Have you ever been to a very awkward party or social gathering or meal? You know the type – there are people all around, but no one seems to know each other and no is talking. Or there is just some small talk that goes no where, and then that 7-minute silence that seems to keep stretching on. You try not to look around too much, because then you might make eye contact with someone else and feel you have to say something, but you don’t know what topics might be taboo, or too political or too off colour, and can you really trust theses other people anyways. So everyone stays pretty quiet, or you come back to ‘Nice weather we’ve been having lately’ or ‘how ‘bout those Leaf’s?’ for the umpteenth time. You are so glad when the food comes, so then at least your mouth can be busy with something, and maybe you can talk about the food… as long as you don’t’ get into allergies and food sensitivities or the latest diet fad or anything that might offend. Do I drink or not drink? What is the proper table etiquette for this particular setting and party? What if the food is not very good in the first place. And what if you are not sure where you should sit and who might be beside you…. Or is this even a sitting down kind of affair or not. Maybe if you just keep moving slowly around the room, like you have a purpose or something. This corner, that corner. Look interested, even if you are not. Pretend to check your phone for a significant text. Or look important, like you are better than the people around you. You can always name drop. Maybe the person has something you need for your business or yard or a social connection and contact you can file away, and you can take advantage of who happens to be there -tit for tat. Or maybe you are inwardly thinking you shouldn’t have said yes to this invitation and found a good excuse, because a better party came up later, with more exciting people and better food, but you had already said yes here, but didn’t really want to come. Perhaps you have major FOMO for the party you are missing down the street where all the popular kids are. My personality certainly understands FOMO – Fear of Missing Out. To top it off, someone brings up politics in an uncomfortable way, and someone else says a loud risqué comment or tries to make a joke that falls flat, and you join in the muted stifled laughter, because that is better than pure silence, but not really any less awkward.
Sounds familiar at all? Have you ever been there, at a party or social occasion like that, where you would not want such inner thoughts outed to anyone else? We had a fun time at the Bible study Wednesday night describing what all goes into a good Dinner party – the preparation, the food, the plan, the invitations, the background music and ambiance, the decorations and fine China, and what experiences people have had when things flopped, and became awkward – the differing expectations, the introduction of politics, the person who monopolizes the conversation, or the times of silence, the guests that stayed too long, and the gentle hinting saying ‘If we would go to bed, they could go home,’ or maybe even getting out boxes of cereal as a big hint. Not all dinner parties go well or as expected and hoped.
This is kind of like what we read in Luke chapter 14. Mary Schertz, retired professor at AMBS who I took the gospel of Luke from way back when, in her recent Believer’s Church Bible Commentary on Luke, names this awkwardness and says ‘The dinner began badly.’ (Herald Press, 2023, p.272). We didn’t read the first few verses of chapter 14, but the setting is a party, a gathering, an auspicious dinner offered on a Sabbath day by the leader of the Pharisees, with the guest list including other Pharisees, lawyers, prominent folks in the community and Jesus – this new person of curiosity, but also maybe threat. Maybe they could trap him. All eyes are on Jesus, because there is man with dropsy, probably something like edema, a swelling of fluids, maybe even caused by too rich a diet, and they are all wondering if Jesus will again heal on the Sabbath like he did with the man with the withered hand. Jesus asks them ‘Is it lawful or not to cure people on the Sabbath?’, to which they are silent, not wanting to implicate themselves – so he goes ahead and heals the man, and there is more silence. As Schertz writes, Already, ‘the dinner part is not a roaring success as a social occasion.’ (Ibid, p.272) At the Bible study, we named how much tension was present in these verses.
Then we get to the passage Brent just read, the background and context to the Great Banquet parable. There is this jostling for position as the guests navigate the seating patterns, status, and who might get the places of most honour. Jesus warns that all this positioning might just get you into trouble, so rather go sit in the lowest place and you might just get invited up. ‘For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’ (14:11). And if you are the host, don’t just invite your friends or rich neighbours, again positioning yourself, padding your reputation, but invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, a list that will re-emerge in the parable. What is going on here?
There was this ancient middle eastern code of hospitality, one really found around the world in so many cultures, that says you welcome the stranger, with open arms and no questions, just warmth and food, and that they may even be bearing a surprise gift from God for you. It is wonderful. But over time, it had also sometimes become twisted into a system of reciprocity rather than pure hospitality. Gifts and meal invitations were given with the expectation that the receiver would return the hospitality, and favours. You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours. Rather than true hospitality, freely given without expectations for something in return, meals and social occasions became opportunities to reinforce social hierarchies and status. ‘Hosts would not invite poor people to a meal since that would threaten the host’s social status; a poor person could not reciprocate.’ (Shelia Klassen-Wiebe, Shine, March 9, 2025, p.12) This is how power gets reinforced and social position reinforced. We know this kind of tit-for-tat reciprocity is alive and well in our world and our time. People still jostle for social position and power, and for the invitations to the parties that get one noticed. An extreme example right now in the States, are the ads going to top CEO’s that for 1 Million dollars, you can have a seat at the table at Mar-a-Lago for a candle light dinner with the President and for 5 Million a one on one chat. As a source says ‘It’s everyone else who missed the boat.’ (https://www.wired.com/story/people-paying-millions-donald-trump-mar-a-lago/) Talk about influence, access, power, reciprocity and I dare say, corruption.
Jesus challenges all of this. Don’t position yourself at the place of honour. Be humbled. Invite those unable to reciprocate back. As Mary Shertz writes, ‘if those who name themselves Christan would consistently invite into their homes and festivities those who cannot repay the generosity, our culture and society would undergo significant social transformation.’ (Ibid, p. 273)
This meal at the home of the Pharisee is getting more and more awkward, more and more uncomfortable. So one of the dinner guests tries to change the mood, open things up with an obvious platitude – ‘Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!’ – I can see him raising his glass, confirmation all around. Diffuse the tension. This makes him look good, maybe move up the social ladder again. To which Jesus tells the parable of the Great Banquet, leaving everyone stunned and quiet. Party over.
So what do we make of this parable he tells, this story within a story? It is confusing and doesn’t always line up neatly exactly as we expect or hope. Is the parable about the host and the invitation? Someone gives a great banquet and invited many. Who is this host supposed to symbolize? That particular Pharisee hosting Jesus that night? A well to do person in that community? Any of us who might think to host a party? Or is it God inviting broadly to God’s kingdom? But why then an angry host? Or then why not invite the poor and disadvantaged right away? Why wait until the others back out? And isn’t that last line harsh, that none of those who were invited will taste my dinner!’ (14:24) What about grace and second chances?
Or is this parable more about those who receive the invitation, and a warning against making excuses, of not joining in on the party, or being a part of the kingdom. The list here parallels the list in Deuteronomy 20:5-8, of the four reasons acceptable for not participating in holy war. A new house or land not yet dedicated, a vineyard not yet borne fruit, like the five yokes of oxen, a marriage not yet consummated, and a disheartened attitude – all giving evidence of divided attention – heart and heads not in the spirit of the banquet. (Ibid, p.274) Or are these just excuses made because you don’t really want to go to the lame party, where the chance for influence, prestige and power moves has already dissipated. Is this an indictment to the guests sitting right around Jesus in that Pharisee’s home that day? Suddenly there is a new guest list – first the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame – those Jesus already named a few verses earlier as worthy of inviting, and then even further a second list of anyone that might be found in the roads and lanes and back alleys that can be compelled to come in – an interesting turn of phrase – compel– to this list of what The Message Translation calls ‘The misfits and homeless and down-and-outs.’ Talk about turning a party upside down with chaos and bedlam. Etiquette thrown out the window. Clean, unclean, unpredictable, uncouth, socially unacceptable, and yet all part of this new Great Banquet guest list.
So maybe this parable is about upending all sorts of our understandings and assumptions, and shaking up our very concept of social barriers and who eats together and parties together, and yes, who all makes up the Kingdom of God? It is about hospitality in its most profound form and messiest form. If we move beyond Luke 14, we read right away in the next verses about the cost of discipleship, hating even father, mother, wife and family – the tight social unit, carrying your cross, and giving up all your possessions. Chapter 15 starts with the Pharisee’s dismay and grumbling that Jesus welcomes tax collectors and sinners and eats with them. This is a different kind of kingdom. This is a new imagination for hospitality, rather than simply reciprocity. This is a hospitality that does not have clear rules of etiquette, and is fuzzy about who is all invited and what the interactions might look like. We ended our Bible study on Wednesday night, wondering if in the context of this parable being told in the Pharisee’s home on a Sabbath, if this parable was calling them back to more nuanced and full practice of Sabbath, in which you did not focus on rules, but remembered and cared for those without power and status in the community, remembering that you were once slaves in Egypt, saved by God.
This week, one of the Richard Rohr daily devotionals caught my attention in relation to this passage. It was entitled ‘Hospitality: A Holy Practice.’ He writes, ‘Communities in which hospitality is a vibrant practice tap into deep human longings to belong, find a place to share one’s gifts, and be valued. The practice of hospitality reflects a willingness on the part of a community of people to be open to others and to their insights, needs, and contributions. Hospitable communities recognize that they are incomplete without other folks but also that they have a “treasure” to share with them. Hospitality is at the heart of Christian life, drawing from God’s grace and reflecting God’s graciousness. In hospitality, we respond to the welcome that God has offered and replicate that welcome in the world.’ Rohr goes on to name this as a shift from doing to being. It is not just about this or that meal or party, but rather, about an expression of who we are – our very being as Christian communities. He continues ‘What is this shift, this journey from doing to being? It involves a deepening relationship with both the Holy Spirit and people who may not look like us or share our experiences. Shifting our focus from doing to being allows us to become more fully the community that Scripture calls us to be. Though we may begin with hospitality, where we are saying “we welcome you,” Scripture calls us to journey from that place, through a place of solidarity (“we stand with you”), and ultimately to mutuality (“we need you”), where we comprehend just how deeply the global community of Jesus followers need each other in order to be the people of God we are called by Scripture to be.’
It is this kind of embodiment of hospitality that this story of the Great Banquet calls us to BE. A community that values difference and diversity, and the gifts of all, no matter what their background or story. These are the kinds of values I want to hold on to, rather than the values that flow from a meal at Mar-A-Lago or from any place where assumed and privileged reciprocity replaces honest and true hospitality, and the gifts from God that may surprise us.
I find it kind of cool that on the day our text is this Luke parable of the Great Banquet, we here at SJMC have our Mystery Progressive Supper. And yes, it could always be more expansive, and maybe each host should stand on their street corner and invite in a few extra folks from whomever happens to walk by – I know Rachel and I in downtown Kitchener have interesting conversations sometimes on the sidewalks around our place. But what I like about this meal, is that hosts don’t know who is coming for their meal course, and guests don’t know who they are going to be eating with and sitting next to, and you can’t really have any FOMO, or try to position yourself, or even offer something in return. You might be a host or a guest, or both as you go through the evening. It is food and fellowship and community and hospitality freely given and received, no strings attached, and no excuses given – a signpost of the Great Banquet, where God is the ultimate host. So may tonight remind us and be a kind of foretaste of God’s Great Banquet, where all are welcome and all find a place at the table. Come on Children to the Gospel Feast! Amen.