuition to get a good job, to be financially independent, to provide for my family, to achieve some financial security, that is, to get a good seat at the table. In order to do well in life, that is, to be upwardly mobile, one must develop a network of family and friends. I regularly connect with them and even from time to time entertain them. Now to be told by Jesus that we’ve got the wrong idea, that in his kingdom our rules are not God’s rules, well, it’s quite a jolt.
We are here in church because, in one way or another, Jesus has invited us to his table. A highlight of Sunday worship for us is when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper and we all come forth to share in the bread and wine, the holy meal God offers to us. One of the highlights of Sunday worship for me as a pastor is when I get to stand in front and watch you come forward to the Lord’s Table. You come with open, receptive hands, expectantly, joyfully, as if to receive a gift. Christians are those who know that Christ invites them to his table.
But please note that’s not really the main concern of this Sunday’s gospel. Jesus is not inviting people to his table, he’s the guest at a Pharisee’s table. Pharisees were pious, well-informed, Bible-believing laypeople who sought to apply God’s law, Torah, to every aspect of their lives. But in the gospels, they are often presented as critics of Jesus. That makes all the more remarkable that in spite of any questions about or disagreements with Jesus, this unnamed Pharisee has invited Jesus to his table for a fine dinner with a number of guests.
And there at the table, Jesus takes over, making the Pharisee’s table his. Noting how some of his fellow guests jockey for positions at the head of the banquet table, Jesus tells them that those who climb up to the top will be brought low and those at the back of the line will be brought up to the front. I wonder how the guests took Jesus’ mocking of them?
Then Jesus turns on his host, the Pharisee, telling him that when he gives one of these banquets, he shouldn’t invited his friends and cronies, who will thereby be indebted to him. He is to invite the disabled, the marginalized, and the outcast who have no means of repaying the invitation. Jesus ends his attack upon the guests and the host by saying, “All who lift themselves up will be brought low, and those who make themselves low will be lifted up”
At some tables, we are guests, recipient of the host’s invitation. Jesus tells us, don’t try to be at the head table, taken the less honorable seat. Why? Because now that I’m here, the tables are being turned upside down.
Sometimes we are the host. We draw up a guest list of those we would like to have share our table. Often they are people who are our best friends. Why would we go to all this trouble for strangers? Many times they are people who have invited us to their tables. (“Honey, we really have got to invite the Jones. They have had us to their place twice now so we’ve got to reciprocate or well seem rude.”) Jesus tells his Pharisee host, “Don’t invite your friends and cronies. Invite those who do not have the means to repay your hospitality. Invite the outcast, the down and out, the hungry, and the disabled.”
But this Sunday Jesus says to those of us around his table, guests of his extravagant generosity, “Here’s who you should invite to your table, the ones that few people want at their table, those who, because of their physical or economic conditions, are excluded from bountiful tables.” Why can’t Jesus be happy with those who have said yes to his gracious invitation? Why doesn’t he just enjoy those of us who are here this day to share his bread and wine? That’s Jesus, not content until everyone, particularly the poor, the low, and the downtrodden is at his party.
And why can’t he just let us enjoy his meal together, we here at his table, gathered with those with whom we are best friends and most comfortable? Why does he attack our limited notions of a good guest list? Why won’t he just let us focus upon those who are here rather than push us to go out and invite those who are not here?
Like I said earlier, in the context of my daughter’s wedding last weekend, this passage hits pretty hard. I’m not sure if any of the folks Jesus is alluding to this morning were in attendance last weekend. If I take a moment and think about somebody who is lowly, someone whom life has pressed down, a person who is unlikely to be invited to sit in a prominent seat at the world’s banquet. Is Jesus looking across his table at you and saying, “And when you make, give or host a meal, why don’t you invite them?”
I’m not giving my daughter and son-in-law a hard time for the wedding weekend to celebrate them, their love and new life together. But it held up for me the importance of making sure that we as a church, as a body of faith, expand God’s table. It is not only for those who are well-to-do. It is a table that is open and welcoming for all – poor, rich, of different colors and languages, of different orientations and lifestyles.
I think it was the great preacher, Fred Craddock, who said (maybe he was thinking of this Sunday’s gospel) “A church is not best known for how many hungry people it feeds during the week but by how many hungry people kneel with them at the Lord’s Table on Sunday.” Who is absent who should be at the Lord’s Table with us?
Blessings upon you for risking a meal and dinner table conversation with Jesus. Sometimes, it’s not always comfortable to be at his table, but what a bountiful table it is. Let’s do what Jesus tells us, go out and invite someone for whom he has prepared a seat of honor to join Jesus and us at this bountiful banquet. Thanks be to God – amen.