Sermon Proper 17 C 1 September 2013 The Rev. Canon Francis Hebert Don’t you just love a good party? Jesus seemed to love a good party, and throughout the gospels, especially the Gospel of Luke from which we are reading this year, meals and get-togethers and parties are central in the life and ministry of Jesus. Luke’s gospel, for instance, is the only one of the four that includes the dinner at the home of Martha and Mary in Bethany. After the resurrection, the disciples first recognized the risen Jesus on the road to Emmaus – “in the breaking of the bread.” Even in the second volume of Luke’s work, the historical book that we call the Acts of the Apostles, the church community includes not only those who are baptized, but those who share food with one another. Luke, it seems, is drawing the connection between eating and our Christian identity, eating and our Christian ministry. And what he seems to be saying is this: In our meals, we act out what we believe. We act out the truth of God’s kingdom. And the truth of God’s kingdom is communicated in this parable Jesus told them as he noticed how each one of them had tried to elbow their way into the best seats at the dinner party. When someone invites you to dinner, don’t take the place of honor. Don’t try to get the best seat for yourself. Somebody more important than you might have been invited by the host. Then the host will come and call out in front of everybody, ‘You’re in the wrong place.’ and you’ll have to stand up with the napkin hanging out of your belt loops, pick up your water glass, the fork you’ve already used, and move all the way over to the only empty seat in the room with the Hillbilly cousins wiping their mouths on their sleeves and picking their teeth with the steak knives. (Actually Jesus didn’t say that last part.) When Jesus sums up his point in the words, whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. He is not telling us to develop some strategy of religious modesty so that we can get right with God or get ahead in God’s kingdom or get a better place. Jesus is calling us to a new and radical way of relating to other people – a way totally different from the way the world relates to people – not paying attention to status: either our own status of the status of the other person. All of us have been taught from the very earliest age that life is about winning; life is about being at the head of the class and the top of the heap and having the best seats in the house. And if we hope to succeed in that kind of world, we need to find ways to woo the influential, to do everything in our power to get ourselves on equal footing with people who have fame and fortune – in other words people who can do something for us. Jesus, in his life and in his teachings utterly and consistently rejected that approach. His reasoning was simple: when your only concern is getting connected with the right people, you’re never really connected with them at all. All you’ve done is used them, treated them not like a person, but like an object. You have de-humanized them in an utterly un-Christian way. To be a Christian is to be someone whose name is on guest list of Jesus’ great dinner party. To be a Christian is to be one who has been invited to eat and to drink with Jesus. But when we join Jesus at his table, we have to follow the peculiar customs and rules and manners of his kingdom. In this world’s culture we are taught that it’s a good thing to desire to sit at the head table, to aim high in our ambitions, to get, to achieve, to accomplish, to be somebody. To sit at the table with Jesus, we are going to have to rethink all of that: our goals and our ambitions and our desires. Jesus, the host at the table of the kingdom, teaches us another way of being together. If we are to be at the table with Jesus, then we must be there on his terms. That is to say, on equal terms with everybody else at the table. In the end, it is our Christian family meal that tells us the most about what it means to be here at the table on Jesus’ terms. It is at this, our weekly celebration of the Holy Eucharist. Some churches call it the Lord’s Supper, and that name is one that I find particularly helpful, because it emphasizes who is the host and who are the guests. I’m not the host. Jesus is the host. I’m just the maitre d’. Or maybe just the kitchen help. But the amazing thing about being a servant at the table of the Lord ’s Supper is that just like all the rest of you – I’m invited, too. The highlight for me is when you come forward and hold out your empty hands, as if you were seeking something. I place the piece of bread in your empty outstretched hands. For me as your priest and pastor, it is a great privilege and a profoundly moving, holy moment. I say that because the longer I’m here as your priest and pastor, the better I get to know how many of you are able, accomplished people. You have your achievements, you attainments, all the things you have earned and now cling to. But here, as you come to the Eucharist, as you participate in the Lord’s Supper, your hands are empty. You have to let go. Of everything. You have to loosen your grip upon all the things, all the material goods you have accumulated, all the goals you’ve set for yourself, all the internal images you hold of yourselves, and hold out your empty hands. We come to this table on equal footing. And that, by the way, is why every week, Sunday after Sunday, the same announcement is printed in the bulletin: all baptized persons are welcome to receive the Holy Communion. Because we are all hungry. We are all empty. We are all vulnerable. Not one of us can repay God, no matter how rich our resources. All we can do is offer our selves and receive with gratitude the gift of God. And that, my beloved friends, my brothers and sisters, that is how life ought to be lived under God. So – I’m going to close this sermon not with answers, but with some questions – some questions I can’t answer from the pulpit but questions we need to ask ourselves as individuals and questions we need to ask ourselves as a community. Questions like: “Where am I seated at the Lord’s table?” “Am I guilty of wanting to go up higher? and desiring to put others down lower?” “Who is present when our congregational family gathers at this table?” “Who is absent?” “What can the congregation of Christ Church do to embody in our meals together – not only this the Lord’s supper but any other meal we have here – what can we do to embody the inclusive, gracious, invitation of Jesus?” We are those who are not to be filled by all the stuff made to fill the hungers of the materialistic, not grasping a great mass of possessions, clinging to nothing. We are empty, hungry, needy, more so than we want to admit. Yet here is the great gospel promise: he comes to us. He puts in our empty hands the bread that is his body. He fills us with for the abundant life. And then, he urges us to go into the world in peace to love and to serve, to invite others to join in his great banquet. Don’t you just love a good party? AMEN
Posted on: Fri, 06 Sep 2013 17:56:21 +0000
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