When [Jesus] noticed how the guests
chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. “When you are invited by
someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case
someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host
who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’
and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are
invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when the host comes, he
may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the
presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves
will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” He said also
to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not
invited your friends or your brothers or your relatives or your rich neighbors,
in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you
give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you
will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the
resurrection of the righteous.”
Luke 14:7-14
If you ask any preacher, they will more than likely tell you
that there are many Scripture passages so rich, so full of imagery, so full of
story and challenge, so full of different and rich ways to share the message,
that oftentimes it is difficult to focus on one way to tell the story, one way
to share the message, one way to get the meaning across in one simple sermon.
This just happens to be the case with today’s passage from Luke’s gospel—this
passage about Jesus and the guests at a wedding banquet, a passage in which
Jesus uses a parable to challenge us and share good news with us in so many
deep and profound ways. When I went to bed Tuesday night, I was pretty
convinced I had found my angle for today’s passage, hopeful that I would be
able to preach it many other times and share many other messages.
But then I woke up Wednesday. As I turned on the tv to watch the
daily news, I was reminded that our nation was celebrating the 50th anniversary
of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, a speech that transformed
our nation in the midst of a crucial time of change and challenge. As I do on every Wednesday during the school year, I walked to the campus student center to have lunch with our students. We began to talk about this historic day in reference to the new movie "The Butler," a movie that chronicles the journey of an African-American man who served with honor, grace, and dignity as the White House butler for Presidents Truman through Reagan. The story tells the tale of this time in our country 50 years ago as it shows the images of Freedom Riders being burned out of their bus, young college students being cussed out and spat upon as they tried to integrate lunch counters all over the south, of young children soaked by fire hoses and snarled at by awful police dogs in Birmingham. The young women who were talking about the movie, both of whom grew up in Alabama, talked about how hard it was to see these awful images of our state, how hard it was to grow up seeing the beauty and goodness of our state while also learning to forgive our awful and racist past. It was a fascinating conversation, and I was thinking about all of it as I walked back to my office after lunch, thinking about King's speech in relation to our Gospel story.
As I got back to the church and walked into the door by my office, I heard the tv blaring from the room down the hall, heard MLK's unmistakable and distinguished voice booming from the speakers. I figured that one of our students had stopped by to hang out or eat lunch in between classes, so I popped my head in to say hello. But as I walked into the room, I noticed that it was someone else--not one of our students, but an older, dirty, disheveled, obviously poor African-American man named Wendell, a man who had stopped by my office many times before to ask for money, a man who I actually found in my closed office one day this summer when I came back to the church. From my experiences with him, I think he also might be suffering from some mental illness. When he saw me, he said, "Hi, Rachel. I stopped by to see if I could borrow some money, but you weren't here, so I sat down to watch this for a few minutes." Still feeling weird after finding him in my office this summer, and not really knowing what else to do, I simply sat down in the room with him to watch the beautiful and challenging speech once again.
"Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children." As Wendell and I sat there and watched, Dr. King's words rang out in a new way for me:
We can
never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel,
cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.
We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller
ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are
stripped of their adulthood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating
"For Whites Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and the Negro in New York
As I sat
there with Wendell, I thought about him, about what he must have been thinking,
about how degrading it must be for him to come and ask this younger, white,
privileged woman for money so often. I thought about how desperate that must
feel, about what his life must be like. His body is heavy with the fatigue of
begging, and I wondered if he has the shelter of a home, much less a hotel or
motel. I wondered if he has the necessary documents to procure an ID so he can
simply vote, wondered about his mobility and how he gets from place to place,
wondered about his life, if he can indeed feel satisfied with the justice and
mercy for which Dr. King fought and yearned. I felt very convicted, wondering
why I had never stopped to ask Wendell his story, never stopped to ask about
how he got to this place. I felt convicted that I had offered him money for
food when I had it, but had never offered to take him to a restaurant downtown and
set a banquet meal for him.
And before
I knew it, as Dr. King was finishing his speech, I began to feel my eyes
welling up and tears rolling down my cheeks. I’m not gonna lie—it kind of
turned into an ugly cry, actually—so ugly that I think it scared Wendell since
he left as soon as we had finished watching the speech. I sat in my office
chair for a few minutes after he left, thinking that I clearly have more work
to do to help achieve this dream. I hesitate to speak for Dr. King, and I
certainly wouldn’t dare to put words into his mouth, but I hope, imagine, that
our passage from Luke today had a huge effect on his ministry, on his
preaching, on his mission to provide an equal table for everyone. Throughout
his ministry, Dr. King fought for equality for everyone, regardless of skin
color, regardless of place, regardless of circumstance. And even though his
fight for racial equality is the most highlighted piece of his mission, he also
fought for economic and social justice, and as his life was drawing to an awful
close, for an end to the violence of a war that he thought was unjust. You know,
a lot of me wonders what his response would have been to our wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq, what he would be thinking today as we contemplate what to
do about Syria.
I have to
believe that Dr. King was heavily influenced by this story of the wedding
banquet, as most ministers are. Seating at banquets during Biblical time was
weighted heavily on place in society, on money, on privilege and power. The
most powerful guests got the best seats, the seats of honor. It was presumed
that less powerful guests would have to move a seat lower down as the rich and
more powerful guests filtered in, late probably, expecting a show as folks
moved to worse seats so the more powerful could take the seats of honor.
But Jesus turns
these presumptions on their heads. He has a different vision of what the
wedding banquet should be like, a different vision of what should happen in the
wedding banquet between us and the church: “When you are invited,” Jesus says,
“go and sit down at the lowest place…when you give a luncheon or a dinner, do
not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich
neighbors…invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will
be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for your will be repaid at the
resurrection of the righteous.”
Go out and
invite the least of these, Jesus says, the ones who are too left out and diminished
to ever be invited to a fancy wedding feast; the ones who are so quickly judged
by their circumstance in life; the ones who are deemed too unclean to even
enter the temple for worship. Jesus calls for the banquet table to be set—but
not set as usual with people of power and privilege. Jesus calls for a table to
which everyone—everyone—is invited, a table open to everyone. Jesus calls for a
topsy-turvy table, a table set upside down, a table of equality where every
seat is equal and every person invited, fed, clothed, and cleansed as the child
of God that they are. We don’t get to make the choice of who is invited, of who
has to move to worse seats—because everyone is invited and no one has to move.
It is a table of equality, of grace, of love.
That is the
messianic banquet, the messianic vision. Jesus sets this vision for us and
calls us to live it out. But let’s be honest. All we have to do is look around
and realize that there is still more work to do. When some of our cities rule
that churches can’t give food to homeless people because of trash left
behind—without even bothering to wonder if the homeless have more worries on
their mind than trash—we have lots of work to do. When families in our very own
community have to come to our Presbyterian Community Ministry because they have
a choice to either buy food for their children or pay their power bill, we have
lots more work to do. When our prisons are busting at the seams, we have more
work to do. When people are discriminated against, especially in the church
where they are told that the table is set for everyone else but them, for any
reason—because of their race, gender, sexuality, religion, or status in
society, we have more work to do. When our nation debates violence as a
solution to violence in another country, we clearly have more work to do. So
much more work to do.
I was blessed
to celebrate at an actual wedding feast last weekend as I served communion at
the wedding of a dear friend of mine. The communion table at the church, Black
Mountain Presbyterian in Montreat, really struck me. While most of our
communion tables say, “Do this in remembrance of me,” this one was a bit
different. The front of the table read, “Has everyone been fed?” What a
beautiful question to ask. What a necessary one to ask. As Christians, maybe
those are the kinds of questions we need to be asking as we set Christ’s
banquet for each other:
Has everyone been treated equally?
Has
everyone been welcomed?
Has
everyone heard the good news?
Has
everyone been invited ?
HAS
EVERYONE BEEN FED AT CHRIST'S TOPSY-TURVY TABLE?
Have they? Thanks be to God. Amen.
