Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (sermon, August 29, 2010)

Isaiah 25:6-9
Luke 14:1, 7-14

Tonight, several families from our church will be sharing a meal in their homes with other church members. Some families will be the hosts and thothers will be their guests. The event is called “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” because although the guests know whose house they will be dining in, the hosts don’t know who their guests will be. In fact, they won’t know until the guests show up on their doorsteps. So, how does one get ready for a party when you don’t know who the guests at the party will be? Well, I suspect it’s about the same as usual. The hosts will have spent time cleaning house, preparing food, and creating an hospitable, welcoming experience for their guests, even thought they don’t know who the guests will be.

Well, it just so happens that on this day, we hear a gospel story all about hosts and guests and dinner. Jesus is invited into the home of a Pharisee, one of the religious leaders of his day. This was not an uncommon practice; when there was a traveling rabbi, or teacher, in town, it was the custom of the religious leaders to have him over for dinner and get to know him. Make no mistake, the Pharisees, both the host and the guests, knew exactly who was coming to dinner, because back then, every social interaction revolved around one thing: status. Who are you, in comparison to me?

In the ancient world, comparing yourself to others was something people did all the time.It was a means of survival; every social situation required an astute knowledge of pecking order: who’s above you and who’s below you. To function in society, you needed to know exactly where you stood.

The text tells us that the Pharisees who gathered for dinner with Jesus were watching him closely, to see where he stood. But they weren’t the only ones doing some close watching. When the time came for the guests to take their places at the table, Jesus watched as each person attempted to sit in the most prestigious seats -- without, of course, actually making it look like they were jockeying for position. Seeing this game of musical chairs, Jesus decides it’s time for a parable, although what he says sounds more like advice from Miss Manners than eternal wisdom. He warns those gathered not to take one of the best seats at the table, because it would be humiliating to be displaced by someone who was considered to be better than you. Better to sit in one of the humbler seats, and if you’re lucky, you’ll be asked to move up to a better spot.

It sounds like rather mundane advice, but remember: this is a parable. And when Jesus tells parables he uses everyday examples like meals and farming and relationships to teach us about the kingdom of God. Jesus isn’t just giving the Pharisees good advice about their next dinner party, he’s offering them -- and us -- a glimpse into what things will be like when we finally arrive at THE dinner party -- God’s heavenly feast.

Jesus isn’t the first prophet to talk about the heavenly table that will someday be set. In our first reading from the prophet Isaiah, the prophet describes a banquet of rich foods and fine wines that will be served to all peoples, a banquet during which the host -- none other than God -- will go from person to person at the table, wiping away their tears and shame and suffering so that each person may feast with dignity and joy and peace.

Believe it or not, there was a time when the Israelites found this passage scandalous and downright offensive. Particularly after the time of the Israelites’ exile in Babylon, where people from other nations treated them so horribly, the religious leaders simply could not accept this prediction that in God’s heavenly kingdom God’s chosen people -- the Jews -- would feast together with non-Jews and that God would see them as equals. It was so offensive, in fact, that some later translators of the Hebrew Bible changed the words to the passage to indicate that this was a feast for Israelites only and the people from all other nations would be rejected and shamed by God. (1)

Like the passage in Isaiah, when Jesus tells the faithful Jews at that dinner party that in the kingdom of heaven, they had better not assume they have the best seats, it was offensive! After all, the Pharisees were the ones who worked so hard to do the right thing in God’s eyes...to obey the laws, to uphold the traditions of their faith, to make sure that children learned about God. They were a lot like those of us who try hard to be faithful disciples and who do whatever we can to support the church with our time, treasure, and talents. And wouldn’t it be offensive to us if someone came to one of our church dinners and said “hey, you better not assume that when you get to the pearly gates, God is going to say ‘well done, good and faithful servant.’”?

That’s pretty much what Jesus says to the Pharisees. It’s rude! It’s offensive! And he doesn’t stop there. He then turns to the host of the gathering and advises him on the guest list: “Next time, don’t just invite your friends and family to a party in hopes that you’ll get a return invitation someday. Invite those people who would least expect it -- like the poor, the lame, and the blind -- those who least expect it and who could never repay you.”

No doubt the silence that followed that remark was deafening. Now remember, table fellowship meant everything in this culture. If you sat down at a table with someone and shared a meal with them, then you declared to all the world that you and this person were equals, that you shared the same social status...and when you extended an invitation to someone, it went without saying that you expected an invitation in return.

There is an ancient proverb in the Middle East: “I saw them eating, and I knew who they were.” In other words, if you could see what someone ate and who they ate with, you knew all there was to know about them...or, at least, you thought you did. When Jesus told the Pharisees to invite outcasts to their dinner tables, Jesus is messing with deeply held cultural assumptions. And it doesn’t stop with the Pharisees, either. We make assumptions about who we eat with, too. I can’t speak for the rest of you, but the only meal I’ve had with someone who couldn’t repay me was when I stood behind a buffet at a homeless shelter, putting food on people’s plates and maybe offering them a smile. As a church, we give food to those who can’t repay us, but it usually involves taking our leftovers to a shelter which can use them to serve those in need.

It’s a hard word to hear and a hard word to preach, but Jesus is saying quite clearly here that instead of helping others from a distance, we ought to be bringing the poor and homeless into our homes, sitting them down at our dinner tables, opening a bottle of fine wine that we’ve been holding on to for a special occasion, and filling their plates with the best food we have to offer, like that beef tenderloin we were saving for the family Christmas dinner.

All week I have twisted and turned Jesus’ teaching around in my head to try and figure out how to make it palatable. I simply couldn’t figure out a way to stand up here and tell you that we are called to invite the outcasts of our society -- the runaways, the homeless, addicts, the poor -- into our homes, to eat with us at our dinner tables. I’m sorry to have to tell you that I failed to turn these hard words into something that would go down easy. I think it is wonderful that tonight many from our church will share a meal together in their homes, but today’s text makes quite clear that as a church, we are called to do more than that...we are called, not just to serve a meal to, but to sit down and eat with those people our society considers outcasts, those at the bottom of the pecking order, those who can never pay us back. We are called to humble ourselves.

Heather was my best friend in high school. We spent countless hours talking on the phone, hanging out at each other’s houses, and sometimes even studying together. But Heather’s schedule was always complicated by the fact that every night at 6:15, her family ate dinner together. Heather had three other sisters, all with busy schedules and activities, but eating dinner together was absolutely a non-negotiable for their family.

Well, whether they knew it or not, it turns out that Heather’s parents were on to something. Study after study by social scientists have proven that of all the things you can do for your kids, having dinner together on a regular basis is the best. Kids who eat dinner with their families “are more emotionally stable and less likely to abuse drugs and alcohol. They get better grades. They have fewer depressive symptoms...And they are less likely to become obese or have an eating disorder.” And for all of us who thought reading was the best thing we could do to increase our children’s vocabulary and set them up for success at school, here’s a shocking fact: family dinners are more effective than reading in terms of preparing kids for school. In turns out all those interactions children have and observe at the dinner table are the best possible preparation for school and for life. (2)

Now when social scientists talk about “family dinners” they mean, of course, a dinner shared by members of the same biological family -- parents and children, maybe grandparents and cousins too. But this isn’t the only family we belong to, and Jesus’ teachings -- not just here but in other places as well -- make clear that our family goes beyond shared DNA. We have a church family, yes, but in the kingdom of God, our family is all people, because all of us are God’s beloved children. Jesus calls us to start manifesting the kingdom of God here and now, by sharing meals with those who are not like us, and particularly those we might consider beneath us...because in the kingdom of God there is no rank, there is no status, there is no pecking order to be established. As offensive as it may be, in the kingdom of God, all are equal in God’s sight, and everyone is invited to the banquet.

What would it look like for us to extend a dinner invitation to someone who could never repay us? This is the questions I have pondered this week and I don’t know if I came up with any good answers, except to say that it will probably look different for each of us. It certainly wouldn’t be the easiest or most enjoyable meal we ever had, but it might just remind us that, here on earth, as in the kingdom of God, we are guests. The only host here is God, no matter whose table we are gathered around. We are guests at this incredible banquet of life God has prepared for us, and Jesus is calling us to share that good news with others, since all people are honored guests at the Lord’s table and none of us, no matter how faithful or righteous or wealthy we are, can repay God for what God has done for us.

And to remember what God has done for us we need look no further than the words of our first hymn today: “He came down to earth from heaven, who was God and Lord of all. And his shelter was a stable, and his cradle was a stall. With the poor, the oppressed, and lowly, lived on earth our Savior holy.” (3)

Humility is never easy. Yet it’s what Jesus tells us to do and it is what Jesus did for us, right up until he died on a cross. May we find the courage and humility to follow his example, knowing that one day, no matter how well we have succeeded, we will find ourselves at God’s heavenly banquet, freed, forgiven, and beloved. Amen.


Endnotes:
1. Kenneth Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes. IPV Academic, 1998.
2. Christine Carter, Raising Happiness. Ballantine Books, 2010.
3. Verse 2 of “Once in Royal David’s City,” Hymn #49 in The Presbyterian Hymnal, 1990.