World Communion Sunday- The Best Supper

We know a thing or two about hospitality here in MS. It is our specialty and our state moniker after all. We know how to set a beautiful table. We know how to create cute invitations. We really know how to throw a party. The setting of today’s text finds Jesus at a dinner party. He has been invited to a sabbath meal in the home of one of the leaders of the Pharisees.

And so Jesus is walking in to take a seat and looks around and sees everyone trying to get the best seat. You see, in Jewish culture, where you sat at the table was a symbol of your status in the community. So if you were the host, you made sure to place all the big wigs next to you to elevate your own status a bit. It’s all about who you are seen with. Not a lot has changed. Where we sit at a concert or a football game. The letters after our name. The neighborhood we live in. The car we drive. The clothes we wear. Everywhere we look, we are showing others where we stand, where our place at the table is.

And so Jesus is looking around at everyone trying to get the best seat. He looks at the man who invited him and says “when you give a luncheon, you shouldn’t invite all of these rich relatives that can repay you…but invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, because they cannot repay you.” In other words, hospitality isn’t about what’s in it for you. Hospitality is about grace.

Jesus then tells the parable of the great dinner feast that I just read to you. The story of the host who threw a huge party and no one showed. All those who were invited were no shows and gave lousy excuses. The host was frustrated and didn’t want all the food to go to waste so he sent a guy out to invite everyone he could find: the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame, the good, and the bad, “so that my house may be filled.”

So that my house may be filled. So that none may be excluded. So that nothing is wasted. Suddenly the host in this story changes the guest list. Now it’s an open table and the least of these are given the seats of honor. These are people who would have never made it in without someone seeking them out and inviting them. These are people who didn’t make the cut and yet were welcomed to the party anyway.

Think about the tables in your life that you have sat around. Which tables have you extended hospitality to you? Which tables welcomed you exactly as you are? Which tables made room for you?

A coffee table? Your kitchen table? The break room? Your desk? Your best friend’s living room table?

Growing up, I always felt like our dining room table was a revolving door. My mom was literally always inviting people over. She was always asking people if they had plans for lunch or dinner and if they didn’t have a place to go, they would end up at our house. Those who didn’t have a Sunday lunch crew. Those who no longer had spouses or children to care for them. Those who were sick. Those who were estranged from their families. Those who were visiting or just passing through. My mom invited people to the table.

There was nothing my mom loved more than a full table. You see, both of my mom’s parents had died by the time she was age 16, and so she knew what it was to eat meals alone. She knew what it was to long for a table full of people, and so she created it by making her own a space of hospitality for others.

What happens when we make space for others? When we share in holy hospitality? In 1933 in the midst of utter chaos and division, Rev. Kerr invited the world to practice holy hospitality through sharing in Holy Communion. He believed the Lord’s table was the one place where we are all invited and united in Christ. Henri Nouwen said “when hostility is converted into hospitality then fearful strangers can become guests…Then, in fact, the distinction between host and guest proves to be artificial and evaporates in the recognition of newfound unity.” Diana Butler Bass says for Christians, “hospitality opens the way to practicing peace, doing a tangible thing that can change the world.”

When I served in Iuka, I got a call one day from a lady who attended the Southern Baptist church across the street. Apparently she and a few ladies went to visit the women in jail each week and it had been a long time since they had received Communion. They asked if I would be willing to come the next week and share it with them. I was honored. So I brought the bread and the juice, the plate and the chalice. And there beside their bunk beds, the small hard table became an altar. I said words maybe they weren’t as familiar with. They sang hymns I didn’t know. But we looked in each other’s eyes and were united by the “body of Christ which has been broken for you, the blood of Christ which has been shed for you.” Southern Baptist, Methodist, and a little bit of everything in between: we were by a common invitation to share in a meal that none of us had paid for, a meal of holy hospitality and radical grace.

Afterwards one of the women came to me and asked if they could keep the leftovers. She said “we don’t want anything to go to waste.”

You see, I don’t make the guest list for Holy Communion. I don’t set the table. I simply join in the invitation to come and eat, to share the Lord together. The late Rachel Held Evans said “the gospel doesn’t need a coalition devoted to keeping the wrong people out. It needs a family of sinners, saved by grace, committed to tearing down the walls, throwing open the doors, and shouting “Welcome!” There’s bread and wine. Come eat with us and talk. This isn’t a kingdom for the worthy. It’s a kingdom for the hungry.” It’s a kingdom that longs for the table to be full, that nothing would be wasted.

So today and every day we are invited to come to the table, to share the Lord. As we prepare for that, I want to leave you with a Table Blessing by Jan Richardson. She is the artist of the piece on the front of your bulletin. She writes:

To your table

you bid us come.

You have set the places,

you have poured the wine,

and there is always room,

you say,

for one more.

And so we come.

From the streets

and from the alleys

we come.

From the deserts

and from the hills

we come.

From the ravages of poverty

and from the palaces of privilege

we come.

Running,

limping,

carried,

we come.

We are bloodied with our wars,

we are wearied with our wounds,

we carry our dead within us,

and we reckon with their ghosts.

We hold the seeds of healing,

we dream of a new creation,

we know the things

that make for peace,

and we struggle to give them wings.

And yet, to your table

we come.

Hungering for your bread,

we come;

thirsting for your wine,

we come;

singing your song

in every language,

speaking your name

in every tongue,

in conflict and in communion,

in discord and in desire,

we come,

O God of Wisdom,

we come