Sermon for Sunday, July 15, 2007WHO BELONGS AT THE TABLE5th in a series on Tell Me A Story: The Subversive Parables of Jesus by Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz |
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Scripture: Luke 14:12-24 12 He said also to the one who had invited him, "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. 13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. 14 And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." 15 One of the dinner guests, on hearing this, said to him, "Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!" 16 Then Jesus said to him, "Someone gave a great dinner and invited many. 17 At the time for the dinner he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, "Come; for everything is ready now.' 18 But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, "I have bought a piece of land, and I must go out and see it; please accept my regrets.' 19 Another said, "I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please accept my regrets.' 20 Another said, "I have just been married, and therefore I cannot come.' 21 So the slave returned and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and said to his slave, "Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.' 22 And the slave said, "Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.' 23 Then the master said to the slave, "Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled. 24 For I tell you, none of those who were invited will taste my dinner.' " James Autry is a business executive, writer and poet who has had an extremely varied career. He was vice president of the Meredith Publishing Company which publishes Better Homes and Gardens, Ladies Home Journal and other magazines. He is married to the lieutenant governor of the state of Iowa. He speaks across the world. His latest book tells about his unorthodox religious faith and tells also about his journey as a father of a son with autism. His son Ronald is now 22 and has significant disabilities in some areas and is fine in other areas. Autry writes about Ron’s prayer life as a teenager and tells about Ron’s difficulty understanding how to address God. Here is the poem. LEARNING TO PRAY
Autry tells another story about Ron being on the track team in high school and learning to run the 440. Ron is slow and determined. After all of the other runners had crossed the finish line, Ron was only about halfway there. His goal however was to finish without stopping or falling. When Ronald rounded the last turn all by himself on the track, some of his teammates who were on the sidelines came onto the track to run with him. They joined him and were shouting Go Ronald! Go Ronald! As he came closer to the bleachers other people began to take up the cry: Go Ronald! Go Ronald!! As he passed in front of the crowd, parents of other kids from other schools joined the chorus until when Ronald finished the crowd stood up as though, Autry says, an Olympic star had set a new record. And Ronald was surrounded not only by kids from his own school, but members of other teams patting him on the back and shouting encouragement. I want you to keep that scene in mind as we look at another subversive story from Jesus of Nazareth our teacher and our guide and master and coach and sensei. The first thing to say is that this story only shows up this way in the gospel of Luke. There are only two of the four gospels that contain most of the parables of Jesus. They are Matthew and Luke. And the way Luke tells this story is significantly different from Matthew’s version. Luke’s way of telling it fits into the major concerns of Luke throughout his gospel and through his other book in the Bible as well—the book of Acts. Luke is consistently concerned about people like Ronald—the least and the last and the frequently left out. Luke is always puncturing pomposity—we will see that in the story for next week— and lifting up the little people. Jesus in the gospel of Luke is welcoming the wrong kind of people. In fact, Jesus is often pictured in Luke at a dinner party, eating at someone’s house—and he was not particular about whom he ate with. He ate with respectable people and he ate with questionable people. Do you recall anyone in Luke’s gospel that Jesus ate with—just invited himself to this man’s house—and when people learned about it they were shocked? Jesus is passing through Jericho on his way to be executed in Jerusalem and he sees a fellow up in a tree—Zaccheus was his name, a despised sinful tax collector—and he invited himself to Zaccheus’ house. Jesus welcomed the people on the fringes and associated with the outcasts—this was one of the things that caused the religious folks to plot together for his death. But it was not just the outcasts who were welcomed; it was the little people also. Jesus tells a story about a rich man who had everything and outside the rich man’s gate was a beggar who had nothing. And the wealthy man was so self-absorbed that he did not even know about the needs of the beggar outside who Jesus says was so needy that the dogs licked his sores. The beggar dies and goes to heaven. The rich man dies and goes to hell. Jesus is most concerned about the little people. In Luke when Jesus makes his first public appearance after his baptism and his time of discernment—his vision quest—in the wilderness, Jesus goes to his home synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth and reads from the Bible. What passage does he read? The spirit of the Lord is upon me for the lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind. The people Jesus read about were the nobodies—the poor people, the forgotten people, people with disabilities who had no status, no belonging. They were on the fringes. No one noticed them, no one cared about them, in fact, if they had those disabilities people thought they probably deserved the disabilities because of something they had done. But Jesus notices them and says that we should also. Jesus says that God notices them and that God has a place for them. One more piece of evidence about this distinctive concern in the gospel of Luke. In the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew organizes a lot of teaching material from Jesus in what we know as the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5-7. In Luke, most of that material is also present but it is delivered not on a mountain but on a plain—so it is called by scholars the Sermon on the Plain. There are some differences. The version of the Lord’s Prayer in Luke is different from the version familiar to us which is from Matthew. There is another significant difference: in Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes, Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." In Luke, Jesus is more blunt: Blessed are the poor. Jesus is reaching to the outsiders and those looked down on by respectable people. Now for the story for today: A man wants to throw a party. He sends servant to give advanced notice—that is how it was done. The people receiving the invitation are upper class folks—I will tell you how we know that in a moment. His servants get everything ready and then he sends another servant to say that the party is about to start. And the excuses begin to fly. Did you hear what they are? They are insulting mostly. One man has bought a field and now has to go look at it? How insulting! No one would buy a field without looking it over very carefully! Another man has bought some oxen and now has to go and try them out??? That is ridiculous! No one in ancient times would buy oxen without trying them out—just as almost no one today would buy a car without driving it first. The third man has just gotten married. We don’t know what kind of excuse that might be. The people receiving the invitation are people of status and wealth. They have property and livestock. The man giving the party is insulted and angry so he makes some different plans. He opens the party to everyone—even the forgotten people—the poor, crippled, blind and lame. So around the table of the family of God are the nobodies. The familiarity Judy and I have with the disability community immediately gives me some pictures of this parable. Having a family member with a disability gives us a new lens. By the way, folks who have some sort of disability call the rest of us “the temporarily able”!! Jesus’ party is not the kind of party that would show up in the society pages of the Denver newspapers with pictures of well known folks from our city. Think about how this party might look today. Who would be today’s equivalent of the group Jesus called “the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame”? There would probably be a couple of Iraqi war veterans—one with a leg missing, the other with an eye missing and with a permanent head injury. There would be an elderly person with Alzheimer’s who could not recognize anyone else. There would be a blind person with a companion dog. There would be someone with mental illness, a child with autism, and a young adult with Down syndrome. That is the picture that I begin to have in my mind as we re position Jesus’ story. Jesus says about that group around the table—this is the kingdom of God, this is the family of God—not the people who get all the glory and recognition and status and attention, but the folks who some have said don’t belong. Paris Hilton is not there. George Clooney is not there. What does the picture look like for you? Perhaps a criminal in a jump suit? Speaking of criminals, did you know that… Ruth Graham, wife of evangelist Billy Graham, was buried last month in a casket made by Richard Liggett, a convicted murderer in the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Made of birch plywood with a cross on the top and brass handles on the sides and lined with a fabric-covered foam mattress, the casket cost a mere $215. Liggett, who was serving a life sentence for second-degree murder, found God while in prison. He often made caskets for other prisoners. He died of cancer in March and was buried in one of the last caskets he made (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, June 18). This was a shocking story in ancient times because that culture, like ours, looked up to people with status and prestige and beauty and power, and it looked down on people who were poor or “different” or disabled or who had no power. We talked about this story in our staff meeting last Tuesday and folks had some good insights. God’s values are not the same as our values and certainly the values of our culture where some of the best selling magazines are about celebrities—and certainly the best selling magazine in the US is TV Guide so we can follow our celebrities and our American Idol candidates. God’s values, Jesus says, are different from ours. The prophet Isaiah said it this way on behalf of God: my thoughts are not your thoughts, says the Lord, and my ways are not your ways. My thoughts are higher than your thoughts. God’s definition of success is not the same as our definition of success. It is good to be good at what we do and to earn for our family and to make money—as long as we are in control of our wealth and are not controlled and obsessed by it. It is good to climb the ladder of success as long as we are sure we have leaned our ladder against the right wall and not the wrong wall. Jesus tells a story about a man who leaned his ladder against the wrong wall and we will look at that in a couple of weeks. God’s values are different from ours. God’s values are upside down from ours. God is not as impressed with status and class and fame as we are. And God’s family includes some people we would not include, some people we might be uncomfortable with. There are some other learnings from the story. Not only is this a very diverse and unusual group around this table, Jesus says that there is still room at the table. There is always room for others. We are working in a visioning team on redefining who we are and what we are about in this very vital congregation named after Andrew, and that has been one of the themes—that we want to continue to invite and welcome and offer a place at God’s table for everyone. If Jesus were retelling the story today, who else would be in the picture around that table? We have been interviewing for the new director of our youth ministry outpost. Our LIFEspot ministry is reaching kids we will probably not reach in our Sunday evening youth program. We are reaching some kids who have been on the fringes, kids who have been in trouble, kids who have family problems, kids who think that they are being sent to the other parent because the parent they live with now hates them—that was a recent quote. Who would be around the table today—kids with spiked hair and nose rings and lots of tattoos—sitting by the lady in the wheelchair with Alzheimer’s? Where are you in Jesus’ story? Which character are you? Many of us are in the first group. We are so busy. We are so preoccupied. We have so much on our plates that we think is really important. We can’t take time for God, for prayer, for church, for Bible study because of all these other really important priorities. At least that’s what we think. But God wants to give us a feast. God wants us to be at the party. That’s what kind of God this is, Jesus says, a God who wants us to celebrate at a feast with salmon and prime rib while we are settling for peanut butter and crackers. And God says that when we put our relationship with God first in our lives, that all of our other seemingly important things fall into place. The invitation is still here for us. There are still openings for us. Will we find time to spend with this welcoming host who gives us the best nourishment of all? Or will we send our flimsy excuses and miss out on the feast of the family of God? |
