It’s all about the meals, according to New Testament scholar Robert Karris. In his book “Eating your Way through Luke’s Gospel,” he points out that Jesus almost always seems to be either going to a meal, at a meal, or coming from a meal. And in the Gospel we just heard, Jesus is teaching about a meal. A meal that challenges the dominant dinnertime expectations and rules. His parables echo Mary’s song, from the beginning of Luke: “he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts, he has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things.” These are fighting words. In Luke’s Gospel, Karris famously wrote, Jesus got killed for the way that he ate.
Even without the guest who famously challenged the seating chart and the invite list, we already kind of know that meals can be a dangerous business. What’s your memory of a scary meal? The first time you met a partner’s parents? The place setting that had more forks than you knew what to do with? The one that served a weird looking food you had never eaten before?
When my husband and I lived in Central America, our neighbors were always gracious to invite us to meals, even when they had very little food to share. Talk about radical hospitality! Ask John sometime about the red beans that had been cooked with an unintended splash of diesel oil. In a country where food was not abundant, you don’t waste a pot of beans just because there’s truck fuel in them.
Myself, I remember the first time I was handed a full cup of warm sugary juice with some fuzzy fruit seeds in it. I later learned that, in the Nicaraguan village I was visiting, this was a special drink. Reserved for honored guests. But at the time all I could see was a cupful of microbes and parasites. l looked around, wondering if there were a discreet way to dispose of it. There wasn’t, so I gamely lifted my cup to the host and drank. As expected, I did get sick… that time and several others. And I got familiar with the side effects of metronidazole, an anti-parasitic medicine that I’m guessing backpackers in this congregation have heard of. It’s not for the faint of heart. But I got better. And more significantly, I got to make friends.
It matters what we eat and who we eat with. For our physical health, certainly. But in Jesus’ world, meals were even more significant for the health of the community. Meals make us friends or enemies. They have the power to reinforce or to undermine the social order. They can be sacred, and they can be scary. So here’s what you do: you sit in the seat of the humble, and you invite the outcast to your party. Follow those rules and you’ll make all the wrong sort of friends, you’ll learn about the breadth and resilience of human community, you’ll eat some strange food and—if you take Jesus at his word—you’ll get a glimpse of the kingdom of God.
Here at Trinity, I’d venture to say that we do a pretty good job of upsetting the seating chart. I think of our Wednesday community meals, where the most food-insecure Portlanders occupy the seat of honor, are fed nourishing multi-course meals and hear live music played by talented Trinitarians. Your gifts to Trinity make you a host at that meal, but did you know that you are invited to it as well? Come and share lunch with our guests some Wednesday, you’ll learn so much about loss and human resilience. I think of our Posadas, and our Dias de Bienvenida where Spanish-speaking Episcopalians bring their favorite meals to share with us. You are invited! I think of our Sojourners meal groups, gathering all over town. You are invited to sign up for such a group, this very next week at our “Connected at the Commons” welcome back event.
This Gospel has something to say to those of us who might be hosts; who have a choice about where we sit or who we invite. Choose humility and hospitality. But it also has good news for those of us who feel like we are never invited. If you are feeling lonely or poor, go ahead and invite the lonelier and poorer. If you are hungry, come to where there’s food enough for the body, as for the mind and soul. You can get all that and more on Wednesday evenings here.
Whether we identify with the host or the guests, we can still be brave to show up where we’re not on the guest list. Eat at a food truck that’s new and scrappy rather than a restaurant that’s established and trendy. Put ourselves where people speak a different language, take public transportation if we usually drive, live in a neighborhood where people don’t mow their lawns. We can even go to a church that worships in a way we don’t understand. Oh wait… forget that idea.
But you see what I’m getting at. Jesus really wants us all to be at God’s banquet, and he’s willing to go to dangerous lengths to get us there. Whether we are the inviter, the invited, or even the uninvited. It doesn’t really matter where we think that we fit into the order or hierarchy, God’s party just won’t be complete until everyone is at the table.
In our current climate of mistrust, getting us all there could take a while. But in the meantime, we can practice. In fact, this right here is our practice party. When we gather on Sundays, we worship God in Word—that’s the lessons and the sermon—and in Sacrament. That’s the bread and wine—recalling the last supper—which likely to have been a symposium meal. Remember Plato? In the Greco-Roman culture of Jesus’ followers, festive meals were nourishment for mind as well as body. People—women as well as men—came to eat, drink, and engage in learned conversation. So it’s no surprise to find Jesus teaching about a meal, or within the context of a meal. In his name, that’s what we do still. I hope you come away well-fed, and maybe a little scared by the power of the meal.
I know you. I know that some of you have come to Trinity this morning because you have such an abundance that you can’t help but want to share it. I also know that some of you are hungry: for food, for learning, for friends. We have a feast for you! Some of you are eating the bread of sorrow. We have a prayer for you in the chapel after communion. Some of you are wondering if you’re sitting in the right seat, and some of you are wondering what the heck you are doing here at all. In a way, that’s the truth of all of us. We don’t know what we’re getting at this meal. The food we came looking for may be a mere appetizer. Perhaps you came here looking for a hopeful words, and you end up with the very Word of God. Maybe you came looking for some spiritual sustenance, and you end up with the real presence of Christ.
The good news is, it doesn’t really matter what you have come for, or who you are at this table. You are welcome, and you are needed. Squeeze in, move down a seat, and make room for the next honored guest. Without knowing it, you might just be entertaining an angel.
