“Setting a Place for Grace”

A Sermon Based Upon Luke 14: 1, 7-14

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

September 1, 2013, Pentecost 15, Year C.

  “But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.

And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." (Luk 14:13-14 NRS).

Several years ago it was popular for churches to take a new approach to naming their congregations.  Not only did new church starts name their churches differently, but some existing churches decided to rename their congregations.   In early times most churches were named either by their geographical location or with biblical names.  Hence, in the early days of American history churches took names like, “Flat Rock” as a geographic location or “Zion” as a biblical name, etc.  In more recent days, new churches have decided to name their churches based on the ideals or mission of the church.  Today we hear names like “Elevation Church”,  “Hope Church” or “Church of the Glad River” all having theological and biblical connotations but aimed at identifying what kind of congregation they want to be.  One of my favorite names ever given to a church was simply, “A Place of Grace”.

That is what the church is supposed to be more than anything else, isn’t it?  When you study the ministry of Jesus, his primary mission and purpose was to offer saving grace to God’s people, would you not agree?  Isn’t that we still love to sing the song, “Amazing Grace?”  At the center of everything Jesus was, lived for, taught and died for, was his desire to express God’s love for the world by offering people God’s grace through his ministry of teaching, healing, helping and caring.  

Of course, I say this---that at the center of Jesus’ ministry is offer of God’s grace, but as far as I know, Jesus never used the word.   Not one single time in the gospels is Jesus ever quoted as using the word grace.   It is not until we come to John’s gospel that we read that “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth”, but these were John’s words, not the word of Jesus himself.  Strangely, Jesus did not talk about grace.  Maybe it was because he was grace.  Jesus lived it and he was full of it.   It’s was as plain to him as the nose on his face.

In today’s text from Luke 14, we have one of the greatest depictions of the grace of God.  It is a story about a dinner table, one of Luke’s favorite settings.  Rather than being about the meal itself, it’s about the guests who were invited and how they should be seated.  It’s also a story about the people who were not invited, but should have been.  And finally, it’s about the people who didn’t show up at the party.   In the middle of all this partying, we find three of the most important lessons about the ‘grace’ of God.   They are stories that symbolize God’s table setting of grace for us, teaching us not only to appreciate what God’s grace means, but also teaching us never to take God’s grace for granted.

THE RADICAL HOSPITALITY OF GOD

If you want to get a picture of how radical, overwhelming, and extravagant God’s grace is, you need to first zoom in on the most important moment in this entire scene.    Jesus is talking with a Pharisee who had invited him and other Pharisees to dine with him.  As Jesus reviews the guest list, he makes a suggestion for the next party:  “…When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid.   But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.    And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." (Luke 14:12-14 NRS)

No doubt, the Pharisee had never thought about throwing a party this way---putting the most unfortunate people in his neighborhood on the guest list.   I would guess neither you nor I would have ever thought about that either.  So on where does that put us?  Do we think more like a Pharisee or like Jesus?

What is Jesus thinking?  Isn’t this where Luke wants to take us--into the mind and heart of Jesus?   According to Jesus, when God throws a party, or when that final day comes when we all gather around God’s table, God will invite the most unfortunate, unwanted, and unexpected people to the party of the kingdom.  This is what God’s grace looks like.  God’s grace is amazing precisely because the last are first, the forgotten are remembered, and the undesirables and nobodies are invited.  This is how it is in heaven and how it should be on earth.  Jesus wants the see how amazingly incredible and unimaginable graceful is this God who is unusually hospitable.  In fact, the word hospitality itself means ‘welcoming strangers’.   When God throws a party, he opens up his table and welcomes any and all---“whosoever will, may come.”  

And we not only see God as the one who invites the undesirables, but we see that God expects his church to do the same.    Jesus says to the religious leader and he says to us, “Don’t invite your friends…family… neighbors, but invite those who can’t repay you….those who could never throw a party for you?”  Do you see where Jesus is going with this?  He is telling us this is how God works. If you are working with God and you want to God work in your church, you will not only invite the people like you or the people you like.  If that’s what you are doing, then the church you build will not be very hospitable.  In fact, as the rest of story implies, churches built by friends helping friends is a most often a church that ends up hostile, just as in this story where so called “friends” people battle each other for privilege and position.  That certainly isn’t what Jesus had in mind for his church.  His church is to be a place of grace, which is all about inviting the lost, the lame and the least.

So, are we setting a place for grace?  Are we trying to build a church based on family, friends, cronies or neighbors?  There’s nothing wrong with inviting your friends and family to church, but if this is all we are doing, we really haven’t gotten the main idea.  A place of grace should be much more hospitable than that.  Once I went to visit a church in central North Carolina, where a well-known visiting preacher was to speak.  My friend and I got there early.  As people started to come in, a dear old lady came and stood beside me.   There were empty seats in front of me and behind me, but slowly and surely, this woman proceeded to sit down, as if she was going to sit down in my lap.  As I moved over still in shock, I suddenly realized that I must have been setting in her seat.  This was her church and it was her seat.   Do you think that woman had ever thought about the fact that the church did not belong to her.  Do you think she ever thought about making a seat for others, rather than taking a seat from others?

Several years ago a missionary told me a story about a fast growing African church.  I don’t know what part of Africa, but I will never forget the story.   People in that area had never had a church building before.  After a church had helped them to build a building, there was never an empty seat.  It was filled to capacity ever service.  In fact, they were turning people away who had never had a chance to hear the gospel even for the very first time.  It was a problem, but it was a good problem to have for the church.  So, the deacons and pastor got together and decided what they would do until everyone in the village got to get into the church and hear the good news.   They decided that they would patrol the service and look for their members and ask them to give up their seat for strangers and visitors.  If their members or others persisted on demanding a seat, they would look at them and say, “How dare you come and hear the gospel twice, when there are still people here who have never heard it once.”

However you want to express the grace and goodness of God, you have to come to terms with the fact that Jesus turned the religious values of his day upside down.  Instead of a religion where the good, the righteous and the privileged are most honored, Jesus introduces the world to an expression of faith where the last are first, the first are last and where the lowest and the least are welcomed into the kingdom ahead of the brightest and the best.  That’s quite a different vision of the world than most people imagine; a world that is determined not by what people accomplish, earn or make of themselves, but a world that is determined by the God who loves and receives those who are unfortunate, have failed, or have been left out of privilege, honor and status.  This is the kind of faith-world that only God’s love and grace can make possible.  Picture it this way: As all the eyes were watching and waiting for that royal baby to be born back in July, the birth announcement God awaits is the announcement that hearts and lives have been reborn because they discover that there is a place of love and grace reserved just for them.  

 

GRACE SHOULD HUMBLE US TOO

Sometimes we all struggle to understand what God wants to do in our world.  Jesus did not seem to struggle in his understanding, but everyone else struggled with Jesus.   As Luke’s story opened, we already read how religious leaders are ‘watching him closely’ (Luke 14:1).  The point is that it can be very surprising, if not even extremely challenging and humbling to realize that God wants his church to be a ‘place’ where the sick, sinners, strugglers, and people crippled by life can come and find help and hope.  How do we set the table for grace where the radical hospitality of God can be made known and experienced?   

It will not happen, it does not normally happen, until something else happens.  That something else that must happen first is what takes place at the beginning of Luke’s story.   Jesus has been invited to a dinner party the Pharisees are having.   Many scholars believe it was probably at trap to show just how stupid Jesus ideas were.  On the way to the party (a party that was thrown ‘on the sabbath’),  a sick man just happens to be standing there in front of him, perhaps planted there to see what Jesus would do.  Jesus puts the question back on the Pharisees who are watching him: “Is it right, is it lawful to cure people on the Sabbath or not?”   No one answers.  It’s not that they are confused, but they want Jesus to break the law on the open road.  Maybe they want this to end up being the point of discussion that will follow at the dinner table.  But Jesus reminds them that if an animal has a need on the Sabbath, there is an exception made.  Shouldn’t it be the same, if not more so for a human being?  The answer is clear.  End of discussion.

So, when we get to the dinner table, it’s Jesus who has the first word.  Noticing how the dinner guests are all scrambling to take the most honorable positions, Jesus reminds them that they should instead be taking the most humbled seats.  If you take the honored one, and you are asked to move, just think how humiliating that would be.  So take the humble seat, Jesus suggests.  If you are later asked to move up, you will be ‘exalted’ in front of everyone rather than humbled. 

We must understand here that Jesus giving us a parable and picture of God’s kingdom work, not advice on seating etiquette.  The point is that if we would invite the least and the lost in our churches; that if we want this place to be ‘a place of grace’, it will have to start with attitudes and acts of humility among us.  You don’t fill up the church or expand the kingdom by getting people who are the least and the lost to step up, but you fill up the church and expand the kingdom by getting the people who are among the brightest and the best to step down.   We are the ones who have to send out the invitations.  We are the ones who have to give up our seats.  We are the ones who have to do what needs to be done to prepare the dinner for the lost and the least. 

Something interesting has just happened in a town not far from here.   It was one of those large steeple churches that most pastors would love to have as their church.  It is a place where many of the wealthiest and finest of the town want to belong.   But rumblings have been going on in that church for some time now.   The pastor had led the church to new approaches to try to reach people.  He had gotten the church involved in the community.  He had done away with the sophistication of their approach toward ministry.  He had attempted to help the church reach out to the needs of common people.  But some of the long term members of the church did not like what was happening, even though new people had come in.   So, some of the people with honor, prestige and money in that church started giving the pastor a hard time, all in hopes that these new attitudes and actions of ministry and change would not continue.  They liked the church the way it was before as a social and spiritual place for the successful and the elite.  I don’t know all about what happened, but I know that it is highly unusual for a  pastor to give up a church most would love to have.  But that’s exactly what the pastor recently did.  He left job as pastor to become the head of a charitable organization.   He said he had been wanting to help strangers find hope all his life.   The church never did understand why he wanted to step down.   Some also didn’t understand why the church needed to step down.  Stepping down is not the direction the world or the church is used to going.

But if we want to join in the work of God in this world, in a world that isn’t really that much different from the world Jesus faced, we too will have to be willing to take the lower seats and the places of less honor.   This is how the kingdom comes and it is where grace is most appreciated and will do the most good.   For you see, those who are in positions of prestige, power and privilege need God’s grace just as much as the rest of world does.   Until we realize just how ‘needy’ we all are, even if it is on an entirely different level, we will not find it easy to make a place of grace for someone else.

GRACE CAN BE A HAZARD, BUT ONLY IF WE REFUSE IT

Jesus has one more lesson about grace.   In response to a wish for the kingdom comes a warning.  Jesus tells another story about a person who gave a big dinner party and told his servant to go and hand out the invitations.  The problem was that the invited guest would not come to the party.  The host said “everything was ready” but unfortunately, those who were invited made all kinds of excuses, sent their regrets, or simply did not show up.  They said they all had ‘good’ reasons, and maybe they did.  But what does the host do, he goes to plan “B” and sends his servant back out on the street to invite all the undesirables, the sick, the lame, and the crippled.  They do come to the party, but there is still room.  Now comes the question: Should the servant go back out and invite more people?   Yes, of course, “but” the host and owner of the house says, “none of those who were invited (and did not come) “will taste my dinner.”   

A couple of years ago, Rob Bell, a popular evangelical preacher, wrote a book entitled “Love Wins!”  The subtitle of that book suggests that this book is about ‘heaven, hell and the fate of every person who ever lived’.   That’s quite a tall order for any book, and as a result of writing this book and the controversy that ensued, Bell lost his job as founding pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids.   What caused such a stir?     At the heart of the book, Bell discusses his belief in God’s unconditional love and grace, which God offers through no merit of our own.  So far, so good, but what Bell objects to is the idea that if you reject God’s invitation of love and grace, that ‘God will torture you forever’.  Bells goes go on to affirm his belief that since God’s will must be done on earth as it is in heaven (which is God’s will and wish to save everyone), ultimately God will gets what God wants, meaning that in the end love will win over all the evil that is in the world and the evil that is in us.  Whether it is through the purifying fires of purgatory or sheer grace and power of victorious love, Bell affirms that God will eventually save every person who ever lived.

Several years ago, a French lawyer and theologian, Jacques Ellul wrote a book about his own Christian beliefs.  I’ll never forget one statement he made about ultimate human destiny.  He said that a healthy minded Christian should hope and pray that everyone will eventually be saved, but he said he had to stop short of believing this is true.  Why did lawyer Jacques Ellul not go where pastor Rob Bell dared to tread?   Could it be that listen closely to the final word of the host in Jesus’ parable, who says resolutely:  ^“For I tell you, none of those who were invited (and did not come) will taste my dinner" (Luke 14:24 NRS)?

To be fair to Rob Bell, I don’t think he meant to reject Hell as much as he just could not reconcile God’s loving heart with the idea that God sends people to Hell to burn forever and forever.   Anyone who has a loving heart and who believes that “God so loved the world” (John 3.16) or that “God does not want any to perish, but that all come to repent” (2 Peter 3.9) should take the Bible serious enough to have trouble with Hell.   Even in the Bible, Hell is not intended for humans, but for ‘the devil and his angels’  (Matthew 25:41).  But the greatest problem I have with Hell is not the burning of the fire, or the unending nature of the punishment, but the problem I have with Hell is that it represents something that I see each and every day as very real in this world.  Love and Grace have set the table through Jesus Christ.  Everything has been made ready, but there are still people, bad people, but also good people, even religious people, and even so called “Christian” people, who have received the invitation of grace, but are still too busy to come to God’s party.     

If you don’t come when you are invited, will you still get to enjoy God’s meal of goodness and grace?  Israel didn’t.   They rejected God’s offer of grace through Jesus, and within a generation, the nation was gone.  If we reject God’s invitation to love and grace now, “how will we escape, if we reject so great a salvation’ (Hebrews 2.3)?  If we take this life as seriously as God does, then our it must be our choices now, not our choices after death that determine our legacy and our destiny.  I think C.S. Lewis had it right when he said that if the door of grace is locked, it is locked from the inside.  But we can lock it.  God will honor and respect our choices.  As the poet rightly says, “We are the captain of our souls.  We are the masters of our fate”.   God is also the master host of his own table.   If God says that ‘none of those who were invited (and did not come) will taste his dinner’ (that final supper of the lamb at the heavenly table) I don’t think we have any theological or philosophical right to turn his ‘none’ into “all” or “every person”.  

What we can do, must do, and are challenged to do in this text, is to accept the invitation of grace and love ourselves and to keep handing out the invitations to God’s table, even if only those who have been lamed, crippled and blinded by life, are those who accept the invite.   We can’t control who comes or doesn’t come to the party, nor do we know what only God knows about ‘who will not taste the dinner’, but what we do know is that for now, the table is ready and it is open.  God’s grace is amazingly hospitable to outsiders and it is amazingly humbling to insiders.   The only ‘hazard’ I see in grace, is if it is rejected.  If we reject God’s grace and love what else is there that can save people like us---or save people like them---and save people like us any and all of the rest of us?   What else is there that can save and nourish us to eternal life worth living except the meal of grace and love that God has set for us in his son and our savior, Jesus Christ?’  Amen.