September 2, 2007 - Luke 14: 1-14 Proper 17C
The Rev. Stephanie E. Parker

"Dinner Is Ready"


(Non-sequiter)

When I was a junior in high school, a friend of mine, who was a senior, came to live with my family to finish out the school year because her parents had to relocate. Nell came from an introverted family that consisted of a total of four people. We, on the other hand, were a robust, extroverted band of 4 children and mother and father. After what I can only imagine was a pretty tough adjustment, one night Nell said, "You know, I think I finally figured your family out...you guys are like the Walton's---except on acid!"

I have to say I found that a pretty apt description. We were an odd mix of a loving, nurturing, family with core values as well as some pretty deep dysfunction---dysfunction that included but was not limited to mental illness and a drug addicted sibling. But somehow there were always certain wholesome constants that provided grounding for all the chaos. I believe the strongest foundation of all was our evening meal.

Every night almost without fail the whole clan managed to sit down as one at the dinner table and constitute a place of connection that created the stability and love that saw us through most of the challenges.

We knew all the proper manners and if we had an occasion to have dinner at a friend's house glowing reports of our grand gentility always made my mother smile and take pride that at least we were not savages in public! At home our table, however, was more like barely controlled chaos-there was laughing and sharing and squabbling and usually everyone was talking all at the same time---the whole scene made sense to us, but to an outsider...yes, we were probably like the Walton's, but on acid.

But there was always a whole lot going on at that table. There were moments of forgiveness, moments of reconciliation, moments of shared disappointment as well as the sharing of our successes. There was also a lot of good food cooked by a woman whose sole desire was to love and nurture her family---and if all else failed she could always count on us to make our way to that dinner table so that there was at least the potential that all could be made well over the breaking of the bread. Every evening we would hear her call: "Dinner's ready!" And we would all come running to the table.

This morning Jesus reminds us of that same power of the Table to reach into our lives and call us to places of shared fellowship and belonging. I think Jesus sees the table as a place where we can gather together out of our vast diversity and remember the great gift of what it feels like to belong to something larger than our individual selves.

In Luke's gospel Jesus is constantly at the Table. If he is not somewhere at a dinner he is usually traveling in between. Most of his greatest teaching in Luke happens at the table up to and including Jesus' final supper with his disciples. Table fellowship for Jesus and the early Church was no simple break for filling their stomachs. Dinner parties and banquets were laden with a variety of meanings and expectations that spoke to their religious, societal and economic understandings of life.

So into this rich mix steps Jesus and he takes the opportunity of table fellowship to teach us---- Jesus teaches us time and again at these meals of the wideness of God's mercy and welcome. For Jesus, the kingdom of God is best described as a great banquet where all are welcome at the table. Today, as at many other meals, he is confronting the great human frailty of pride of position and how we quite often want to put up a velvet rope and VIP list at heaven's door.

Now, if we are honest and if we can put away our soft and fluffy image of Jesus as a cross between Gandhi and Yoda, we will have to admit that Jesus' behavior here is a bit difficult. One articled compared this particular scene with Jesus to an old Bloom County comic strip---do you remember Bloom County? I loved that comic strip.

Well, in this particular scene it's Thanksgiving Day, and Milo, the precocious, politically active youngster, has been asked to offer the blessing for the meal. "Dear God," he says, "we thank you for this meal, and for this turkey, which was once a living breathing creature, brave and free, capable of nurturing its young with almost human affection.
Anyway, it's dead, and we're going to eat it now. Amen."

And of course, Milo gets booted to the back porch because this isn't exactly the blessing his family had in mind to begin a warm, festive holiday meal. He has spoiled the mood, not to mention their appetites. But Milo is unrepentant. You can almost see him wondering: isn't my conscience more important than any mood?1

I guess this is why Jesus' dinner party dust up has the power to make us uncomfortable. In polite society isn't it just the better part to sit quiet even if we are a bit uncomfortable with what is going on around us? But today Jesus begs the question: what is more important---God's mercy and truth or societies do's and don'ts?

Now, I do not think it was Jesus' intention that the good, sincere Christian folk of the world run around making scenes at nice parties to usher in the kingdom of God! But, I think Jesus does desire that those who profess to follow him should understand that the kingdom of heaven has no velvet rope---that there is no hierarchy at God's table.

And we would also be very careful not to distance ourselves to quickly from the Pharisees in this piece. As Andrew said last week, it is enticing to jump up on the bandwagon and point at these people of faith and yell HYPOCRITE!, but if we do that we will miss Jesus' point and possibly a chance for our own transformation.

We will do well to remember that even as Jesus ate with the outcast and sinner and called the establishment to swing wide it's doors, Jesus did not find it necessary to exclude the religious elite in order to include tax collectors and prostitutes; Jesus' spirit is inclusive in the broadest possible sense.2 The point is my friends is that Jesus wants us ALL at the table. Jesus wants us to not only be reconciled with God, but to be reconciled with one another.

It is quite clear that Jesus sees the Table as that place where all peoples meet and are healed by God's love. The mystery of the Eucharistic feast is that it has the power to heal not only our individual wounds and brokenness, but through the power of God, as we gather as one community, we are healed of the wounds we have inflicted on one another.

The world bears deep wounds that have been cast across a number of man-made barriers. But at God's table prejudice is cast aside in favor of inclusion. The hatred of bigotry is left behind as we begin to see each other through God's eyes. Once this begins those things that separate us like race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious differences, gender, and poverty---we all know the laundry list---these barriers crumble at the Table that God sets.

I believe it is Jesus' hope that our love for God becomes so great that our greatest fear is not what kind of rabble are we letting in, but instead we tremble with heartbreak to think that there is someone, anyone alive who has not tasted the sweetness of this feast God has prepared for us.

You see, once Christ penetrates our hearts and minds there is no longer much room for judgment and fear of those who are not like us--- and our deepest yearning is that all might come to share in God's grace and mercy. This is our call; this is what Jesus teaches us again and again.
As Father Tom leads us through the Great Thanksgiving this morning, I hope you will listen to it with fresh ears---I hope you will rediscover the joy and hope that is contained in these words that tell our common and sacred story.

So, I guess I'm back to my early memories of that family dinner table. Some of my favorite memories of my childhood and family life reside at that table. It is where still to this day we can gather and sit side by side and see one another eye to eye no matter where all of individuals lives have taken us. Even those who have gone ahead to that heavenly banquet are still at the table with us in our shared memories and laughter.

The Church is the same. We are all just one chaotic, imperfect family made whole in this ritual gathering. We gather here to remember Christ and we tell the sacred story and we break the bread and drink the wine before we all head back out into our individual lives.

In this meal we are reminded to whom it is we belong. We belong to God and it is God who feeds us. We are all God's children and we are called to come back to this Eucharistic feast---this place of communion time and time again. We come to celebrate God in Christ's love for us and to share the joy of this banquet with the world. Come to the Table-dinner is ready...Amen.

1 The Rev Anna Carter-Florence
2 Fred Craddock