Sermon for August 31, 2025: "An Invitation" based on Luke 14:1, 7-14

​Scripture: Luke 14: 1, 7-14 Jesus at a Pharisee’s House ​(New International Version) 

One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched.

When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table, he told them this parable:  “When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this person your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place, But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all the other guests. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

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     “We’re not your fancy friends,” I said to a friend who was a little worried that what she was feeding us, canned pasta sauce, wasn’t up to her typical standards. If we were in her house, instead of the cabin her family had borrowed, she would have made something homemade and complicated and extra delicious. I assured her that we are happy to eat canned pasta sauce. We have some in pantry at our house right now. I said “we’re not your fancy friends” because I wanted to be clear that we don’t have to be invited to eat fancy food to feel welcome. Canned pasta is just fine all the time, but especially among friends.

     We’d actually had dinner with some fancier friends a few weeks ago. Dinner involved pre-dinner drinks, there were multiple forks, fabric napkins, and nice wine glasses.  People talked about their wine cellars, trips abroad, and what classical music they were enjoying at the moment. While Tasha and I have been solidly middle class for a while now, we do not come from multiple fork and wine cellar people. And yet, we were welcomed and included, though we only knew the host family and one other attendee. The people we met for the first time asked about us, our work, and our pets. And, the hosts, who are friends who know I have developed some annoying food sensitivities, always make sure that there is food that I can eat and make changes to parts of the meal so I can have something comparable to what everyone else is having. They know that being good hosts means everybody gets to eat, and having special needs with your food doesn’t stop you from being invited.

     How does one offer hospitality? How does one receive hospitality? These are common questions in the book of Luke. In his commentary on this text, E. Trey Clark notes that Jesus is often found eating with people from across all kinds of backgrounds in the book of Luke. When you are often invited to people’s homes to eat, particularly if you live in a culture that values hospitality, as Jesus and his disciples did, it is wise to think about being a good guest. When you often end up feeding people, as Jesus did, it is wise to think about being a good host. Today’s reading is from a time when Jesus was a guest of a Pharisee. As Clark notes in his commentary, this meal was shared among people who took their faith seriously, but also felt free to disagree with each other about their interpretations of their faith quite out loud and quite clearly. The religious leaders are watching Jesus closely because they know that they all have a conflicted history. As Clark points how, Jesus is watching them, too. He’s paying attention to how they are guests.

     Even in a Jewish home, the people attending the meal would have likely been seated in Greco-Roman fashion, reclining at a low U-shaped table. Clark points out that the attendees would have been assigned seats based on how high or low their social standing was. Fancy guests up by the host. Less fancy guests farther away. It would be deeply embarrassing to be asked to move away from a fancy seat by your host.

     Looking around at what Clark argues would likely have been a table full of people of relatively high status, he tells them not to exalt themselves. Rather, they should assume a humble status. Clark is also quick to point out that Jesus isn’t telling low status people to stay in their place. Instead, he is pointing out that a life following his understanding of faith is less concerned with what Clark calls “climbing the social ladder” than it is about adjusting our behavior to the contours of the kindom of God.

     The kindom of God is less concerned about using meals to network and move up in the world than it is about making sure that all people are fed. So, Jesus said to invite people to come eat who have nothing to offer you other than their presence. Invite people who will come and it will be of no social benefit to you. Clark argues that this big table full of humble powerful people and welcome marginalized people will help us see a glimpse of heaven. In a couple verses after today’s, Jesus will tell a parable about something scholars call an “eschatological banquet.” In those verses, (Luke 14: 15-24). In that feast, the powerful don’t think they need to come, so the host invites the powerless instead. It is clear that the faithful are the ones who understand how to be a good guest. God’s got a big table. There is always room, but the seating is first open to those who are hungry. Everyone else can fill in after. But, you have to be willing to show up.

     My mom called me yesterday to tell me about a meal she thinks I would have wanted to be a part of. She was right. I would have wanted to be there. She’d stopped in to see my grandmother for a bit, who lives in a small nursing home that is constructed to be like a residential home in a neighborhood. After helping granny lay down for her post-breakfast nap, mom started planning for lunch. She already had a little bit of a kind of soup called menudo. It is a traditional Mexican tripe soup that she came to love when working at a little Mexican restaurant after first moving back to Texas almost 25 years ago. Several of the CNAs and kitchen staff who work in the nursing home are from Mexico. She asked them if they liked the menudo she had with her, which she had gotten at a local grocery store. They did! So, she decided to get some to share when she went to pick up a prescription for my grandmother.

     Mom got back with a big container of menudo. While she was gone, the staff had produced a container of delicious, home-made, face-meltingly spicy hot sauce to eat with it. When she told me the story, she didn’t know if they’d whipped it up right there in the kitchen or had brought it in for their own lunches. Either way, they wanted to share it with her to eat with the menudo. So, my mom and a bunch of women who work at the facility all crowded around the table, talking, laughing, and eating. My mom even tried the hot sauce, much to their delight. She wasn’t constitutionally prepared for more than just a taste, but they were so glad she tried.

     I’m so glad these folks are there taking care of my grandmother. As you know, it is challenging to work in nursing homes. And, it can be challenging to get good care in far too many facilities. I know that my granny is as safe and as healthy as she can be because these folks who brought the hot sauce and my mom who brought the soup take her care seriously. I also know that their lives are precarious. Not only is the work physically and emotionally demanding, most of the staff in the facility are on work visas. Though they are here legally, as we well know, plenty of legal immigrants are being targeted for harassment and deportation. I worry for their safety if they are outside of the facility where they work.

     The employees of this facility are guests and hosts, invited here to work, making sure the residents of the facility have safe and nutritious food and help to eat. In this moment in our nation when questions of hospitality and welcome are at the forefront, we ought to consider this time as an invitation to remember the responsibility of the host to make welcome and of other guests to be humble, especially with regards to people who provide necessary and underappreciated work, like personal care work. Jesus didn’t direct his disciples to play bouncer to decide who gets a seat at the table. He invited those of us with a measure of privilege to presume that someone else needs to be seated closer to him than we do. There’s enough food for all if only we share it. Let’s make sure everyone knows they are invited, and that there is room to spare.

Resources consulted while writing this sermon:
​E. Trey Clark: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-22-3/commentary-on-luke-141-7-14-6