Sermon - September 1, 2013 - Luke 14: 1, 7-14 For the last few years, many denominations across North America have designated September as the ‘Going Back to Church’ month. For various reasons, people who have been absent for weeks, months or even years think about returning to church during this time of the year. And who knows? Maybe we will have the opportunity to welcome newcomers in our midst. I can already envision the scene. “Reverend, reverend. There are new people here this morning. This is wonderful. There is a whole family of them. This is even better. Yes, yes, I know, but they are sitting in my pew. Please come and make them move somewhere else.” If almost everyone would agree that we ought to welcome people in our congregations, the question, ‘why should we do it?’ is not often asked. Do we want to follow Jesus’ instruction and to share the good news with everyone on this planet? Do we want to bring more people to Christ, as some conservative denominations would say? Or do we have other motives? Are we looking to fill our pews and our committees with new warm bodies? Are we looking to boost our membership numbers so we could regain our influence and position in the Canadian society? Are we focussing our invitations to a specific demographic and generation who would be able to pay our bills and keep the doors of our church open after we would be gone? One does not have to be an expert in human psychology to know that we usually never invite people for nothing. There are almost always some strings attached to an invitation. I can give you the example of my close friend who a few years ago was planning his wedding. He wanted to keep it small and simple. Only immediate family members and close friends would be invited. Then his mother reminded him that her friends invited her to their children weddings and he had to return the favour by inviting them back. Sounds familiar… When we organise a party or a gathering we are confronted by an unwritten law that everybody knows. Our cultural norms push us to consider, on top of our friends and relatives, those who already offered us hospitality in the past. If there is nothing wrong with this, it still creates a cycle of forced reciprocity. We somehow feel we are in debt to those individuals when we are preparing our guest lists. Without noticing it, we create a kind of ecosystem in which we only invite our own kind of people, or at least those we can feel comfortable around. Strangers and outcasts rarely make their ways into our circles. This reality is as true today as it was 2,000 years ago when Jesus went to the house of a leader of the Pharisee for lunch. If I may… Have you noticed that Jesus always seem to eat in the Gospels according to Luke? He obviously was not suffering from diabetes. Jesus eats with the sinners, the tax collectors and the Pharisees. In fact, there are in the Gospel according to Luke more references to eating, banquets, tables, and reclining at tables than in any other Gospels. If we all agree that eating is essential for life and no one can manage for very long without it, in Luke meals are never just meals. They are teaching moments offering profound theological insights. To those who were present that day Jesus offered to following advise: “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers and sisters, or your relative or rich neighbours, in case they may invite you back in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” Jesus issued a challenge to our human impulse to work according a system of reciprocity. Hospitality should never be about some sort of self-serving purpose nor an investment in our future. Jesus called all his disciples to reach out to those who are outside our natural circles, those who are marginalized by our community, those who have a hard time to find their place in our society. Since then we have seen countless of good Christians running local food banks, volunteering in homeless shelters and opening the doors of their buildings to various 12-steps programs. They have done this and way much more without asking anything in return because they will be “repaid at the resurrection of the righteous”, as this morning’s passage says. They help the poor, the needy and all of those who are unable to ‘repay’ them because they are convinced they will be rewarded in heavens. Those individuals who are claiming to love their neighbours without any self-interest are in fact frequently in a state of denial, because their actions are motivated by their desire to build up capital for our own future. If they do not expect to be repaid in this life when they are generous with the poor, the needy, and the abused, they still expect that God would notice and they would be repaid in the next life. Some even enter into some sort of a race for the ‘lowest place’, hoping to win the prize awarded to the humblest of all. Their actions are nothing else than self-promotion and reasons for boasting. “Everyone, look how generous I am! Look at all of those misfits I invited at my table! Look at everything I do without expecting anything in return! Please do not praise me. I do not need it. Because of God, I will received a hundredfold and I will inherit eternal life.” Sometimes I wonder what would happen if we would be bold enough to push Jesus’ logic a little further. What would happen if we took a step forward? What would happen if we made the choice to break away from all systems of reciprocity? What would happen if we began to be extravagantly generous without hidden agendas? What would happen if we welcomed everyone in our midst without playing games? What would happen if we invited people to join us without expectations in this world or the other one? What would happen if we tried to lose everything and see how much we could win? As scary as this idea might be, this is the path Jesus invites us to take. We are all called to go beyond what we could gain by our actions or good deeds. We are all invites to forget about concepts like vindication and final judgement. We are all asked to move away from accountability systems designed to help us to earn our place in heaven. Let us stop waiting for a distant future when Christ would eventually come back. Let us stop equating charity, giving alms and helping the needy beneath us so we could win extra divine Brownies points. The reign of God that Jesus came to preach could begin right here and right now if we make the choice to live and embody God’s values. We can do this simply because it is the right thing to do, simply because it is the society we want to live in. 12th century theologian Thomas of Aquinas understood charity as an ongoing relationship with God in which we are drawn by God’s goodness and model our lives on God’s expansive love. He wrote, “Animated by charity, we work to show to others the same befriending love that God shows to us.” When we accept to live boldly this sort of love and to let it loose in our reality, letting it do its work, we cannot expect thanks in return because we are simply behaving according to who we are. When we accept to walk on a path of self-giving rather than calculating what one is likely to get in return for a good deed, we are simply following in Jesus’ footsteps. When we accept to open our arms and our hearts to our neighbours, we simply see the world from God’s perspective. Jesus’ message for the Pharisees and all of his disciples is somehow disturbing because it profoundly attacks the norms of normal social conventions. As we are ready to invite those who had invited us previously and to welcome back old friends and acquaintances, we are challenged this morning to open our doors to those who cannot contribute to the life of our community. We are called to spend money and efforts to invite people who might never come to our church. We are invited to baptize and to marry people that we know that they will never come back. It might not appeared to be the wisest course of action for an institution like ours, especially during these difficult times, and yet it is what we are asked to do because this is who we are and the world we want to build together. This is what we want to share with those we invite in our midst. Amen.
Posted on: Sun, 01 Sep 2013 13:05:20 +0000
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