Lewis
says to Lamb Chop: I was very disappointed in how you acted when we had
dinner guests last night.
Lamb
Chop: Why?
Shari:
Because when the food was set at the table, you just grabbed all the food off
the plates and ate it up before anyone else had a chance!
LC:
Oh. (pause) Well, what would you have done?
Shari:
I would have waited to go last.
LC:
Well, you were last, so what’s the problem?
And it goes on like that, back and forth with Shari trying
to teach little Lamb Chop in vain about how to be a good guest and how to be a
good host.
In today’s Gospel, we see Jesus at the home of a Pharisee
trying to teach him about how to be a good guest and how to be a good host.
All through his Gospel, Luke shows us Jesus eating and
drinking and with all kinds of people, from Matthew, the hated tax collector,
right through to his Last Supper at Passover with his disciples. Luke’s
Gospel tells us how Jesus fed the multitudes...twice! In Luke’s Jesus is at table
with everyone, rich and poor, men and women, you name it!
But why all this eating and drinking? For Jesus, the meal,
the table and the banquet, is an image of what God’s reign in like. He says
that being in relationship to God is like being at a feast…where only strangers
and the poor are invited!
Jesus says that the kingdom of God is like coming in to the party
and not only being greeted but being escorted to the best seat in the
house. We don’t need to bluster, bully
or pretend. And we certainly don’t have to reach across the table and grab what
we want and stuff our faces. We don’t need to charm the bouncer at God’s
banquet, either. In today’s Gospel,
Jesus says that at God’s banquet, we are seen for exactly who we are and—surprise!
—we are invited to the head table!
But wait! There’s more! Look at Jesus’ invitation list. His banquet
is open to everyone! Typically, we invite only people we like, or people we
want to impress, or people who are like us, people we don’t want to offend.
That’s natural. But God want us to live beyond the natural, to go the extra
step into the supernatural: invite the stranger, the poor, the hungry, the
outcast. Now maybe we don’t do that in our homes, but we can certainly do that
here.
Jesus teaches us to welcome—and, more than that, to invite
and usher in—to the table everyone who hungers, especially those whose hunger is
beyond our ability to feed. Look at what Jesus teaches in the Gospels: the
banquet, the feeding of the four- and five thousand, the communion table, the
cross, all show us that God’s love is for everyone! And God’s grace is better
than any heavenly Uber-eats because we don’t so much go to the banquet, but God
brings it to us, where we live, as we are.
Are you a fan of old movies? I am! One of my favorite films
is called "Places in the Heart." It pops up from time to
time on one of the cable networks or you can find on Tubi or Amazon Prime or
one of those. Set in Texas during the 1930s, “Places of the Heart” is a
film about survival in the face of very difficult circumstances. It talks
about overcoming hatred with love, and how grace happens even among broken,
imperfect people. Sally Field plays a poor widow with small children, and she
won an Oscar for her role in this film. Her character takes boarders into
her home to help make ends meet on her dirt-poor farm. In the film, the two
borders are a blind man, played by John Malkovich, and an African-American man,
played by Danny Glover. Glover is also her farm hand and farm manager and
faces overt –sometimes violent – racism from Field's white racist
neighbors. Malkovich is blind but he sees the world for what it is. Every
meal that is set for the family and the guests becomes a kind of ritual, a
meeting place, and a touchstone for whatever else is going on.
What I remember most is the final scene, set in a small
country church during Holy Communion. As Communion is being distributed,
the camera shows us the congregation. There, all around Sally Field's
character, are not just the congregants, but also all the people who are and
have been important in her life, both the living and the dead. Despite
all the conflict and difficulties of life and all the imperfections of that
community, there they are. It’s not just a church service; it’s a heavenly
banquet attended by the communion of saints.
‘How often have you
been at a social gathering and gravitated towards the most popular, powerful or
supposedly “important” person in the room? It’s natural; maybe this person has
become popular because of some talent or notable accomplishment. So perhaps the
“popular” person seems more interesting. But often we gravitate towards that
person because of our own desire to be seen as popular, powerful or important
as well. That is, we hope for a kind of “rubbing off” of the person’s
importance.
“It’s natural, but
it’s not what Jesus asks of us. When I [Martin] was in high school, one of my
friends regularly spent time with fellow students who were seen as “uncool.”
This impressed me deeply. It was like he had some sort of superpower: He didn’t
care if others saw him as uncool. It was more important for him to treat others
with dignity and kindness.
“Who are seen as
“outcasts” today? That depends on what social milieu you are in, but you might
say transgender people, migrants and refugees, the poor, homeless men and
women, sometimes the elderly. Most of us aren’t so callous as to shut them out
(though some people do this publicly, and even gleefully), but are there times
when we could be more welcoming? It’s important to say without irony what we
all want to hear ourselves: “Friend, come up higher.”
Jesus takes it a
step further. Instead of taking the place of honor, take the place of humility…
join with the outcast, the left behind, and the stranger and the host of the banquet,
God our Creator, will say, “Friends, come up higher.”
A long time ago, when I was a student at Drew University, a
Methodist-related college in New Jersey, I went to chapel every Tuesday night
for Holy Communion. And every week, the celebrant (a religion professor and
Methodist minister) would recite these words from a hymn written by Charles
Wesley, Anglican priest and, with his brother John, founder of the Methodist
movement, that went like this:
Come, sinners, to the gospel feast;
let ev'ry soul be Jesus’ guest.
Ye need not one be left behind,
for God hath bid all human-kind.
The Prayer Book has the rubric that when the consecrated
bread and wine is presented to the assembly, the words “The Gifts of God, for
the People of God” are said by the Celebrant. And over the course of my
ministry it has become my custom to say something like to everyone at the
offertory, “…this is Christ’s table, and you are all welcome to it.”
And you know what? Whenever I say that invitation, something
like that movie image comes to my mind. Here we gather, in Christ’s presence
with all the people who have ever touched our lives, some living and present,
some moved away and moved on, some who have died, and yet… we are all here, at
home, at table, sharing a great and wonderful feast together.
Whenever we come to this table, we come face to face to two
truths: we are, all of us, the humble guest invited to “come higher” and we are
the hosts, the maitre de, as it were, of Christ’s banquet who invite all
comers, even the lowliest, the most unlikely people to sit and feast at God’s
head table.
+ + + + + + + + +
Scripture for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 17, Year C, August 31, 2025
Website for St. Mary's Episcopal Church, Dade City, Florida
Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here
Here is the bulletin for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, August 31, 2025, St Mary's Episcopal Church, Dade City, Florida.
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