Lectionary 22/15 Pentecost C August 28, 2016
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie G. Hutson
Proverbs 25: 6-7 + Hebrews 13: 1-8, 15-16 + Luke 14: 1, 7-14
Grace and peace to you, from God, who creates us, Jesus who saves us, and the Holy Spirit who sustains and enlivens us. Amen.
*Note for online readers: This sermon, unlike most of mine, was delivered extemporaneously, and not from the pulpit. The stories, so closely related to our texts assigned for the day, related so well to this. God bless the reading and the hearing.
It’s wedding season…especially here in Seattle, where we are fairly certain that the weather will cooperate during the month of August. Weddings and banquets and feasts and festivals all figure prominently in Scripture. But I can’t stop thinking about that wedding in Turkey last week. The one where a boy wandered into the celebration as it spilled out into the street…neighbors and friends were celebrating with the newly married couple…..and that boy…that boy….blew himself up, killing 70 of those celebrating as well as himself. I am haunted by images I see reported from the scene and from those I can only imagine. Images of a feast that goes horribly horribly wrong.
And so as a preacher and as your pastor I was tasked with pairing the story we heard this morning, that Jesus tells to guests who were trying to get a seat of honor at a wedding banquet, to this current wedding banquet story in our news and in our hearts.
My mind kept returning to another banquet…another feast. It was not a wedding, but it was a feast that we shared together here in this place some three plus years ago. Some of you were there and watched these events unfold. But it’s a story that bears remembering on this day.
It was Holy Week of 2013, Maundy Thursday to be exact. We were preparing for our second Agape Feast….a banquet of love….where we would gather to be together on the day we remember Jesus’ commandment to love one another.
As always, Gordon was in charge of the kitchen and the smells from the kitchen wafted down the hallways of this place. Roasted lamb with garlic and all of the trimmings. Gordon had arrived early in the morning to begin to prepare the feast. It was impossible for people who were in the building throughout the day not to stop in the kitchen…to follow their noses. And they were always rewarded with a taste, or a foretaste of the feast to come.
The fellowship hall was set in a large U shape….tables joined end to end and covered with tablecloths. There were flowers down the tables and candles, too. And of course china and silverware at each place setting. We had set our best table.
We had an intern that year, Vicar Inge, and together we had put together a program for the Agape Feast. Between course servings, we would hear Scripture readings and sing songs and hear reflections. There were a variety of people who would participate in this litany that would allow us to feast with all of our senses.
To allow for all of those who had a speaking or leading role to be on the same page, we decided to sit them at the head of the U shape….placing us literally at the head of the table. So, next to those place settings we put their worship leader materials, placed carefully so that when their turn came to lead they would be prepared.
As is the case with meals of this magnitude, we had asked folks to sign up ahead of time to indicate their intention to attend and to allow us to set just the right number of places, plus an extra one or two. The fellowship hall would be full that evening.
We had also been inviting the folks who received lunches to join us throughout the week, hopeful that they would feel the sincerity of our invitation and the warmth of our welcome.
As we began to gather that evening, we lit the candles and waited with eager anticipation. The fellowship hall was warm and abuzz with conversation and our eager hunger to sit down together and enjoy this feast.
We’d begun to find our seats when our brother Robbie Rizer came in. Although he’d not signed up to be at the meal, he’d noticed the cars pulling into the parking lot, and coming to make sure that all was well (he didn’t call himself the Mayor of Broadview for nothing), Robbie found his church family on the brink of a feast. We encouraged Robbie to stay for the meal, placing him at one of the extra place settings. Of course he’d stay, he said, but give him a minute. He’d be right back.
We said our opening prayer and as we awaited our salad course, Robbie returned, along with two other men. Like Robbie, these men lived on the street. They’d not showered for several days, perhaps weeks. Because where would one shower? The musty smell of alcohol and cigarette smoke clung to them. But Robbie had trusted his church family enough to bring them to the feast. We didn’t have that many spare place settings, and we didn’t want to separate them from Robbie, so they wouldn’t be uncomfortable. So three of the worship leaders left their places before we even began and we sat them there at the head of the table.
Soon, Jill arrived with her mom, Dorothy, in a wheelchair. In order to accommodate Dorothy’s wheelchair, she would need to sit at the end of the head table. Which was where we placed her and she promptly struck up a conversation with one of Robbie’s friends.
The salad course was still continuing when several more of Robbie’s friends from the streets filtered through the doors. Smiling Robbie said “I just invited everyone I saw. I told them there was plenty of room.”
The remaining worship leaders left their places at the head of the table and invited the new guests to be seated for the feast. Instead of an orderly row of worship leaders, seated together to assure we would do things in just the right way (because that’s how your pastor likes these things to go) the worship leaders were standing in the kitchen and on the fringes of the gathering, holding their plates of food in one hand and enjoying the feast all the same.
One of those leaders, looked at the head table, and tears filled his eyes. Seated at the highest place, if you will, were those who lived as the outcast….those who lived at the margins. An elderly widow in a wheelchair….and several men who, when they left us that night, would sleep outside, not knowing for certain what the night would hold. Yet, there they were, enjoying a feast of Biblical proportions and hearing as the evening went along, the stories and songs of our faith.
And this congregation welcomed them. No one….no one even blinked at their presence. There was no murmuring that we’d welcomed these unkempt strangers to the feast where we’d put forth our very best. Rather there were smiles and words of blessing and inclusion.
That worship leader looked at the head table and said through choked back tears “That is the kingdom.”
Beloved community, I remind you of this story, and I hold it alongside the story of the wedding banquet in Turkey, not to say that what happened here was our doing. To do that, to elevate our welcome and our inclusion and our hospitality would be to do the very thing that Jesus said in the Gospel today we should not do.
Rather I hold these stories side by side to remind us of the power of love in the world. When love prepares a meal, there is food for everyone. When love sets a table, there is room for everyone. When love throws a feast, as it does every single time we come to the table for the body and blood of Christ….there is a place for all people.
May we continue to act and reach in love and may we remember that we are the ones welcomed at the table of God, along with every other person God has created. It is the wide welcome of grace.
Continue to love each other as sisters and brothers, wrote the author of the letter to the Hebrews. Don’t neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some people have entertained angels without knowing it.
Thanks be to God and let the church say…Amen.