Luke 14:1 & 7 - 14
Rev. Sue Yarber
We live in a time where eating dinner in a restaurant with friends is a common social practice. Banquets, in the time of Jesus, were something out of the ordinary and, often, families would make great sacrifices to provide their friends with a large meal. It was a commonplace Greco-Roman practice to sit people in particular seats around the host according to their social status. Diners would recline on their left elbows and eat with their right hands. The place directly to the right of the host was considered the highest place of honor. The phrase, "God's right hand" is directly related to these ancient meal customs.
We don't generally assign seating for social functions but there still is a lot of competition among us. Keeping up with the Joneses is not only a national pastime for many, but it's a consuming passion. We, all too often, measure our worth by some external standard imposed on us by society. We look to something outside of ourselves to give us our sense of identity, approval and self-worth.
I do not consider myself materialistic. I drive a lavender Beretta and since it is exactly the same shade as the obnoxious singing dinosaur I have shamelessly named it Barney. My car is always the only lavender Beretta in the parking lot...that's the good side. I never thought much about the color of a vehicle until Barney came into my life but now I will be driving along and see a hideous vehicle and think ...what poor sucker bought that tasteless car...that's the bad side. I have judged myself a sucker based on the color of paint attached to the metal contraption with a powerful engine. What a strange world we live in. Status and consciousness of one's status runs mighty deep... it permeates our lives in subtle and unexpected ways. Jesus was extremely daring to call the value of social status into question.
I find myself aware of my own status, how I measure up externally to those around me, all too often. Jesus wants us to shed the superficial levels of our day - to - day existence and operate on a different plane than those around us. It was this call to the Pharisees that made Jesus such a rebel in their eyes.
Honor and shame were important concepts in Luke's gospel. Jesus challenged a system of honor that promoted hierarchy and grouping people by social class. He broke the mold of "I invite you and you invite me." In Jesus' time it would be considered inappropriate for a poor person to accept a rich person's invitation because the poor one could never repay the rich one. Jesus is not just throwing off etiquette rules but is teaching us about the realm of God. God invites us to the table not due to our own efforts, not due to our own merits, nor our wealth, nor social status but only because God loves us. God offers us a free gift knowing that no one will be able to repay God.
Jesus takes things a step further than teaching about the nature of God. Jesus suggests that we, too, should experience giving a gift knowing that it can't be repaid. Jesus actually lists who the Pharisees are to invite, " the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind." These are the very people that are denied the right to be priests according to Leviticus 21. Jesus challenges the Pharisees' perception of who is holy and who determines who is holy. "The poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind" were not allowed to approach the altar nor were they allowed within the inner circle of the Temple. The Temple was not just a house of worship but rather the center of the entire culture. It served as bank, marketplace, political body and worship center. They were outcasts in every sense of the word.
We have our own outcasts in our community and, yes, even here in our church. Who are they? They are the disabled and the transgendered , the poor and the mentally ill. They are people who have church backgrounds markedly different from our own and they threaten to take our comfortable worship and change it.
Jesus does not suggest that we should invite the outcasts to the table out of some altruistic motivation. He makes it clear that those cast out by society - even our community - have unique gifts to bring to all of us. We are less without them. When I lived in New York, I knew a man named Harold. He was born with only partial arms. He had trouble walking because his balance was affected by his lack of arms. Harold was sitting in his wheelchair on the street corner minding his own business one day when a man with a Bible approached him saying, "If you had more faith God would heal your arms." Harold looked right into the man's eyes and calmly said, "If you had more faith I wouldn't need arms." The notion that physical disability is a result of sin or lack of faith still exists and poisons the possibility for wholeness for all of us. Faith is seeing past the lack that is in everyone of us. We all lack something.
Dr. Nancy Lane, a professor of mine at Union Theological Seminary, a brilliant Episcopal priest and Jungian analyst, told me a story about when she applied for college and the division of vocational rehabilitation told her that since she had cerebral palsy it was a waste of her time. She would never make it. She appealed their decision and graduated with honors. They gladly helped her pay for her masters and doctorate degrees and have changed some policies as a result of knowing her.
She was once told by the bishop that there was no place for a "woman like her in the Episcopal church." She replied, "Well, if you truly believe that then remove every crucifix from the sanctuary because they are representations of God disabled." The truth of her difficult statement still rings in my ears. When we create outcasts we are rejecting a part of God's creation. We cast out others because there are parts of ourselves that we reject.
There is not a group that Jesus cannot relate to - he spends his time with those cast out by others. What would Jesus do? is a popular phrase. Well, I think Jesus would encourage us to look at what parts of ourselves do we see as unacceptable to approach the altar of God? Those are the parts of us that desperately need to be in God's presence. Invite the outcast within you to the table.
Another group that comes to mind in our community that we often overlook or don't acknowledge is our transgendered sisters and brothers. Transgendered folks make us face some difficult questions. They raise questions about what it means to be male or female. They make us look at our own internalized sexist assumptions. They make us think about male/female power dynamics. Transgendered folks push the lines we have built for ourselves, ways of defining ourselves, that keep us comfortable and safe. I believe that, if Jesus was standing right here, he would urge us to embrace transgendered folks because they have unique gifts to offer us. Often transgendered people have a spiritual depth that few of us ever reach. I have had the opportunity to meet and share about spiritual experiences with transgendered people, both here and in my time in New York, and it has been a profound challenge to understand an experience that is foreign to me. I remember clearly one transgendered woman, Chloe, who said to me that her connection with God and her deep internal sense that God created her is the only thing that kept her alive. She said it this way, "When you feel alienated from the only body you have it's critical to be connected to God. Without knowing that God loved me and God created me, even though I defy categories of this world, I would have died."
The sad truth is that many transgendered people do die. The rate of suicide and death - dealing substance abuse is alarming. We have a moral and spiritual obligation to stand with them. We have life lessons to learn from transgendered people, lessons that only our transgendered siblings can teach us. We will learn truths about our own experiences of our gender identity. We will learn truths about how connected our spirituality and our own sense of our bodies are. We will learn truths about compassion, unconditional love and survival against all odds, not just survival, but spiritual victory and celebrating life even though it is, at times, excruciatingly painful.
Pray for the transgendered group that meets here twice a month and consider visiting one of the open meetings to get to know the folks that attend the meeting. Your life will most assuredly be richer, and you will learn something about the amazing complexity of God.
Jesus had vision that saw far beyond the worldly roles of people. I am under the distinct impression that if seats at the heavenly banquet are assigned then Fred Phelps and I will sit next to one another and will have to work out our differences. I will have to deal with the reality that Fred is there, even though he worked to spread lies about us during his time here on earth. Fred will have to deal with the reality that I am there, even though in his mind, I am a sinner who is not forgiven. God's love is so much bigger than anything we can conceive and God's grace extends to all of us.
The Pharisees assumed they knew who was acceptable to God and they allowed their culture to dictate to them who was in and who was out. Let's make sure we don't make the same mistake. Don't decide in your own limited minds, all human minds are limited by the way, that any part of you is unacceptable to God.
To follow Christ is to be an odd one in any age. As Christians we, in the words of AW Tozer, " feel supreme love for one we have never seen... empty ourselves in order to become full, admit we are wrong in order to be declared right...are strongest when we are weakest, richest when we are poorest...die so that we will live." We are living a paradox and so when Jesus says that "those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those that are humbled themselves will be exalted," it reminds me that Jesus, like all good prophets, came to "afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted."
The table is a whole lot bigger than we could ever fit in this room. There are people of every size, color, social class, ability and belief. There are those who raise their hands in worship and those that pray in tongues. There are those who love organ music and those that feel God's presence most when they hear an electric guitar. There are those who love the smell of incense burning and the sound of bells being rung. There are those who don't feel that they've done church until someone is clapping and Amening loudly. We truly are a preisthood of all believers. Let's peel off our pretenses, and anything else, that serves to remove us from God's grace, instead of, putting us right in the midst of it.
So whoever you are as you prepare to come to this table know that it is God's free gift of grace given to you. Your gift to God is to simply say yes and feast upon God's never ending love.
God longs for you more than you long for God. Amen!