Rev.
Debra Cato
Luke
14:1; 7-14
Church
of the Indian Fellowship
August
28, 2016
Sit Wherever You Want
A lot of Jesus ministry; a
lot of his teaching happens around meals.
Have you noticed that? Jesus and
meals; Jesus and food seem to go together!
Jesus sits down with people, he eats a meal, he talks, and people change.
Besides the wedding feast
when Jesus turns water into wine, the first meal mentioned in the gospels is
when Jesus eats with Matthew. It’s after
Jesus calls Matthew to leave everything to follow him. Matthew is so excited that he throws a huge
banquet for Jesus and invites all his tax collector friends. He wants them to meet Jesus too.
The Pharisees and teachers
of the law have a fit about the company Jesus keeps! “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors
and sinners?” they ask. The religious
leaders are appalled that Jesus is sitting at a table and eating with Matthew
and his friends. From the very beginning
Jesus is scandalous!
Jesus feeds the crowds of
people who come to hear him teach – blessing five loaves of bread and two small
fish. The gospels tell us Jesus does
this twice – He feeds a crowd of 7,000 and a crowd of 4,000 and of course if we
count the women and children it’s likely twice this many people!
Jesus calls Zacchaeus,
another tax collector known for his crookedness, down from a tree and invites
himself to his house for dinner.
Zacchaeus stunned at Jesus’ acceptance, immediately confesses and offers
restitution to all his victims – just at the invitation of a meal with
Jesus!
There are many, many
stories of Jesus sitting down at a table and sharing a meal with people.
On the night of his arrest;
knowing that in only hours he would be arrested and humiliated and beaten,
Jesus eats a meal with his closest friends;
the 12 men he picked just 3 years earlier to follow him. A meal that was so important that we continue
to celebrate it in the church today.
And then there are the
stories after his death and resurrection...
starting as strangers sharing a meal but ending with the recognition
that they were actually sitting at a table and eating with the risen Lord and
Savior. Lives forever changed.
So today, Luke takes us to
another meal with Jesus …
and this time we get 2
teachings in one!
Jesus is invited to the home of a Pharisee for
dinner.
We know that the Pharisees
do not consider Jesus a friend! They do
not like him! They feel threatened by
Jesus! They don’t like the things he
says. They don’t like what he does. They don’t like the people he hangs out
with. They are watching him. They constantly try to catch him making a
mistake; catch him doing or saying something worthy of arrest. Something that will let them shut him up once
and for all. And yet, one of the
Pharisees invite him over to his house for a Sabbath meal. Jesus loves
eating with people so he says ‘yes’ to the invitation, and he shows up for
dinner.
Jesus is a
people-watcher. Do you like to watch
people? Do you like to be somewhere –
like a waiting room, or the airport, or a restaurant; maybe a party? Somewhere where you can watch people, see how
they behave, see how they respond to situations? Do you like to notice their similarities,
their differences, their idiosyncrasies?
Jesus notices people. He notices when a woman touches the very edge
of his clothes. He notices when a woman
at a well has a deeper story. When she needs to be accepted. He notices when a
man lying by a pool of water has a deeper story; when so-called sinners need
compassion rather than condemnation; he notices when lepers need touch rather
than exclusion. Jesus watches people and
he learns a lot by what he sees.
So it’s no surprise that when
Jesus shows up for dinner at the house of the Pharisee, he watches the other
guests arrive and take their seats at the dinner table. Jesus notices their behavior. He
notices that there was no assigned seating because the guests sit wherever they
want. And Jesus notices that wherever
they want to sit, turns out to be the seats closest to the host. The “best seats in the house.”[1] The seats of honor.
Jesus is never afraid to speak
his mind – even when he’s the guest of a Pharisee, and so he scolds them
saying, “When someone invites you to a
wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished
than you may have been invited.”
Jesus was not one to be
impressed by importance, was He? He
taught over and over again that what is important in the world is not what’s
important to God.
So once again he warns us
about worldly importance. He warns us
not to assume we are the most important person invited to dinner; the most
important person in the room. Jesus
says, always humble yourself. Assume
there will be someone more important than you.
Don’t exalt yourself and choose the customary seats of honor. Assume every invited guest is as important as
you or wait! Perhaps more important than
you! When you can sit wherever you want,
sit somewhere else. Leave the seats of
honor for someone else.
Now I need to stop for a
minute and remind you that humbling yourself does not mean
thinking less of yourself. Sometimes we think we are being humble when
we put ourselves down or when we think harshly of ourselves. But that is not being faithful to who God
calls us to be or what Jesus is challenging us to in this passage. True humility is not thinking of yourself any
differently from the way you think of anyone else. Humility is the capacity for being no more or
no less pleased with yourself than you are with anyone else. After all, we are all made in the
image of God. We are all worthy
in God’s eyes. No more or no less than
the next person.
But, Jesus knew that far
too often we jockey for position trying to be important in the eyes of others.
Vying for recognition. Choose me! Notice me!
Jesus reminds us that the humbled will be exalted in the end. God
chooses who will be lifted up!
Imagine how the guests of
the Pharisee – probably other religious leaders and important people in the
community heard this message! But Jesus;
well Jesus isn’t finished! What a dinner
guest he makes! Now Jesus turns to His
host. The Pharisee hosting this
meal. The Pharisee who invited Jesus
over for dinner in the first place.
Jesus turns to His host and
he says, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner,
do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors;
if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor,
the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be
repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
I think if Jesus were
speaking to us today (which He actually is by the way!) he would specifically
name the “the homeless, the immigrants,
the refugees.”
But the world tells us
differently. We are told they are the
ones who have done something wrong. They
are to blame for their circumstances. They
are the outcasts. Those are the ones we
are to turn away. They don’t belong at
our table. They aren’t invited. Notice the “us and them” language. We separate ourselves.
But Jesus speaks contrary
to what the world says. Jesus tells us
these are exactly the people we are to invite to our table. “Don’t
invite those who can repay you. When you
give a banquet, invite those who cannot repay you and you will be repaid at the
resurrection of the righteous.”
It’s easy for me to imagine
this banquet, this meal that Jesus envisions.
God called me to a ministry at Catholic Community Services Family
Housing Network. We are a housing provider
for families in Pierce County who are experiencing homelessness.
Our shelter program serves
families experiencing homelessness while they work toward
permanent housing. Family Housing Network has a Day Center with
kitchen, laundry, and
shower facilities. In the evenings, the families go to a church
that hosts the families for dinner and sleep for 1-2 weeks at a time after
which the families move to the next church and then the next... and the next.
Every night of the week,
there is a church in Pierce County, hosting a banquet for the homeless just as
Jesus envisioned. I see these families
gathered around the table – 20 - 25 mothers and fathers; children and infants,
sitting at a table in the church basements or fellowship halls eating a meal
prepared by church volunteers. These are
not guests that will ever repay their hosts.
Far too often they forget
to say thank you. Sometimes they
complain about the food; they don’t like it.
It’s not what they want.
Sometimes they don’t clean up after themselves or their children. They don’t always have “good manners.”
Sometimes the volunteers
sit down and eat with the families. They
get to know them. They develop
relationships with the adults. They
understand how hard it is. The
shame. They appreciate the
families. They love on their
children. They have compassion. They see beyond their homelessness; their
neediness; their circumstances and they see the people. They develop relationships and everyone is
transformed – the families and the volunteers.
The families are welcomed guests in the church. This is what we hope for. This is a good week.
Sometimes the volunteers
stand off by themselves and just watch the families eat. They criticize the lack of gratefulness; the
lack of appreciation. They watch for
them to do something wrong. They judge
the parenting skills; the behavior of the children. They complain about the lack of manners and
the lack of help with clean-up and chores.
The volunteers don’t sit down at the table and eat with the
families. They don’t get to know them. Relationships
are not established. There is no
transformation. They see the differences and they are too great. They are afraid of the homelessness; the
poverty. The don’t see the face of God
in the faces of the homeless. Hosting
the families is a chore; a burden. These
are hard weeks for the volunteers, the families, and our staff.
The world will tell you
that people are homeless because they are lazy and they don’t want to
work. They abuse government programs;
they want to be on welfare. They are
homeless because they are addicts or mentally ill or they don’t pay their
rent. They are criminals. Sometimes you hear that people are homeless
because they want to be homeless.
Sometimes some of this may be true.
Most often, families are
homeless because they are single parents working one or two minimum wage jobs
and they can’t afford the high rents in Pierce County and the cost of childcare
and utilities and food.
Or, they are a two-parent working
family, renting the same house for 11 years.
A family living a decent life.
Five great children, the oldest starting college at Central Washington
University. Without warning, their
landlord gives them a 20-day notice to move because he wants to sell the
house. They don’t have the average
$2,000+ in savings that it costs to move.
Suddenly, this average family is homeless.
Or because there is not
enough truly affordable housing in Pierce County.
Or they are a veteran who
served 3 tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and returned with PTSD and can’t find
employment and they’ve gone from hero to homeless.
Or she’s a Mom with 2
children fleeing domestic violence with only a suitcase of belongings with her.
These are the stories of
some of the people who came to us for help in the last two weeks. The stories are endless. They are as varied
as the people. If you sit down and get
to know them, you understand that you have a lot in common with these people. Homelessness is their immediate situation,
it’s not who they are.
Perhaps the only difference
between a homeless family and you is that you have a support network and they
don’t. A church family that could and
would be there in a crisis. If you got
that 20-day notice to move, your church could help. Or someone in the church could give you a place
to stay while you saved the money you would need to move.
I think both of Jesus’ teachings in today’s passage go
together. They are both about humility
and how we see ourselves in relation to others.
We are no better or no worse than others. We aren’t that different from one
another. We are all created in the image
of God. But we have to get to know one another to figure that out! We have to have humility and compassion and look
at others with the eyes of God.
Jesus knew that one of the best ways to do that is to sit down at
a table and eat together. Fellowship and
breaking bread. It works wonders. Not jockeying for the best seat – the seat of
honor. But sitting wherever you want,
knowing that whoever you sit by is important in the eyes of God. Created in the image of God. Relationships are built when we eat
together. Lives are transformed. And it’s when we let our recognition, our reward,
come from God that we will be truly blessed.
Eternally blessed.
The Church must counter the messages of hate and unacceptance the world
confronts us with every day with our actions of love and humility and
compassion. So I leave you with these
questions:
How can you live this out
in your life?
How can this church; this Body of Christ live this out as a
witness to
God’s love in the world?
God’s love in the world?
Amen
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