Sunday: 14th Sunday after Pentecost 17C
Reading: Luke 14:1,7-14
Preacher: Peter C. Lane

The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost [18C]
St. Paul & the Redeemer Peter C. Lane
Luke 14:1,7-14 September 2, 2007

In 1952, Robert Coles, a young medical student walked into the Christian Worker "house of hospitality" on the lower East Side of Manhattan. There he saw Dorothy Day sitting at a table, having a conversation with a woman who was clearly very drunk. Eventually Dorothy Day stood up, walked over and asked him, "Are you waiting to talk with one of us?" "Are you waiting to talk with ONE of us?" The already famous Catholic Socialist activist Day put herself at the same level as this smelly inebriated woman. Her question to Mr. Coles suggested that her eating and talking with this woman was true fellowship. Dorothy Day must have read our passage, she must have imbibed the principles of Jesus' parable, "When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or 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." I can hear the host of Jesus' imagined banquet surrounded by the riffraff of society responding to a prominent visitor, "Are you waiting to talk with one of us?"

This 14th chapter of Luke has a collection of stories about the table. Luke ties these three or four disparate accounts of table fellowship together by introducing the chapter with Jesus eating a Sabbath meal at the house of a Pharisee. For Luke, table fellowship is very important. In chapter five, Levi the tax collector threw Jesus a great banquet with lots of those other, money grubbing, ritually unclean tax collectors. In chapter seven, Jesus identifies himself as having come "eating and drinking" to the point where people call him a glutton and a drunkard. The revelation of the risen Christ happens on the road to Emmaus when the disciples sit down to break bread. Luke continues in the first chapter of Acts, where the Holy Spirit is promised as the disciples eat. Finally, the Jewish and Gentile Christians were able to be church around the table. What someone ate and who they ate with were central questions in 1st century Palestine. And, if you've been to Mon Ami Gabi in Lincoln Park, French Laundry in Napa Valley, or the Olive Branch Mission on 63rd Street, you know that what we eat and who we eat it with are important today. Of course, the institution of the Lord's Supper, the Eucharist, the source and summit of the Church's life, happened at the table. Jesus had a thing about eating. The table was central for Jesus' ministry. Our collection of snippets suggests two important values for Jesus around table fellowship: humility and generous hosting.

Humility. Jesus' first saying about table fellowship is a strange tale on the need for humility. It could be read as a bizarre manual on how to connive ones way to the top. (Don't sit at the best seat first, because that looks bad. Rather, sit here in a bad seat, forcing the host to invite you to an even more prominent seat.) That's not it. Rather Luke has put this parable here to remind the community (for about the 100th time it seems) that it is the lesser, the poorer, and the more humble who will be exalted. Dorothy Day's "Are you waiting to talk with one of us?" suffices. The table should not be used to elevate oneself; it is a place of humility.

Generous hosting. In Jesus' mind, table fellowship is marked by generous hosting. Generous hosting means that it is not about reciprocity (the Wilson's have not invited us back over, uh!), not about social prestige (we're going to Barack and Michelle's for dinner tonight) but about radical hospitality. Jesus' second parable advises hosts not to invite friends or relatives, but rather the crippled and the blind. Why? Because, they can not reciprocate. One can not secretly be making claims, setting conditions, and expecting things in return. In Jesus' table fellowship, the hosts invite people who have no ability to host in return. Acceptance is found in baking bread together; that's generous hosting.

That brings us to our open table fellowship. We make such a point each week of inviting everyone to God's table. We organize our liturgical space around an unguarded, unfenced, barely elevated, almost round wooden table. And all of those characteristics can be seen as flowing from Jesus' talk about table fellowship being marked by humility and generous hosting. The table is at the center to mark the centrality of generous hosting in Jesus' vision. The table does not have a beautiful brass railing to remind us that it is open to all comers: not just the in-crowd, but also the figuratively lame and blind. It is barely elevated to remind us that the priests do not hold pride of position in relation to God, but rather serve as ministers among God's people. It is almost round so that no one sits at the head of the table. It is wooden to remind us that fundamentally we are eating together like Jesus and the tax collectors at a table and we are not re-sacrificing anything on an altar. We are attempting to understand the Eucharist as Kathryn Tanner says, "in light of Jesus' practices of eating with sinners and filling the bellies of all comers." What we are doing at the table in remembrance of him is in part modeling humility and generous hospitality.

Luke strings together a series of Jesus' sayings about table fellowship. They call us to remember that our hosting, our hospitality needs to be marked by this humility and true generosity. We seek to model that each week as we gather around the table to be fed by God with God that we might incarnate God to the world. Thus, everyone, whoever they are and wherever they find themselves on the journey of faith is welcome at God's banquet. Dorothy Day conversed with drunkards. They are both welcome. Mother Teresa spent years with nothing but silence and emptiness from God. She's welcome. My son Simon, who doesn't have even the most basic understanding of the Eucharist, is welcome. Those that have a growing and thriving relationship with God are welcome. Those who are experiencing the brokenness of relationship and the aridity of faith, they're welcome. Even me, a sometimes faithful Christian, I'm welcome at this feast. But, just watch out. Sharing in this table fellowship might just transform you. Although Jesus does not imposing on any the necessity of changing to be part of his table fellowship, he often gets inside of them and brings new life out of old.
Amen.