Sermon:  “Table Talk”
Have you ever heard this table grace? “Be present at out table, Lord, be here and everywhere adored...” When I went to camp, we used to sing it at meal times. It’s a prayer that Jesus will be present with us at our table as we eat together. Perhaps we need to rethink this in the light of today’s reading from the Gospel of Luke. Do we really want Jesus at our dinner table? Jesus was not always the most congenial dinner guest.
On the occasion described in today’s reading, Jesus is invited to Sabbath dinner at the home of one of the prominent Pharisees. By this time in Jesus’ ministry tensions have developed between him and the Pharisees. Jesus has charged some of the Pharisees with hypocrisy; the Pharisees have charged Jesus with breaking the Sabbath. Luke tells us that the Pharisees are watching Jesus closely, keeping an eye on him, lest he step out of line. And sure enough, he does. While everyone is sipping their aperitifs, he heals a man with dropsy, thus breaking the rule about working on the Sabbath, right in front of the Pharisees’ noses. Then he insults his fellow guests at the table. Watching them scramble for the best seats at the table, he pokes fun at them with a parable about where to sit when invited to a wedding banquet. After that, Jesus has the gall to tell his host who to invite to his next dinner party. Jesus’ table manners have a lot to be desired. In fact, he has turned out to be a rather rude dinner guest. His name probably won’t be on the guest list for the next banquet, at least not at any of the Pharisees’ homes.
Why is Jesus so concerned about table etiquette, about where to sit at a banquet and who to include on the guest list? Let me give you a clue before we dig more deeply into his sayings about who to invite to your next dinner party. Throughout the scriptures, the kingdom of God - the time when things will be the way God wants them to be - is often described as a lavish banquet, with plenty of good food and fine wine, freely offered to all who hunger and thirst. Meals in the Bible are symbols for the kingdom of God, God’s new community of justice and love. In Luke’s Gospel particularly, meals say a great deal about who and what is important in God’s kingdom. So Jesus’ isn’t just talking about behaviour at banquets. He’s talking about kingdom behaviour, about how we treat one another in God’s realm, and who is invited to God’s table. And it’s not too much of a stretch to relate his sayings to the church, since the church is something like a school where we learn and practice how to live in God’s kingdom, how to behave according to God’s rule.
Jesus says to his host, the one who had invited him to the banquet, “‘When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbours, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid.’” This goes against the grain. According to the rules of etiquette in Jesus’ day, if you were planning a dinner party, you would invite people from your own circle of family and friends, people of your own social class. And it only made sense to invite those you knew would reciprocate by inviting you in return, thus keeping you in the right social circles.
Lately I’ve been reading a lot about the practice of hospitality in the church. You might remember that when Kathy shared her reflections on the Annual Meeting of Maritime Conference, she referred to a book by Robert Schnase called Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations. Well, the first of those practices  is “The Practice of Radical Hospitality.” Schnase defines hospitality as “the active desire to invite, welcome, receive, and care for those who are strangers so that they find a spiritual home....” And of course our Church Promotion Committee has been working on ways to invite and welcome people in the community to our church and Sunday School. So when I reflected on these words of Jesus, I related them to the way we invite, or don’t invite, people to church.
We are inclined to invite people we like, and people who are like us; people with similar interests and lifestyles; people from the same racial, ethnic, and economic backgrounds as us; people who move in the same social circles we do. We are reluctant to reach out to those who are different, those who seem strange to us, those we feel would not fit in. And we are not inclined to invite those whom we feel have nothing to contribute. In fact, if and when we do invite people to church, we often have ulterior motives. We want them to put money in the offering plate and help us meet our budget. Or we want them to teach Sunday School, or sing in the choir, or fill one of those unfilled positions on the Unified Board. When we invite people to church solely because of what they can do for us, they can smell the ulterior motives.
Or maybe we’re too timid to invite anyone to church, because it would make us uncomfortable, or because we’re afraid they’ll think we’re being too pushy; because we don’t know what words to say, or because we haven’t really thought about why we think church is important. When was the last time you invited someone to church?
Jesus tells his host to revise his guest list: “‘when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.’” This certainly goes against the etiquette of reciprocity, of tit-for-tat. The people Jesus says to invite are those who would never be able to reciprocate. They are those who (I hate to say it) in his day were considered unclean and undesirable - social outcasts who were excluded from community life because of their physical and financial limitations.
I think there’s an important message here for us in the church. Jesus is reminding us that this is not our church, but his church; not our table, but his. He is calling us to invite not just people we like and people who are like us, but people who are different from us, people who are outside our circle, on the margins of society - those whom others overlook, ignore, or reject. He is calling us to invite not just people who have money to put in the collection plate, people who have recognizable gifts to share, or who are capable of filling positions on the Board, but people who need to be accepted, who need to be part of a caring community - people who may not find a welcome anywhere else. He is calling us to offer a gracious invitation without ulterior motives; to invite and welcome people into the church out of genuine love for Christ and for others, so that, in the words of Robert Schnase, they may “find a spiritual home and discover for themselves the unending richness of life in Christ.” He is calling us to practice radical hospitality that breaks down the barriers of race, culture, class, ability, and status. He is calling us to ignore social norms and join with him in creating a community that invites and includes everyone.
When Kenn and I were at Berwick Camp this summer, we discussed this passage from Luke at Bible Study one morning. A woman stood up and said she was excited about her church, St. Andrew’s United in Truro. “This is the first time I’ve ever been part of a church that’s actually growing,” she said. “Every Sunday there are new people, “ she told us; people of various ethnic and social backgrounds, people of all sorts, including immigrants, gays, lesbians and transgendered folks, street people. “Everyone is welcome,” she said, “no matter who or what they are.”
This week, we are extending a wide welcome to people in the community to join us for worship and Sunday School. The Church Promotion Committee has revised and reprinted the church flyer that was produced last year. You may remember that the drawing illustrating “Spirit in Community, Community in Spirit” is an original created by Sandi. Last year we mailed the flyers to certain letter carrier walks in the Spryfield area where we thought there might be a lot of families with young children. This year we decided that instead of mailing the flyers, we would place some in strategic locations such as the Captain William Spry Centre, the Single Parent Centre, and St. Paul’s Food Bank Café, and rely on volunteers from the congregation to deliver them to certain areas, particularly the newer subdivisions such as Kidston Estates, Silver Estates, MacIntosh Estates, and Governor’s Brook. In addition, the Church Promotion Committee has prepared a number of postcards to hand out to children in the community, inviting them to come and bring their families to a pancake breakfast and Sunday School registration on Sept. 12. The drawing for children to colour, above the caption “Jesus loves the children,” was created by Joe. These postcards have been given to the children who attended Camp Paul this summer. And we’re asking each of you to take some and give them to children and families in the community who don’t have a church home - your neighbours next door or down the street, your nephews and nieces, your grandchildren. Here is an opportunity for you to be “an ambassador for Christ,” to use the apostle Paul’s term; to invite someone to “Join us in Sunday Worship” and Sunday School, to find here in this beautiful church with its brand new roof and freshly paved parking lot, as it says on the back of the flyer, “a place for you to grow in faith and love.” Studies have shown that almost 80% of people who come to church come because they have been invited by a friend or relative.
The practice of hospitality calls us beyond our comfort zone. Extending a wide welcome in the name of Jesus is scary, even risky. But Jesus promises that in practicing radical hospitality, in inviting and welcoming those outside our circle, we will receive blessing: “‘and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you....’” In the Letter to the Hebrews, we heard this instruction given to those who were part of the early church: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.’” This is a reference to instances in the Hebrew scriptures of the Old Testament where God appeared to God’s people in the form of a stranger.
The surprise blessing is that sometimes, when we think we’re just being kind to a stranger, practicing hospitality, we may be welcoming God, experiencing the blessing of God’s presence in our midst.
Yvonne Delk, the first black woman to be ordained in the United Church of Christ in the USA, tells about a time she went to a church in downtown San Francisco, filled with people of all races, classes, and sexual orientations. She moved into a crowded pew and sat down. Then she saw another person crowding into her pew, coming a little too close for comfort. She could not tell if it was male or female, but it was obviously a street person. She pretended not to look. Suddenly the minister invited the congregation to stand and greet one another with the peace of Christ. Reluctantly, she reached out to the street person beside her, closed her eyes, and reached out for the embrace. In her own words, “Slowly I felt the arms reach back to embrace me. They held on to me so tight that I could hear the sobs and feel the heart beat. ... How long had it been since this person had been held....? I was in the presence of a huge mystery. A door swung open. I was in Christ’s presence. I was being held. I was being loved in spite of myself. My ‘holier than thou’ posture had been pierced. I opened my eyes, looked into the face, and saw the living Christ. ....”
The mystery is that in welcoming the stranger, we welcome Jesus into our lives and into our church; in giving hospitality to those who need a spiritual home, we receive the living Christ.
Thanks be to God for the glorious gospel.