The Unearned Feast

The Rev. Alissa Newton

The Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost

text: Luke 14: 1, 7-14

This summer I have engaged in the time honored practice of binge-watching one television show over the course of just a few weeks, thanks to the streaming technology of Netflix. This particular binge has been on a series that aired in the early 2000s, Gilmore Girls. The show centers around Lorelai Gilmore, a daughter of wealth and privilege who became pregnant at the age of sixteen and fled her parents influence to raise her baby daughter on her own, in a small town. We meet Lorelai when her daughter, Rory, is fifteen years old and has just been accepted into a prestigious prep school that Lorelai cannot afford. In the very first episode she has to go to her wealthy parents to ask for financial help, and we, the viewers, begin to see why she left the comfort of their home in the first place. Lorelai’s mother makes a deal with her – she will pay Rory’s tuition but only if Lorelai and Rory will come to dinner every Friday night until the debt is repaid. Friday night dinners at the Gilmore house are delicious, chef-prepared meals full of bitterness, formality and intrigue. They stand in stark contrast to the pancakes and cheeseburgers that the Gilmore girls consume regularly at their little town’s local diner, where Lorelai serves herself from behind the counter and the small town characters demonstrate a love and care for each other that seems to be missing from Lorelai's relationship with her wealthy parents. There is this big question, at the center of the show that I find really interesting, and relevant to our gospel this morning: what is the relationship between the privilege of wealth and status and real freedom to love and care for people? Lorelai gives up wealth to raise her daughter in a more loving environment. And then she enters back into relationship with the people and privileges she despises in order to give that same daughter an education. And we see, throughout the series, that no gift from Lorelai's mother comes without a price to pay. Not in money, but in obligation, control, and power. These are the things Lorelai must give to her parents in order to get access to their wealth.

Wealth, status, and obligation are also central questions in our gospel this morning. Jesus is at a sort of "Friday night dinner" of his own, eating with a leader of the Pharisees and observing how the people who are invited to this special dinner behave. For events of this sort in that time there were strict protocols in terms of status that had to do with where people sat – we see this all over our scripture with people who vy to sit at Jesus' right or left, etc. The most important guests would sit the closest to the host, and the least important would be seated the furthest away. This meant that a person could literally read a room and tell who was the most important or least important based on where they were sitting. However, these seating arrangements were not free. They came with the price of expectation. If you were given an invitation to dinner, and a place of honor at that dinner, then you would be expected to reciprocate with equal or better treatment at your next fancy dinner.

So Jesus is eating dinner with a Pharisee and that Pharisee's peers, and they are watching him closely. As it turns out, Jesus is also watching them closely. He sees the fine food, and the way that the guests are vying for position. And at first it seems like Jesus is simply giving out some common sense advice about seating arrangements at these things. . But then he takes it a step further, and asks his host, in front of everyone (all people who have the status to be invited to dinner) to abandon their hard earned privileges and expectations, in favor of a different sort of blessing. He asks them to consider that in God's kingdom the best dinners will be for the people who never get asked to sit at the table in this world, and that real privilege would come from throwing parties for those folks now, even knowing that they have no way to reciprocate.

I want us to notice how radical this idea is. Jesus doesn't say to the room full of haves that they should do charity work for the have nots. Jesus doesn't say that what they really need to do is stop having parties and start investing in job programs or housing projects or to figure out a way to help the blind, sick, poor, and outcast find a way to earn status and privilege for themselves. No, Jesus says keep having parties, but change and expand your guest list. Jesus says that a party isn't really a party without the freedom to invite everyone, without the most vulnerable included on the guest list and without the freedom from any expectation that a seat at the table must be earned. For the best parties, there is no expectation that in order to come to the table a human being needs to change or improve who they are, or conform in any way. Do you see how radical this is?

So here we are, and we have a party every week. We gather around a table and it would be easy for us to assume that where we sit and what we bring to this table is in some sort of relationship with how important, or how good, or how faithful we are. But this party, and this table, are not part of the status and societal structures of the rest of our world. At this party every single one of us is sitting next to the host, the God who comes close to us in the mystery of Eucharist, and in the mystery of each other. And at this table, you don't even have to eat to be welcomed, and you are considered a blessing no matter how you behave, and no matter what society thinks of you. You can bring the good, the bad, and the ugly of who you are to this party, and God will fill you up and bless you, and you do not have to do anything to earn it. This is God's table, and when we make worship here we are participating in a preview of God's kingdom – a preview that shapes us, and changes us bit by bit into a people capable of lives that also preview God's kingdom.

I am afraid that we do not always realize the potential of this table. I know that for me, it easy to bring all the baggage of our world, our culture, my privileges and the obligations that come with them, it is easy to bring this into my life as a Christian person. Giving without expectation of a return is not a thing that comes naturally to human beings, and even here in this place it's a tough thing to shake. We experience this, don't we? We want to see returns on our investments, we want to see the people we reach out to change, improve, become more like...well, more like us. We want the homeless to get better and live in homes, we want the poor to do something that makes them not poor, we want the outcast to conform and fit in better, and if we cannot make them conform we don't want to invite them into our lives. But that is not the party Jesus is telling us to throw, this morning. That is not the meal we are being offered today.

Here is the good news, church, in our gospel lesson today: we don't have to change or conform or contribute in order to be invited into relationship with God. God's table is not a place where there is a quid pro quo relationship between giving and receiving love and sustenance. You belong at God's table just as you are, and every one of us has a place of honor at this feast. And here is more good news: we don't have to change other people in order to love them, or feed them, or bless them. We also can throw parties and give gifts of care and time and relationship without expectation of return. You see, if we eat here enough, if we really show up at this party each week together, then we will learn how to take the party with us, to make it a part of how we live every day, how we eat every meal, and how we form every relationship. We will become the blessing that once upon a time we thought we had to earn.