Everyone loves a party. Don’t you? I’ve been to some of your houses. I know that most of you know how to throw a party. And I’m thinking about parties today because over the past year we have explored the Gospel of Luke on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings and we’ve seen that Luke writes about more meal-time and party scenes than any of the other gospel writers. Indeed, Luke’s gospel shows us that the Christian life is a lot like a banquet or a party.
We see many narratives in Luke that end with a festive meal. Do you remember the story of the prodigal son? The youngest son was welcomed home and a huge meal was prepared for him upon his return. And then, the pinnacle of the gospel comes at the Last Supper meal, when Jesus turned an ancient tradition upside down and made it mean something new and different. And finally, the last chapter in Luke was about two disciples traveling on the road to Emmaus after Jesus’ death, only to have their eyes opened to see him when they broke bread and shared a meal together. For you see, the Christian life in the Gospel of Luke is not simply about justice and mercy. No, it is also about the welcoming that happens during a meal. The party taking place in the text read this morning is Jesus’ kingdom-movement in the world, a movement that welcomes all. Is that the kind of party you want to go to? Because it is the party to which we are all invited.
Not only do we see Jesus’ unpretentious actions at a prestigious and pious party elevating how we should be humble before God and others, this story is also the fourth Sabbath controversy we’ve encountered. The Pharisees were out to get Jesus because he put the healing, health, and welfare of people over religious ritual and institutional exclusion. Jesus claimed lordship over the Sabbath and the Pharisees hated him for that.
In the first Sabbath controversy, if you remember, Jesus and his disciples plucked grain on the Sabbath so his followers could eat. Jesus’ critics claimed he was actually doing work by harvesting the grain, regardless of how hungry the people were. In the two other controversies, Jesus healed a man with a withered hand and then, last week, Jesus healed a woman bent-over with a spirit of weakness. And Jesus didn’t have a problem healing and helping people on the Sabbath because he taught that the Sabbath was created in response to the people of God receiving freedom from slavery in Egypt. Dr. Charles Raynal from Columbia Theological Seminary claims that “In the view of Sabbath as the celebration of freedom for slaves, the Gospel of Luke shows that Jesus offers liberation from the diseases that destroy fullness of human life.” So, we see that the Sabbath is to show the people of God what freedom looks like through healing and helping and hope.
And today, Jesus gave us another Sabbath lesson, a lesson that happened at a party, a party at the house of a popular and important Pharisee, probably one of the Pharisees that might have been watching Jesus’ every move to see if he would break anymore religious laws. And the guests at this dinner party, as was the custom of the time, were supposed to vie over the most prestigious and honored place at the table, the seat next to the host. And, Jesus did what Jesus often does, he went and sat at the far end of the table, farthest away from those who were most wealthy, or wise, or popular, or powerful, even the host.
And I’m sure Jesus got everyone’s attention by this bold social move. So, since he had the attention of the room, he starting teaching. He said, “When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this man your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all your fellow guests.”
Ouch. I’m not sure many in the room with Jesus that day wanted to be the lowest at the table. But then for effect, he added this punch line: “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” I guess Jesus decided that this was as good a place as any for an object lesson about humility
And Jesus wasn’t done. We just saw Jesus chastise the bewildered guests and their propensity to seek brownie points and power and position. But then, after the guests, he turned against the host. You see, in the Near Eastern world, dinner parties were about those with money and power trading favors and inviting only those who could help them in the future. Hosts were usually social elites who wanted to also be invited to the special parties of their rich and important guests. They wanted the favor to be returned. So, Jesus added one more lesson to this story. Jesus was clear who should be invited to the party: the people who were, as Dr. Emilie Townes from Vanderbilt University puts it, were “the very fabric of God’s realm – the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. For Jesus, extending genuine hospitality to the least of these through acts of unselfish hospitality and kindness, can wash God’s blessing over us and give us a sense of the great blessing that is to come in the resurrection.”
Jesus turned the party on its head. He was showing this Pharisee host that customs and rituals and place and power and position didn’t matter at the banquet of God. Jesus basically took Hebrew scriptures, the scriptures he probably knew from when he was a child, Psalm 107, that psalm that says that God gathered in all those who were hungry and thirsty, those from all the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south, and put that psalm into practice at this dinner party. Dr. Ronald P. Byers from the Feasting on the Word commentary contends that Jesus wasn’t being unmannerly or impolite, he was giving an example of his kingdom work that he had enacted since the beginning of his ministry. Byers says, “[Jesus] shares the table with those from who folks with conventional values turn away. From one society to another, and from one era to another, there seem to be different lists of those from who respectable people expect to turn aside. Jesus’ challenge reaches across boundaries of place and time, calling us to be more aware of those from whom we are inclined to avert our eyes, and to follow him rather than those who baptize common prejudices and virtues.”
Friends, we are the guests and the hosts and Jesus has something to say to all of us. Not only must we steward our own lives, seeking to be humble with our power and generous with our resources, we are also to invite all people, from the east and west and north and south to come to the table, to no longer be hungry or thirsty or homeless or helpless or alone or marginalized. That is the kind of party to which Jesus calls us.
As we enter Stewardship Month, I am going to challenge us to live out our love in the world. It’s not just about paying the bills of the church, although that is important. I know that this church is a historical Baptist beacon in this city and is needed in Dallas now more than ever. So, yes, we need to pay the bills and equip our staff. But more than that, I think this Pharisee dinner party story in Luke’s Gospel asks us to be good stewards of the party that God wants to throw for the world. It is our job to give all of who we are, our treasure, our time, and our talents to make sure that everyone has a seat at the table. And as we move through Luke’s Gospel, we will continue to see that Jesus desires for his followers to not care about status but to care more about our neighbor, to not care about greed but to live more generously, to not be consumed with our stuff but to live out our lives in dynamic ways that invite all to the party.
Many of you may recognize the name Jim Wallis. Wallis is a noted author and longtime activist for social justice. In 1990, Jim Wallis spoke to the Chicago Sunday Evening Club. His words were important, especially for us Christians in this affluent and prosperous time. Here is what he had to say: “I was a seminary student in Chicago many years ago. We decided to try an experiment. We made a study of every single reference in the whole Bible to the poor, to God’s love for the poor, to God being the deliverer of the oppressed. We found thousands of verses on the subject. The Bible is full of the poor. In the Hebrew scriptures, for example, it is the second most prominent theme. The first is idolatry and the two are most often connected. In the New Testament, we find that one of every sixteen verses is about poor people; in the gospels, one of every ten; in Luke, one of every seven. We find the poor everywhere in the Bible.”
“One member of our group was a very zealous young seminary student and he thought he would try something just to see what might happen. He took an old Bible and a pair of scissors. He cut every single reference to the poor out of the Bible. It took him a very long time. When he was through, the Bible was very different, because when he came to Amos and read the words, ‘Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream,’ he just cut it out. When he got to Isaiah and heard the prophet say, ‘Is not this the fast that I choose: to bring the homeless poor into your home, to break the yoke and let the oppressed go free?’ he just cut it right out.”
Wallis continued, “All those Psalms that see God as a deliverer of the oppressed, they disappeared. In the gospels, he came to Mary’s wonderful song where she says, ‘The mighty will be put down from their thrones, the lowly exalted, the poor filled with good things and the rich sent empty away.’ Of course, you can guess what happened to that. In Matthew 25, the section about the least of these, that was gone. Luke 4, Jesus’ very first sermon, what I call his Nazareth manifesto, where he said, ‘The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news to poor people’ – that was gone, too. ‘Blessed are the poor,’ that was gone. So much of the Bible was cut out; so much so that when he was through, that old Bible literally was in shreds. It wouldn’t hold together. I held it in my hand and it was falling apart. It was a Bible full of holes. I would often take that Bible out with me to preach. I would hold it high in the air above American congregations and say, ‘Brothers and sisters, this is the American Bible, full of holes from all we have cut out.’ We might as well have taken that pair of scissors and just cut out all that we have ignored for such a long time. In America, the Bible that we read is full of holes.”[1]
Friends, I don’t want to read and follow a Bible full of holes. I don’t want to worship a God who doesn’t care about the poor. I don’t want to be a part of a church that doesn’t fill the gaps we have in this city, gaps in healthcare, gaps in racial justice, gaps in education, gaps in services for the poor. As stewards of God’s good news, the gospel, we need to fill the gaps in this city with love.
Stewardship is love and we need to live out our love in this city. We need to make a commitment in this September stewardship season to do more than we’ve ever done, to give more than we’ve ever given, to pray harder than we’ve ever prayed, to love more than we’ve ever loved. Because this city needs us. This city needs who Royal Lane is and what Royal Lane does and what Royal Lane possess, in order for others to be blessed. This is the year, this is the season when we need to live out our love and live it out boldly!
So, this month, we will focus on how love expresses itself in scripture and how we are called to live out our love in Dallas and in turn, change and grow lives. It is my hope that as we live out love, we might think of all that we have and all that we are and how it is like God’s banquet, God’s party, God’s wedding feast. And it is a feast where all people are invited. ALL people are invited. The first will be last and the last will be first. And all at the table will party together regardless of station and class and race and ethnicity and identity. This stewardship season, let us fill the gaps of injustice in this city with the resources of Royal Lane, for if we do, we will truly live out love.
Amen.
[1] http://www.30goodminutes.org/csec/sermon/wallis_3410.htm