The Guest List
Luke 14: 1, 7-14
Rev. John P. Wesley
August 29, 2010
On just about any Friday or Saturday night here in Bowling Green there will be a number of dinner parties taking place. Some will be a little on the formal side. There will be cloth covered tables in an elegant dining room in someone’s home or at one of the local clubs. There will be drinks and appetizers, followed by a well prepared meal and dessert, all served on the finest china. While the dress may not be as formal as in years past, these dinner parties will be elegant affairs. Now some other parties going on in town will be a lot less formal. They will begin with food prepared on an old grill and served off the top of a card table. Chairs, if available, may be no more than s patio chair whose webbing is just about worn out. Some parties will be quiet and dignified and some will be loud and obnoxious. But for the most part, there will be one common characteristic at all these parties. The people who come will most likely be the people who are invited. There may be a rare exception. There are party crashers even at Presidential State dinners. But usually people who attend a party have been invited because they have some relationship with the host or hostess.
Luke’s gospel indicates Jesus liked to attend dinner parties. Sometimes he was the guest. The host may have been a wealthy Pharisee or a despised tax collector. Jesus didn’t seem to care who was throwing the party. Luke doesn’t indicate that Jesus ever turned down an invitation. And Jesus hosted a few parties himself. They were often spur of the moment parties where four or five thousand people had listened to him preach and teach all day, and as the sun began to set, Jesus would break bread and share it with the multitudes and all would receive their fill and go home happy. One might determine that Jesus had been to so many parties that he began to see himself as a modern day “Miss Manners.” When he went to a party given by a well heeled Pharisee, one of their leaders, Jesus first told those attending how they should act. It almost sounds like advice your mother would have given you. “Now don’t be pushing yourself on other people. Stay back in the crowd. Don’t take the best seat. If the host wants you to have it, he will come and get you.”
When Jesus had given his little talk about appropriate manners to those attending the party he turned to the host and said, “I’ve got a few words of advice to give to you. When you make up the guest list, don’t just put people on the list that you know. Don’t just stick with the people who always come, whose stories you already know. Look around at other people. What about sending an invitation to someone you don’t know? What about inviting a person who is not just like you? How about inviting someone who is poor, or someone who has a physical handicap? How about inviting some people to the party who will shake things up, who will challenge your way of thinking and seeing and being?
I wonder what this leader among the Pharisees did with the advice he received from Jesus. Do you suppose the guest list changed any for his next dinner party? There’s no way of knowing. Luke turns the spotlight away from the host and has Jesus tell a parable about the great dinner, the banquet where all will be invited to come and celebrate the goodness and grace of God. But nothing more is said about the Pharisee. I’m sure he hosted many more dinners, but we don’t know whether he changed his guest list any. I think he probably did. I doubt that Jesus appeared on that list again.
This year our church has taken some time to look again at a special dinner, the one we call the Lord’s Supper. If we want to be particular we would have to say the Lord’s Supper refers to that meal Jesus shared with his disciples just before he was arrested and crucified. By the account of some gospel writers Jesus hosted that meal and only invited twelve people, twelve men to that meal. When we think about the Lord’s Supper, our image is often that of the meal painted by Da Vinci. There are a lot of other impressions of that meal found in paintings and in stained glass windows from across the centuries. In the Chapel of the Macchabees in the Cathedral of St Peter in Geneva I saw a beautiful presentation of the Last Supper. It was a little different from Da Vinci’s painting. It had seven people on one side of Jesus and five on the other. It had Judas sitting across from Jesus, turning to go away with the bag of silver in his hand. There were several differences, but one thing was definitely the same. Those who gathered around the table of the Lord were all men. That is what we expect because the scriptures say the twelve were with Jesus when he shared that meal. It seems the list of those who came to that meal were not strangers, it would seem the advice Jesus gave to this Pharisee was not advice he would follow when he hosted the Lord’s Supper. And it would seem a lot of people were left off the guest list, people who knew Jesus and served Jesus but weren’t a part of that Lord’s Supper.
That’s the way the church I attended as a child interpreted the Lord’s Supper. When they gathered once every three months to have communion, they’d ask anyone who wasn’t a member of that local church to leave. They said that’s what Jesus did. He dismissed everyone but his chosen disciples.
You can imagine the surprise I received when I saw this picture on the ceiling of St Priscilla’s Catacombs in Rome a few weeks ago. It is on an arch at the end opposite the entrance to a little Chapel. On a red background it pictures a table with seven people. At the right end of the table, which would have been the place of honor, a bearded man is seated, clad in a tunic. His arms are extended above the table and he is in the act of breaking bread with is hands. In front of the bearded person is a chalice with two handles and near the chalice, a plate with two fish and another with five pieces of bread. Near the ends of the table are seven baskets containing bread, three at one end and four at the other. The scene, so most authorities say, represents the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharistic Banquet. This fresco is thought to date to a period some 130-150 years after the time of Christ. It would have been a time when the church in Rome was illegal, when people would have been martyred for their faith. It would have been a time when there would be no New Testament, just a collection of some of the letters written by Paul, a copy of some of the books of the Old Testament, maybe a copy of one or more of the gospels and other inter-biblical writings. It is remarkable that there are only seven people at the table, not twelve, but something else that is very surprising is who is sitting at the table. Notice the person who is third from the right. It is a woman in a head covering. I don’t know whether this is meant to be a painting of the Last Supper Jesus shared with the disciples. But I think, in the mind of the early church that gathered in these catacombs this was the Lord’s Supper. It was a reminder of the meal that was shared by Christ, not just once but many times. In the giving of thanks and the breaking of bread, in the sharing of the cup the early church felt Jesus was still present with them.
This picture indicates the early church got what Jesus was talking about when he told the dinner host to invite people to the dinner who were not usually there. In a world dominated by men, in a world where women weren’t suppose to share equally with other men, the early Christians in Priscilla’s catacomb showed that a woman shared the Lord’s Supper with everyone else. When the church began to gain power after Constantine, the Roman Emperor, converted to Christianity, leaders began leaving women and others off the guest list. Though many women had served as prophetess, preachers and teachers in the early centuries of the church, ministry was turned over to the priesthood and the priesthood was made up of men. And so the Lord’s Supper became a sacrament that could only be administered when a priest was present. And that priest was always a man. And the meal that was always prepared by women and shared and served at the table with Jesus and others became a man’s meal.
The guest list is an important list, not just when it comes to those invited to a party, but when it comes to determining those who can share the bounty of our lives, the bounty of God’s blessing. The words of Jesus seem clear enough. When it comes to a guest list, no one should be left off. The beggar and the banker should be getting an invitation. In the story Jesus will tell at this meal, the kingdom of God will be like a king who has a party and first sends out invitations to the rich and famous. But then he also sends out an invitation to those who are living on the edges of life. Attendance at the dinner party won’t be determined by who is invited, but by who is willing to come.
God may be good at putting together a diverse guest list. But most of us struggle with that. We are not comfortable being around certain people. We like our own kind. We end up eating with the same people and sitting with the same people and doing business with the same people. And we raise objection when those different from us ask for the same rights we have.
This morning there are a lot of places where people are gathering for worship. Folks will be raising their songs and their prayers believing their party is the best party in town. The preacher may draw congregations closer together by making sure everyone knows women are suppose to be kept in their place, by making sure that anyone whose sexual orientation is different feels the flames of hell, or by condemning anyone who even looks like a Muslim to Lucifer’s camp. And when the party is over a lot of people will pat themselves on the back as they leave worship saying how good it is that they could be there and that God has blessed them in so many wonderful ways. And they’ll pass some of the people that aren’t like them as they ride to the restaurant or as they are served lunch, and they’ll never think it is possible God includes those same people at the table of life.
What about our guest list here at First Christian Church? Are we willing to look at it again? Are we willing to add some names? Someone told me a few years ago they’d love to invite other people to come to church but all their friends go to church. It may be that all of us need to make some new friends, need to open our lives up to people not just like us, so we can have some new faces at our table. There are a lot of folks in the churches in our community who don’t want certain folks to sit at their table or to be a part of their fellowship. But we come each week and we talk about the Lord’s Table and we say everyone is welcome here. Do we mean it? Do we mean that after acknowledging our prejudices we have to park them at the door and come here and sat a table with seven, or twelve or seven hundred and make sure we have some unexpected people at our table?
I hope you’ve read the wonderful stories of communion in the booklet many of our members helped create this summer. There’s a story in there one man recalls from childhood. He was staying at his grandparents house when a man knocked at the door.. He was hungry and the grandfather told his wife to fix the man a plate. When he started to take the plate outside, the child asked, “Why can’t he come in here and eat with us?” The grandfather said, “It just isn’t done.” You see, the man outside the door was a different color.
So the grandfather took the food to the door, and the man received it with gratitude and he set down on the steps and began to eat. But pretty soon he had company. This little boy, now an elder in our church, took his plate and went outside and sat down beside him to eat his meal.
Whose on our guest list? Who has been invited to the table of the Lord? May we be known as that church that invites all to come and share the grace of God found in this place. May we even be known as the church that is willing to go outside and set a table for those who aren’t comfortable coming in.
