Rev. Marjorie Wilhelmi

Sermon – August 29, 2010

Dinner Party

Psalm 107:1-9
Luke 13:29-30
Luke 14:1, 12-14

Please pray with me:
God of amazing grace – you are our host and you are our guest.  Open our ears to hear your words that comfort and discomfort us.  Open our hearts that we may be worthy to sit at your table.   Amen.
 
            I like dinner parties, don’t you?  I like spreading out a pretty tablecloth, making a centerpiece, planning the menu.  I like inviting friends to gather round and share good food and interesting conversation. 
            God must like dinner parties, too, because they are a consistent theme throughout scripture.  Way back in Genesis, Abraham and Sarah learn they will have a son when they host a few strangers to a dinner party.  The Israelites celebrate their liberation from slavery in Egypt with a dinner party – it’s called Passover.  The psalmist sings about dinner parties where the hungry are fed and the thirsty given drink.  The prophet Isaiah painted wonderful pictures of all the peoples of the world gathering together to feast at a great banquet. 
            Jesus himself went to a lot of dinner parties—enough dinner parties to earn the reputation of being a glutton and a drunkard (Luke 7:34).   According to the Gospel of John, he started his ministry at a party, turning water into wine.  Much of his teaching took place around a table, or on a hillside working wonders with a few loaves and some fish.  Many of his parables are situated at dinner parties, and of course, the bread of life is broken and shared at the last dinner party where Jesus himself is the host.  I’m pretty sure God likes dinner parties.
            Today, we’re invited to a dinner party.  So is Jesus, it turns out.  And we all know he makes for a lively and unpredictable guest.  Listen for the Good News as it comes to us today from the Gospel of Luke 14:1, 12-14, the Message:
       One time when Jesus went for a Sabbath meal with one of the top leaders of the Pharisees, all the guests had their eyes on him, watching his every move….Then he turned to the host. “The next time you put on a dinner, don’t just invite your friends and family and rich neighbors, the kind of people who will return the favor. Invite some people who never get invited out, the misfits from the wrong side of the tracks.  You’ll be—and experience—a blessing.  They won’t be able to return the favor, but the favor will be returned—oh, how it will be returned!—at the resurrection of God’s people.”
      
            Jesus watches all the guests at the dinner party jostling for position, seeking recognition and rubbing elbows with the in-crowd… and he leans over to his host and says… “Hey, you want to have a real party?  Invite the down-and-outers… Invite the poor, the blind, the lame to share your table … Invite the people you’d never dream of inviting… Invite the people who never get invitations, those misfits from the other side of tracks … Invite them.  And then … then my friend … then you’ll have a party!”
            A few weeks ago, I hosted a dinner party.  It was fun, the food was good, the conversation was stimulating, and at a particular point during dinner while the rolls were being passed, I looked around the table, and my heart overflowed with a deep sense of joy, delight, and gratitude.  In that moment, I fully appreciated that this—this experience—is one of our most fundamental human needs—the need for fellowship, community, hospitality.
But while I looked around that table, I already had these words from Jesus running through my heart, and I wondered…… who is missing? …  I don’t think Jesus intends us not hang out with our friends – I just think Jesus is encouraging us to enlarge our guest list… and to think in new ways about who would make the party complete.  He’s got some radical ideas:  invite the poor, the lame, the blind, the misfits… the ones I wouldn’t ordinarily dream of inviting. 
            This is good news—yes, it still the Good News— especially for God’s people today in a world that becomes increasingly xenophobic—increasingly discomforted by people who are not like us.  Yes, this is good news that these strangers are invited to Jesus’ table, because when we were misfits, God invited and included us. When we were aliens and alienated, God claimed and named us. When we were in bondage and full of sin, God forgave us and set us free. When we were outcast and alone, God sat us at the table and fed us.  Because of the hospitality God has shown us, we are enabled and empowered—impelled!— to extend that same love, acceptance, forgiveness and hospitality to the stranger in our midst. 
            This is not new news with the latest immigration discussion.  Not by a long shot.  Long ago in the days of Moses, God said “You also shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deut. 10:19).   Codified into biblical law is this mandate in Leviticus 19:33-34: “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress them.  The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.  I am the Lord your God.” 


            You see, Jesus is drawing on an ancient biblical tradition of radical table manners when he breaks open the guest list, and this grows into a vital practice of the early church: Philoxenia – the Greek word for hospitality, which means, at root, love of the stranger.  Philoxenia is the exact opposite of xenophobia.  Philoxenia, love of the stranger, is how the community of God’s people bear witness to God’s radical hospitality to every one of us.  Care for the poor, the outcast and the alien among you – provide them hospitality, make them honored guests at your table, for from Genesis to Revelation, this is the foretaste of the heavenly banquet, this is the seating chart at God’s dinner party.  
            So I was sitting at my dinner party, glowing in my experience of hospitality, and at the same time challenged by this question:  who would Jesus add to my guest list?  I immediately thought of a young man I had met recently.  I’ll call him Joe.  Not long before, he called the church, hoping to get married here.  The date he was interested in was available, so he said he’d come by to look at the place.  Forty-five minutes later, I happened to be standing in the office talking to Connie, when a stranger walked through the door.  And I do mean stranger.  I had to concentrate to keep my mouth from dropping open.  His long hair was slicked high and back from his forehead in a shiny pompadour.  Quarter-sized ear-gages stretched out both earlobes, and two silver piercings sat snugly just below his lower lip. He was wearing a t-shirt with skull and crossbones emblazoned across his chest, sleeveless to reveal his full arm tattoos.  His rail thin legs were clothed in skin-tight jeans, from which protruded his high-heeled, pointy-toed boots.   I have to confess to you, I experienced a gut reaction to this stranger. 
His manner of dress seemed so aggressive, so over-the-top and in-your-face that all my warning signals went off.  This guy didn’t resemble anyone I’d ever encountered before, and I wasn’t sure what to expect….
            He walked right up to me and stuck his hand, and with a big smile, said, “You must be Reverend Wilhelmi.  Hi, I’m Joe.  I’m so glad to meet you.”  That seemed normal enough, so I exhaled, and showed him around the church, while he spoke to me about his love for his fiancée, and their shared desire to get married in the sight of God and the community.  He was articulate, interested, warm and interesting.  Even as my own prejudices and xenophobia made me squirm, his gracious presence ushered me into a place that was open and hospitable.
            This is what happens, you know.  When we encounter the stranger we are discomforted, put out of our comfortable chairs, and, if we’ve courage enough to go there, we gain access to our central core—that gracious, grace-filled place that reflects the image of God.   Africans have a word for this.  It’s called ‘ubuntu.’  It’s a hard word to translate, but is a concept that is about the essence of being human.  Ubuntu embraces hospitality, caring about others, being able to go the extra mile for the sake of someone else. Ubuntu expresses the understanding that a person is a person through another person.  My humanity is caught up, bound up, inextricably, with yours. When I dehumanize you, I inexorably dehumanize myself.  When I open myself to you, I am enlarged, I grow and so do you, because of our shared humanity. The solitary human being is a contradiction in terms – your humanity comes into fullness in community. 
            I recently read a story about a preacher who decided to prepare his sermon about the homeless by actually living on the streets.  His wife dropped him off one morning and picked him up three days later.  That Sunday, when he stepped into the pulpit, he told his congregation what he had learned:  that for a person who lives on the street, hospitality is as simple as being treated like a person.    He learned, when he was hungry and wet and tired and dirty those three days on the streets, that what he really longed for was for someone to look him in the eyes and to recognize that he was a person.  That’s all it takes to welcome the stranger.  Look them in the eye, and see in every one you meet, a human being, created in the image of God.
            We’ve learned a few foreign words today.  Ubuntu, contemporary Zulu from South Africa.  Philoxenia, Koine Greek from an ancient time.  Both universal words of timeless truth that can help us Michiganders in 2010 speak the language of our infinite and eternal God.  Humanity.  Hospitality.  Important credentials in the Kingdom of God.
            Who seems strange to you?  Who are you most afraid of?  Who is the one you definitely don’t want at your dinner party? … Invite them. …. For the strange ones, the ones most different to you, they are the ones who can enlarge your experience, tell you stories you haven’t heard before, stimulate your imagination, introduce you to a new perspective. … Invite them and practice hospitality—the hard, risky, world-changing work of welcoming the stranger….  Invite them because they are holy—made in the image of God—and sent your way to grow your soul.     …. Invite them… from the east and the west, the north and south… and you’ll have a great party indeed.