Kingdom Hospitality

Have you ever gone to a party and you are clearly the outsider? You arrive and you are aware that everyone else knows each other really well, and you sort of wonder why you were included on the guest list. A prominent Pharisee invited Jesus to Sabbath dinner along with the other Pharisaic leaders. Jesus was clearly the outsider. He knew why he was there. All eyes were on him.

As they are gathering in the courtyard, a man with an abnormal swollen mass is right there in front of Jesus. It seems like it might have been a set-up. Jesus knew all eyes were on him. He asked, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?” They didn’t answer. They wanted to test him, not the other way around. He healed the man and sent him on his way. Then he turned to the other dinner guests and asked, “If you child, or even your ox, fell down into a well on the Sabbath, would you leave them there to suffer, or would you help?” I can just imagine them exchanging glances, but no one dared to speak.

It was time to go inside and be seated for the meal. Custom dictated that the most important person there would recline at the place of honor and everyone else would be seated according to their rank around them. They ate at low u-shaped tables, reclining around the outside of the table, and the seat of honor was the center of the U…the next most important people sat to the right and then the left of the center, and then the farther out you sat, the less important you were. I wonder if there was interest in where Jesus would place himself. Surely, they would take pleasure in making him move down. I wonder if Jesus actually sat down at the end of the left side, the lowest seat. But he was their invited guest, not part of their community, he should be the host’s special guest, seated to have conversation with the host…surely they wanted him at the center so everyone could see and hear him. But, if they moved him up, what message would that send!

He tells what Luke calls a parable; it sounds like manners training. The clue to the real meaning is the occasion of the story. “When someone invites you to a wedding feast…” Throughout the Old Testament, we find God described as a faithful husband and God’s people as the bride. There is to be a wedding. God and God’s people will finally be united…and you will be invited to the feast. It is the long-awaited Messianic Banquet, the heavenly banquet. And Jesus calls them out, “You think you are important. You think you are deserving of the seat closest to God because you think you’ve earned it.” Watch out, or you’ll find yourself upside down. The Kingdom of God is the flip of the ways of the world. “All those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

It’s like Jesus put a sign up over here that said, “Law faithful” and one over here that said, “Law failure” and said “If I had you sort yourselves, when I corrected you, you’d all be flipped.” I just imagine that they are looking around at their fellow Pharisees thinking, “Ok, so maybe he will be honored over me…doesn’t really deserve it, I don’t think, but ok…still, I have to be more follower than he is. I know about what he has done…. And he has not kept the law, let’s be real.”

And while they are busy ranking themselves amongst themselves, Jesus breaks the whole thing open. “When you give a banquet, don’t just invite the people who can reciprocate. Invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.” This is a particular list from Leviticus 21: “Aaron is told who cannot approach the presence of God to make food offerings, No man who has any defect may come near: no man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; 19 no man with a crippled foot or hand, 20 or who is a hunchback or a dwarf, or who has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles. 21 No descendant of Aaron the priest who has any defect is to come near to present the food offerings to the Lord.” The people in the line are not AT ALL who they thought they would be! The people sitting at the table are going to include people who were not even worthy in their minds to offer sacrifice.

Archeologists have found documents from the Essenes at Qumran, a Jewish sect like the Pharisees except focused on strict observance of ritual purity and on apocalyptic prophecies and scripture. These documents show that the Essenes, at the time of Jesus, understood Leviticus 21 to mean that the poor, the blind, the crippled, and the lame wouldn’t be part of the messianic banquet.
Jesus is saying not only are they wrong, these people will be seated at the messianic banquet – and not at the ends where the least important people sit, or outside in the courtyard where the lower classes eat, in the seats of honor – that’s Kingdom hospitality.

Our hospitality is a reflection of our hearts. When we follow the example of Jesus, we eat with people. He didn’t come and start programs or hand out fliers…he sat down and ate with people – Pharisees who were watching him, sinners, tax collectors, children, women,…on the road to Emmaus his own disciples didn’t recognize him until he broke the bread. We discover the grace of community as we gather around the table to eat.

British pastor Tim Chester argues that meals enact mission. We think of mission as something we do somewhere else, to help someone else. We want to outsource mission and evangelism to an expert. But, you are the expert. You know your life story. They know their life story. Listen and be attentive and be open to sharing, if the conversation leads there naturally.

Theologian and chef Simon Carey Holt says, “hospitality…lies at the heart of Christin mission, it’s a very ordinary thing; it’s not rocket science nor is it terribly glamorous….Most of what you do…will go unnoticed and unrecognized. At base, hospitality is about providing space for God’s Spirit to move. Setting a table, cooking a meal, washing dishes is the ministry of facilitation: providing a context in which people feel loved and welcome and where God’s Spirit can be at work in their lives….”

You may have sat down to eat at Room in the Inn with our guests experiencing homelessness and wondered what you would talk about. I have! But, I’ve never eaten in silence. I get asked what we talk about – the same things we talk about at Potluck! How was your day/what’s your favorite team…once you know each other, you catch up on how things are going since the last time you saw each other…they ask about you…do you have kids, you like sports, you seen this movie? Back and forth, connections are made. Grace flows.

We have some other mission opportunities this month. This week on Thursday and Friday, the preschool will be celebrating Grandparents’ Day, but some of the preschoolers’ grandparents can’t come. The teachers have asked if any of you would come and sit with a child to have a muffin together. Then, on the 19th, we have Fall Festival – Friendsgiving moved to September. The whole Farmington family is invited – church folk, school folk – Sarah Spain from Landslide will be singing and playing, there will be face painting and games, we will be accepting donations for Presbyterian Disaster Assistance and packaging 200 hygiene kits with the things you need when you have to evacuate to a shelter (toothbrush, soap, shampoo, washcloth), and Scott will be making homemade pizza – mark your calendar and come…and invite people to sit with you that you don’t know. Walk up to people with your plate of pizza and ask, “Is anybody sitting here?” Ask how old their kids are, how long they have come to Farmington, ask them if they have packed a hygiene kit bag and tell them about who they are for… just have a conversation. Enjoy some Kingdom Hospitality.

And look for opportunities in your everyday – make a point to come to Potluck and Wednesday Night Dinner, maybe sit with somebody you don’t know that well. Or invite someone to have a meal with you that you don’t know well – maybe at your house, maybe out somewhere. It doesn’t have to be elaborate or well-planned. I know a group of neighbors who years ago met in the middle of the street in their PJs and robes and slippers, coffee in hand, and decided to do it again the next day…years later, most of them make it every morning….they have moved to a driveway or into a garage if it’s raining. Now they support each other, pray for each other, God’s grace flows in their fellowship.

This is the mission of kingdom hospitality: Set the table with love and welcome, and let God’s Spirit work. As the author of Hebrews wrote, “Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers. ….And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.”