Kingdom Hospitality

This is the sermon manuscript from the sermon preached on Sunday, September 1, 2013, the 15th Sunday after Pentecost.

Luke 14:1, 7-14
  One Sabbath, when he went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him carefully. 
  Now he told a parable to those who were invited, when he noticed how they chose the places of honor, saying to them,  “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this person,’ and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place.  But when you are invited, go and sit in 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 table with you.  For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
  He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid.  But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.

Jesus gets invited to a dinner party.  On the surface this seems like an innocuous event.  But if we were to spend any amount of time with Luke’s Gospel beyond the sometimes jarring journey that the lectionary takes us on, we would discover that to encounter a story of Jesus at dinner would be a rather common occurrence.  In Luke’s Gospel, it seems that to follow Jesus is to follow the food.  Jesus seems to be at the table quite a bit in Luke’s story.  So on the surface the story we encounter today seems like a common event.  But this common event holds an uncommon calling for us who dare to look close. 
    Jesus, invited to this dinner party, by a Pharisees no less, seems to be out of place.  Last week we heard a story of Jesus correcting a leader of the synagogue, perhaps a Pharisees, over the law and what it means to heal on the Sabbath.  Two weeks ago we heard about how Jesus came into the world to bring “fire” and conflict.  Jesus does not seem to be smart choice for a dinner guest.  He does not seem to be one for polite chit-chat over a nice meal.  Earlier in Luke’s tale he is accused, and correctly, for dinning with “tax collectors and sinners.”  So it seems odd that a ruler of the Pharisees would have Jesus over as a dinner guest.  But we do not have to get too far into the story to understand why.  And there it is, right there in verse one, “they were watching him closely.”
    This is not surprising on multiple levels once we understand the flow of the Luke’s story and its context.  Jesus has not been quiet about his ministry and he has not been averse to butting heads with the Pharisees and other religious leaders over their lifestyle and understanding of the law.  So far in Luke’s story, Jesus has not received any death threats, but he is being watched very closely.  He has caught the eyes of those in power. He is upsetting the balance and must be monitored.  And that’s not an uncommon reality.  Those who upset the status quo are watched closely.  Martin Luther was watched closely by Rome and the German princes.  Martin Luther King Jr. had his phone tapped by the F.B.I..  So take heed, if your are going to speak out against those in power.  Be prepared to be watched.
    The historical context of this story is also important.  Luke’s world was different than ours on some level.  While on the surface this dinner party seems to be a rather unremarkable event to us (its just supper), meals were a complex web of social rules and realities in the ancient world.  Meals were an opportunity to demonstrate power and privilege.  The guest list and the seating chart were statements of who was in power.  The Roman world in which Jesus lived was dictated by patronage and reciprocity.  Everyone from the emperor in Rome to the lowest peasant in the farthest village of the empire were bound in the same system of gift and obligation.  If someone gave you a gift or invited you to a meal, you were bound by cultural ethics to return the favor.  Where you sat at the table had everything to do with your status and influence.  Meals in the ancient world were extremely political events.  So this simple dinner party came with large strings attached.  And it makes the story that Luke tells even more radical.  
    This morning we get two stories from Jesus, two bits of social advice that he offers to those gathered around the table.  The first one deals with how you pick your seat at a banquet.  It is on the surface a rather simple reminder; “don’t overstep your status.”  It seems to play right into the cultural context of his time.  If you over step your status, you will be shamed into taking a lower seat and your influence will take a hit.  Better to be safe than sorry.  Better to take a lower seat in hopes that you will be called forward, and thus honored, in front of the other guests.  It seems simple.  But remember, Jesus is in a room full of Pharisees, a group of whom he has been very critical in the past.  
    Just a few chapters ago Jesus very publicly decried the Pharisees, stating “Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces.”  This call to take a lower seat is about humility and not exploiting your power.  The Pharisees seemed to be notorious in Luke’s Gospel for overstepping their call, playing into the cultural script and forgetting whom they have been empowered to serve.  This call to humility is a critical reminder to those whom Jesus is reclining at the table with to not play into the social constructs of the day and to remember the humble role to which they are called.  Do not play to the honor rules of the culture for you are already honored by God as a member of God’s kingdom.   
    The second story turns the tables on another complex of power that Jesus knew very well.  This is known as the patronage system.  The patronage system of the ancient world was a gift-obligation construct that governed the lives of all in Jesus’ day and it was a corrupt display of power.  This was a system that benefited only those in power, yet was the norm for everyday life.   By the rules you only invited those who could return the favor.  To risk inviting someone who could not would be to invite a potential lose of status.  These are the rules of the world, but this is not how God’s kingdom operates.  God’s kingdom turns this way of life upside down. 
    In God’s kingdom, God is the ultimate benefactor(patron).  All gifts flow from God and are given freely to all people.  We are all connected through God’s gifts.  The ultimate gift is the new life we have in Jesus Christ.  We are joined into this kingdom through Christ’s death and given new life to fully participate.  The story from Luke this morning invites us to a radical reversal of the table hospitality we demonstrate in this world.  If God has invited all to the table, who are we to set limits of our own?  This story invites us to take risks in our lives as disciples.  The guest list includes those who cannot repay us.  This list invites us to dream of what the world could look like if we embodied God’s kingdom. 
    Our brother Martin Luther was a dreamer.  He saw a broken world and a broken church that had pushed the poor and marginalized away from the table.  Luther, inspired by what he found in scripture and by the radical love of God’s kingdom, used his life to re-imagine the world around him.  He was a risk-taker for the sake of the Gospel and for the sake of God’s love for the world.    
    Our brother Martin King was a dreamer.  This week we commemorated the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and Dr. King’s famous “I Have A Dream Speech.”  King saw the broken world and imagined what it could look like if we embodied God’s kingdom.  We have inherited the torch of imagining what the world could look like if we embodied the radical hospitality of God.  
    If we clutch with tight fists to old rubrics of power and control we will never see the potential of God’s kingdom realized.  This radical display of kingdom hospitality was put on show for the world to see on the cross when God turned an instrument of state sanctioned death into a symbol of new life for all people.  The cross is the beginning of God’s kingdom realized in the world.  The cross symbolizes new life, given freely to all people.  This is the hospitality of God’s kingdom; new life given freely for all people.  A kingdom where the table is set for all people regardless of status or privilege.  A kingdom where we turn our buildings inside out on a weekly basis as we seek to embody the cruciform life of Christ in our lives.  A kingdom where walls that divide are turned into life giving tables where cultures intersect to share a meal.
    I have heard stories of communities of faith tossing bread over the walls at the boarder between Texas and Mexico in an international display of solidarity and an embodiment of the table of God’s kingdom.  The table fellowship that Jesus calls us to does not know or understand boarders.  As Bishop Hanson said in his Sunday sermon last July at the national youth gathering “you don’t need a green card to come to this table.”  This kingdom hospitality calls us to be dreamers and to image a world that looks like God’s kingdom.  This radical kingdom hospitality calls us to take risks for the sake of the Gospel.  
    Friends in Christ, I have a dream.  I have a dream that every time we gathered for worship we would spend time gathered around God’s table to be refreshed and renewed for our kingdom work in the world.  I have a dream that this faith community, that we, the people of Bethany, would be a church of risk-takers for the sake of the Gospel.  That we would be risk-takers for the sake of love.  I have a dream that our time spent around God’s table would help us to re-imagine the world around us as God’s kingdom.  I have a dream that we would be dreamers open to the movement of the spirit and the radical hospitality of God’s kingdom.