Scripture: Hebrews 12:28-13:27

Text: Luke 14:1,12-14

Weekly Bible Study: Bible Study Blog

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Is there anything that I could say to you today which will change your plans for Thanksgiving? I know that is a loaded question.  In a way, this question is present in almost every sermon. Sermons aren’t just to teach scripture and develop your theology. They are to encourage Christian living. A sermon ought to encourage you to either change your ways or encourage you to keep doing good. Another way of putting it is a sermon is either a kick in the pants or a pat on the back.  Sermons are as much about Bible as they are behavior. So, let me pose the question again. Is there anything that I can say about the scripture that will change you and make you act differently? Specifically, is there anything that I can say that will change your guest list for Thanksgiving?

 

Therein lies another challenge. Some of you aren’t entertaining. You don’t have a guest list. You or your family might be having Thanksgiving alone. Or, for many, you are on the guest list.  Our family falls in this category. We are on my brother’s guest list. We are invited to Thanksgiving. Invitation was last week’s sermon.

 

Last weekend I started a sermon series on Thanksgiving dinner. In this series, we are studying three stories from the fourteenth chapter of Luke; all occur at a dinner party. As the party begins, Jesus notices that there is a rush for seats next to the host. In response, Jesus tells them a parable. At first glance, you might think Jesus is teaching us how to be polite but parables aren’t about manners. Parables deal with the kingdom of God.  Jesus says to enter the kingdom of God, you can’t be longing for recognition or for that matter, longing for anything. Longing is the enemy of gratitude. If you are filled with longing, you can’t be thankful for what you have.

 

In that first sermon, I extended an invitation for Thanksgiving Dinner. I invited you to prepare for Thanksgiving with a gratitude journal, to write daily that for which you are grateful. Research indicates that gratitude can profoundly impact your health and well-being, even if you find yourself in dire circumstances. People who are grateful---to others as well as to creation---are healthier, more energetic, optimistic, empathetic, and less vulnerable to clinical depression. They make more progress toward important personal goals, are less materialistic and more easily satisfied with what life brings them.  Gratitude is the antidote to longing. It’s why the Psalmist writes “O give thanks to the Lord for he is good…for he satisfies the thirsty and the hungry he fills with good things.”  (Psalm 107: 1a, 9) In the first story, Jesus tells a parable about dinner parties and invites us to enter the kingdom of God with gratitude.

 

In the second story, he turns to the guest list. He looks around the room and observes who was invited. This is something that you do. As you head to a party, you think, “I wonder who will be there.” When you leave the party, you comment, “I wonder why so and so wasn’t there.” It is automatic. We evaluate the crowd and wonder how the guest list was put together. We muse about who got invited and who couldn’t come and who was not on the list.

 

It was no different in Jesus’ time. In first century Palestine, inviting people to one’s table was a sign of affluence or status. In fact, there was a Near Eastern proverb that said, “I saw them eating and I know who they were.”  Jesus blew this proverb out of the water. He ate with whomever he wanted to eat. In fact, just a few chapters earlier in the gospel of Luke, Jesus goes to another dinner party thrown by a Pharisee. While at this party, a prostitute shows up with an alabaster jar of ointment. “She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, ‘If this man was a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him—that she is a sinner.’” (Luke 7: 38-39).[1]

 

I’ve always wondered about the response of that Pharisee. He was in charge of the guest list. He was the one who invited Jesus. Why didn’t he say, “Who let her in?” When she started making this spectacle, why didn’t the host remove her? It’s a wonder that Jesus got invited back. Of course you never know what’s on someone’s mind when they make out the guest list. “I sure hope Uncle Hal’s friend isn’t invited to Thanksgiving. Do you remember how he got tipsy last year and turned over the gravy bowl? What a mess. Why do they keep inviting him?” If Jesus embraces such behavior, why did the Pharisee invite him back?                  

 

The host is a different Pharisee. He is a different Pharisee than the one who invited Jesus earlier. It is seven chapters later in the gospel of Luke and a lot closer to Jerusalem. At this dinner party, the guest list was tightly conceived and there was a bouncer at the door. No sinners with alabaster busting in on this party. Jesus looks around and says to the host, “What kind of party are you throwing here? Your guest list stinks. Don’t you know the Son of Man eats with everyone?” Then he gets specific. “You’ve just invited people who can repay.”

 

What’s wrong with that? Everybody knows that’s how polite people behave. I’ve heard it all week. “This is my sister’s year to host Thanksgiving. Next year, it will be our turn.” “Of course I’ll come to Thanksgiving. What can I bring?” Even if the response is “Oh nothing” you still take something. You’ve learned not to show up empty handed. It’s embarrassing. When it comes to dinner parties, there is always an implied reciprocity.

 

Do you have this picture clearly in your head?  Jesus is at the home of a leader of the ruling party, the Pharisees. He has invited the best of the community to meet Jesus. And Jesus says, “You throw a lousy party. There are people missing from this party.” “When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” (Luke 14:13)  Be honest. With this kind of behavior, how many of you would invite Jesus back to your party?” Jesus is just being rude. He’s being rude if he is talking about etiquette. But if this is a continuation of the parable, then there is an entirely different thing going on.

 

Parables are about the kingdom and there isn’t any sort of reciprocity going on in the kingdom. You can’t show up at the heavenly banquet with a pumpkin pie and Cool Whip to repay your debt. In the kingdom, God is the host. Who can repay God? [2]

 

If God is the host, God makes out the guest list and in the kingdom, no one is left off the list. Everyone will be there. The powerful and the poor, the celebrity and the cripple, the luminaries and the lame, the big shots and the blind all make it on the guest list. When it comes to God’s guest list, he invites all of his family, everyone, red and yellow, black and white. All God’s children are precious in his sight.

 

Do you know the expression, you are what you eat? No one likes that phrase during these next two months of over indulgence. With this parable, Jesus changes that expression to “You are who you eat with.” He addresses our guest list. Jesus isn’t being rude or wanting to shame his host. He wants everyone to look around and realize what a privileged, exclusive group of people they are sitting with and to realize that our guest list is flawed. There are others that need to be invited to our banquet. This takes us back to the opening question. Just what can I say that might change your plans for Thanksgiving? Who here is going to send out some quick invitations to the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind? And just how comfortable are they going to be in your home? 

 

Knowing that very few if any of us are going to change our Thanksgiving plans, let me suggest that one of the ways we expand our guest list is through our mission efforts. This weekend, Thanksgiving food baskets were delivered to 70 families.  If you did not participate in this ministry in some way or another, your guest list for Thanksgiving was narrow.

 

These families were referred to us by Dayspring, Damien Center, Little Red Door, John Bonner Community Center and the Central Indiana Council on Aging. The 70 families representing over 250 people will be cared for throughout the holiday season. In addition to feeding them at Thanksgiving, they will also receive Christmas gifts. They are a part of an invisible group of people in America who are “food-insecure.”  The “food-insecure” have times throughout the year when they experience difficulty purchasing food.  Sometimes it is due to unemployment. Many times it is due to underemployment. A single worker on minimum wage is “food-insecure” because he or she falls below the poverty line. Roughly 38 million people in America are considered “food-insecure” and it is estimated that 12% of the children in America fall in that group. The estimate comes based upon the number of children that qualify for reduced rate or free school lunches.  

 

In our Geist community, one would expect the rate to be much lower than the 12%. After all, we are an affluent community. We surely don’t have poor and hungry people around us. Lawrence Township educators will quickly offer an alternative position. In Lawrence Township schools, the rate of students receiving free or reduced lunches is not 12%. It is 39%. This rate has grown by 20% in the last decade.[3]

I will admit two emotions when I discovered these statistics this week. I was astonished. I couldn’t believe that there were this many people in our neighborhood who were food insecure. I was also embarrassed. I was embarrassed that we are doing so little and we are doing it for just a few weeks around the holidays.  It’s really easy just to look around at the people you hang around with and miss what’s going on. This is what Jesus is trying to get his fellow dinner party guests to see. Jesus wants us to make a connection between God’s guest list and ours.

 

Have you made that connection? I hope so. The test of course is whether or not it makes a difference. The Thanksgiving baskets were delivered but there is still Christmas and there are lots more people in our community who are food-insecure. If this sermon really makes a difference, it will be a kick-in the pants for us as a congregation. Instead of 70 families, we’ll bump up our efforts dramatically. Instead of food during the holidays, we’ll begin to seriously consider the need to offer a food pantry to that will impact the poor and hungry year round.

 

I hope I’ve achieved my goal. I hope I’ve said something that will change your guest list on Thanksgiving, not so much in who is around the table, but rather in who you are going to feed. It will be a start and because of this beginning in expanding the guest list, there will be thanksgiving.

 

 

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