Year C

Luke 14:1, 7-14

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

The Table of God

We are now half-way through the season of Pentecost which ends on Christ the King Sunday in November. As we have moved along in this season, we have been encouraged to learn from the history of God’s people through the ages and to learn from the scriptures that guided them through difficult times as well as the everyday times. Like those who have gone on before us, for the most part, we strive to live godly lives, and like them in all honesty and humility we have to admit how far short we fall of what God expects of us, as well as of our own standards. I mean, how often do we feel like the ‘cracked cisterns” Jeremiah describes. How sobering it is to realize that we need to be reminded constantly with the Hebrew Christians just how to live our lives. How grateful we can be that our Lord speaks to us in simple, story ways to lead us into truthful, upright living that brings us happiness and shows us where true humility and hospitality are found.

The texts today remind us of these two virtues that are essential to life, the virtues of humility and hospitality, seen in truthfulness and generosity. We are remind of who we are before God, created in God’s image and who we are before one another. We are reminded so that we might ask, what does it mean to stand in humility and truthfulness before one another? Contemporary moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre says there are two qualities that distinguish all human beings: vulnerability and dependence. Humility before one another requires that we recognize these qualities of vulnerability and dependence in each other. In the gospel text today, the humbled and exalted wedding quests are alike in their vulnerability and dependence.

The failure of those who take the better seat is that they considered themselves more or better than they are; they refused to see themselves truthfully. We fail in humility when we exalt ourselves by presuming that we are better than others or deserve more from others. Jesus, who was a very perceptive observer of human behavior saw right through to the Pharisees hearts and motives, as God sees through ours today. This is the fourth Sabbath controversy of Jesus which just deepens Luke’s theme of conflict as Jesus continues his  journey toward Jerusalem. Everything he says and does is being critically watched. So this is no innocent invitation to dinner. It’s been set up to try and trap Jesus, and he knows it, all too well.

The religious leader and guests expected to watch a spectacle, but now they become the spectacle. As Jesus watches the guests jostle for position, he tells two stories about dinner parties, both clearly critical of the party he is actually at, and both cut straight to the heart of what it is that the Pharisees and the other guests want to know about Jesus. He dismisses the honors and status of the world and calls everyone into the same meal, into the place of caring and generosity. It becomes the banquet where all the people around the table reach out their hands to those who cannot provide a feast themselves but who need to share in the feast.

This is the feast of the poor, whose hands reach out in need. It is the feast of the maimed, who may not be able to share the work. It is the feast of the lame, whose hands are crippled by disease. It is the feast of the blind and all those who need hands of love and mercy to reach out and invite them to the feast. This is a feast that everyone is invited to attend and our response should be to make sure that everyone gets an invitation. The whole point of the stories is that we are to live a life that would be genuinely pleased to see everyone included in the invitation to sit at Jesus’ feet. When we ourselves realize that we have done very little to earn our own invitation, we should not be resentful about God’s grace to others.

We and others are beneficiaries of the generosity and hospitality of God. God continues to set a table as God did for Israel by bringing it to a new land to eat its fruits, despite its rejection of God. They replaced God, the living water, with leaky cisterns, but God continues to be patient. God shows the truth of who God is and God’s generosity, which is not dependent on Israel’s behavior.  Jeremiah’s task is to announce the judgment of God upon the people. He calls the people of God back to commitment to God alone, rather than the gods of the nations and their values.

In our day, God is no doubt still lamenting our failure to listen, but is also, no doubt, still inviting us to take our humble place at a table that promises to provide generous food and drink. Made in God’s image, we have been created to live in that truth and generosity. The author of Hebrews today invites us into that truth and generosity, we are to share what we have. Singing a refrain that echoes numerous biblical passages, “Let mutual love continue” the writer then offers some thoughts about what mutual love means. The reference to welcoming the stranger reminds us of what Jesus calls us to in Matthew’s gospel chapter 25, where the “sheep”, unknowingly, had ministered to Christ in the hungry they fed, the naked they clothed, the prisoners they visited, and so on.

In acts of generosity, in nourishing others, the “sheep” received the gift of the kingdom, they are fed. Let’s be truthful, we live in a hungry world, marked by hungers of the body, and the soul. Efforts to meet the hungers of the soul is closely tied to the physical hunger of the world. Meeting the needs of the world, feeds not only those on the receiving end, but also those on the giving end. This understanding is increasing in our world. For example, in Finland, Japan and Norway, the homeless are provided jobs, permanent housing and support services. On this Labor Day weekend, we hear Jesus setting the agenda and call for meeting the needs of the most pressing human needs in our modern world. We hear Jesus call us to feeding, which requires humility, truthfulness, generosity and hospitality at the table.

It does seem to be the case that God hardwired our brains so that being generous to others gives us pleasure. You have experienced that, since we are children of God, to do what God does and to have a taste for looking and acting like Jesus, can anything nicer be said of us? Not everyone buys into it, for sure, but for those who do, there is the satisfaction of knowing that we can define ourselves more by what we share than by what we accumulate, that we recognize our host God at work in us when we follow the ways of Jesus Christ and love each other as he loved us.

George Herbert took up this theme of God as host and God’s generosity in his poem “Love Bade Me Welcome.” And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame? My dear, then I will serve. You must sit down, says Love and taste my meat; So I did sit and eat.” Every Sunday we are fed at the table by God, with the body and blood of Jesus to help us grow more and more into being the body of Christ in our world. Today, God invites us to eat at the feast in God’s kingdom. This is about God’s generosity and love for us, certainly not our merit.