Past Sermon

Sermon Title: "Who's At Your Table?"
Date: September 2, 2007
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Luke 14:1, 7-14

Sometime back around 1964 or ’65, our church in Los Alamitos agreed to host Marines from Camp Pendleton for Thanksgiving dinner.  That Thursday morning, we showed up at church as all these young, short-haired, uniformed Marines disembarked from their government bus and, two by two, were assigned to various church families to take to our homes for Thanksgiving dinner.

It is quite possible I would have forgotten this experience if it were not for a communication my mother received some two dozen years later.  One of the Marines, later married, had apparently told his wife about this experience.  He must have still had our address, for in the late 1980s, my mother received a letter from his wife, with a picture of him at our dining room table, thanking us for inviting her husband to Thanksgiving dinner so many years ago and making him feel at home. 

I’m sure having them to dinner was my mother’s idea, for she was always doing something at church.  But my father, who did the cooking, and in the true style of Ensley hospitality he inherited from his mother, always enjoyed having more people in to eat.  One time, Mother invited some visiting missionaries to dinner.  She was mortified when my father offered them wine.  His attitude was, if they didn’t want any, all they had to do was decline!  I have no recollection of whether they took him up on the offer or not, but it would be wonderful to know if they did!

As you heard from Fran in introducing the lesson this morning, many of Jesus’ most significant teachings occurred around the table or at a meal.  As one scholar noted, whenever food and Jesus are mentioned together in the Gospels, pay attention!  Something wondrous, miraculous, important, surely a teaching moment was about to happen.

Last week, Jesus was having some trouble with a temple leader who criticized him for healing a woman on the Sabbath.  Today he is dealing with those pesky Pharisees, again on the Sabbath, as everyone sits down for the Sabbath meal.  The Jewish meal had designated places of status and honor.  But Jesus encouraged his followers to avoid the seats of honor and, instead, to take the humble seats.

Such protocol continues to exist today.  Who of us hasn’t entered the banquet room for a wedding reception, a charity event or a political fundraiser and checked to see at which table we are seated?  Not only so you’ll know which direction to go amongst the maze of tables, but we all want to know how close to the front we’ve been assigned, and with whom we’re sitting.

In June we visited the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston.  There was on the wall an elaborate seating chart for a state dinner.  I found where the president was sitting, and who was at the table with him.  It wasn’t Jackie Kennedy.  She must be somewhere else.  Lady Bird Johnson was in the room, but no vice president or first lady.  Then I realized the seating chart extended into a second room.  There were Jackie Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.  Stepping back, I could see it was all a carefully balanced act of power and prestige—the Kennedys each hosting in a separate room, with the vice president and his wife doing the same.

Not all meals are so carefully staged.  As the focal point of our lives, mealtimes among family and friends reflect the nature of our shared lives.  They are a central space for expressions of love, caring and affirmation through both the provision of nourishment and the conversation that surrounds a meal, from preparation to clean-up.  For those in explosive or damaged families, gathering at the table often becomes an arena for accusation, blame, unbridled anger and painful absences.  If you were fortunate enough to avoid this atmosphere in your upbringing, just watch the dynamics in the next movie you see that includes a family meal.  For many modern families, parents may not even be home from work by mealtime, or the children feel free to cruise back and forth to the table as they take their food in to watch television.  And for those in need, scarcity at the table is a constant reminder of their economic plight.

If we were to eat in the style of Jesus’ time, the Jewish meal imitated the formal meals in Greco-Roman culture, where the feast was presented in two stages:  a meal proper followed by a time of dialogue or entertainment.  I remember much conversation at the dinner table when I was growing up.  I also remember my dad wouldn’t let us leave the table until everyone was finished.  My mother, who talked more and ate slower, had her children’s eyes frequently focused on the status of her dinner plate as we were finished eating, but she wasn’t.

Jesus is concerned in the second part of the story that we don’t go overboard in dinner invitations to relatives or rich neighbors, in hopes of reciprocity, but that we look around and invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.

Many years ago, one of our church groups was having a dinner in the Concert Hall.  A homeless person wandered in the door, wanting something to eat.  I told her it was her lucky day, for we had plenty of food.  ‘Come in; take a plate and go through the buffet line.’  She looked sheepishly down, and self-consciously said she couldn’t do that.  I asked if we prepared a plate for her, would she eat that?  “If I can eat outside, that would be okay,” she replied.  So we did, and she sat out on the porch and ate the same meal we were eating inside.

At least she was well-fed that night, but I wonder if, in light of today’s lesson, Jesus might have made a bigger to-do over it.  “Look who’s here,” he might proclaim as he saw her enter the room.  Like the father in the parable of the prodigal son, he might have thrown a cloak about her shoulders, ushered her through the buffet line, then declared, “Come, sit up here at the front of the room by the stage.”

In a church in the inner city of one of this nation’s larger cities, some in the congregation became concerned about the plight of the homeless.  So the church began a soup kitchen that operated three days a week.  The church was soon feeding over 60 persons for lunch, three days a week.

On every other Sunday, it was this congregation’s custom to have a congregational meal after church.  This was a meal for the members, and the occasional visitor.

Then someone said, “Why don’t we invite the folk who gather here during the week to gather with us on Sunday too?”

There was debate.  It was one thing to “feed the hungry,” another thing to invite them to the table to eat with the family!

Then someone flipped open a Bible, turned it to a particular text in the Gospel of Luke, and read it.

Next word heard was this:  “I move that we have a meal after church every Sunday and invite everyone to join us, particularly the people on the street who show up here on weekdays.”  Motion passed.

It’s reported that attendance at the church doubled.  “We have the Lord’s Supper every Sunday now,” said one woman.  “We don’t call what we do in the fellowship hall after service ‘the Lord's Supper,’ but that’s what it is.”

The crucial text that was read from Luke?  Today’s lesson:  Luke 14:7-14.

Whenever we meet on the first Sunday of each month to share this common meal we call communion, the Last Supper, the Eucharist, who is welcome at this table?  Whenever we gather for a meal, fellowship, even coffee and donuts in the Concert Hall, who is welcome?  Whenever you plan a special dinner at your home, who is welcome at your table?