Invited to the Feast

Introduction

Imagine that one evening you’re sitting at home with your family and supper is just about ready. Then suddenly the doorbell rings. Who could that be? You open the door to find a stranger. His clothes look worn out and he even looks a little dirty. He tells you that he hates to ask, but he’s fallen on hard times and has nowhere to go. He asks if he can have some dinner and a place to stay for the night. How would you respond to this uninvited guest?

This would be a very unusual and somewhat worrying situation these days. But in the ancient world, the Greek and Roman world of Jesus’ day, it was very common. Hospitality was essential to the fabric of society. Travel would be nearly impossible if it weren’t for the fact that people were expected to invite strangers in to provide a meal and a place to sleep for the night. That’s why even in the ancient Greek world, the god Zeus was know as the protector of strangers, the enforcer of the law of hospitality. The Greek name of this virtue, which appears even in the New Testament translates to “love of the stranger.”

How Do We Give Invitations?

Text

Jesus gives two teachings in our Gospel reading that relate to this theme of invitations and hospitality. I want to focus our attention first on the second of those teachings, the one Jesus addressed to his host, the one giving out invitations. Jesus tells him,

English Standard Version Chapter 14

When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. 13 But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”

Jesus's teaching addresses the question, “how should people give out invitations?” Jesus sees that this ruler of the Pharisees and others like him have a problem with the way they practice hospitality. From Jesus’ words we can assume that those he was talking to had a tendency only to invite their relatives and rich neighbors to eat and stay with them. They were excluding the needy, the disabled, and the marginalized from their homes and tables. In their culture they should have known better. They did know better. If hospitality, the love of strangers, was important to the Greeks and Romans, it was even more important to the Jews of Jesus’ day. The Law of Moses in Leviticus commands,

English Standard Version Chapter 25

35 “If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you. 36 Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you. 37 You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit.

The Jews took commands like that very seriously; in the time of Jesus, synagogues often served as a hostel for travelers, and sabbath dinners, like the one in our text, were especially supposed to be a time to welcome visitors and strangers. The fact that Jesus had to call out his host’s lack of love for strangers at a Sabbath dinner shows that there has been a serious neglect of an important virtue.

Application

But if there was a problem with hospitality in our text, I think have an even greater problem with hospitality in our culture today. It seems that hospitality has largely been forgotten as a virtue in modern society. Just think about the people you invite to eat with you in your home. If you’re like me, you’re probably having trouble remembering the last time you had someone over for dinner who wasn’t a friend or a family member of some kind, someone who could repay you for the invitation by hosting you in turn. Jesus’ words could describe us just as well; as a rule, we only invite our friends, relatives, and rich neighbors to our tables. That is, if we even invite people over at all rather than meeting them at a restaurant. And that’s the main challenge isn’t it? We’ve outsourced the whole business of hospitality. We have restaurants and banquet halls to host our feasts, huge hotels to lodge travelers, dedicated shelters for the poor and homeless, and residential facilities for the aged and disabled. Hospitality has become an industry rather than a virtue. I don’t mean at all that those things are bad in themselves. Food pantries like the one here at St. John’s serve more people in need than any of us could on our own. The retirement home where my grandma lives gives her better care than my family could provide. But the fact still remains that these things all tend to isolate us from our fellow human beings, their needs, and the messiness of their lives. We have to work hard if we actually want to open our lives to “the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame,” and anyone else outside of our comfortable bubble as Jesus calls us to do.

How Does God Give Invitations?

But we don’t want to miss why Jesus calls us to act this way toward others. We need to look at the bigger picture. Jesus is not only thinking of everyday luncheons and dinners. All his advice about invitations and hospitality is given in view of God’s Heavenly Banquet, the Marriage Supper of the Lamb that will take place on the Last Day. His answer to the question of how we should handle giving invitations is based on the answer to the question, “how does God give out invitations?”

Jesus commands us to invite those who can’t repay us because that is exactly what God does. God has an eternal Sabbath dinner prepared and he wants to share it with those who don’t deserve it, those who don’t know him yet, those who have no power to offer him anything in return. We were once spiritually poor and destitute, unable to pay the price to redeem our lives from death. We were crippled and made lame by our sin, helpless to do anything for our salvation. We were blinded by our unbelief to the goodness and kindness of God. Yet God sent Jesus to call us and invite us to his feast. Jesus, who said to his disciples, “No longer have I called you servants, but I have called you friends” (John 15:15). Jesus, who according to Hebrews is not ashamed to call us brothers (Heb. 2:1). Jesus, who “though he was rich, yet for our sake became poor, so that we by his poverty might become rich.” (2 Cor. 8:9) We see through the ministry of Christ and in the ministry of his Church how God takes the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame and makes them into his friends, brothers, and rich neighbors. He makes us his very own family. God offers forgiveness for our pride, our self-isolation from others, and our lack of hospitality, and he welcomes us to his table. He gives us a home and family in his Church. He feeds us with his Word and his Sacrament. He provides for us through all the gracious gifts he lavishes on us in our lives. We always remain God’s humble guests. That is why we can look at every person that has been redeemed by Jesus as a potential brother and member of the family. As we sang today, “love excludes no race or clan that names the Savior’s name. His family embraces all, whose Father is the same.” (LSB 845, v. 6)

How Does God Reward and Give Honor?

But now there is one more question that remains: If God has graciously invited us in without any repayment, how can he reward us and honor us for the works of love and hospitality that we do? Jesus clearly teaches here that people will be repaid at the resurrection of the just for welcoming those who cannot repay. What then? After we’ve been invited to God’s feast as undeserving sinners, are we to barge into the Wedding Feast of the Lamb demanding that God give us what he owes us as our reward for the kindness we’ve shown? This is where Jesus’ teaching about choosing the places at a feast can give us an answer. Once we know how God invites people to his wedding feast, we can understand how ridiculous and presumptuous it would be for those invited to insist on the place of honor, to push and shove for the best seat. It’s not about false modesty, it’s about remembering how you were invited. Those who forget God’s grace to them will be humiliated when God reminds them how little they actually deserve from him. But to those who remember that they were invited as blind, lame beggars and sinners, God grants even further rewards and higher honors for the work they’ve done. In God’s way of doing things, even the rewards and the places of honor are gifts.

God allows us to participate in his own work of welcoming the stranger and inviting others into his kingdom. He chooses to work through us to bring his love and his salvation to others. And then, as if participating in the work of God was not honor enough, he chooses to reward us for the things he accomplished through us. He doesn’t have to do that. He owes us nothing. Even the rewards and honors he graces us with are a gift of his endless love. As St. Augustine once put it, “If, then, your good merits are God’s gifts, God does not crown your merits as your merits, but as His own gifts.” It’s all grace from beginning to end. Everything we have, our homes, our wealth, our food, our lives, and our salvation come to us as gifts from God. And so we have the joy of inviting others to share in all those gifts, both earthly and spiritual. Our Epistle lesson also teaches us (Heb 13:2) “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” And more than that, we have the assurance of Christ himself that whatever act of love we do to one of his brothers, we do to him. Even better than hosting angels, whenever we invite someone for whom Christ died to share in our joy, we have the privilege of hosting the Son of God himself.

Augustine of Hippo, “A Treatise on Grace and Free Will,” in Saint Augustin: Anti-Pelagian Writings, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. Peter Holmes, vol. 5, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1887), 450.

Conclusion

Please pray with me. O God, our dwelling place in all generations, look with favor upon the homes of our land. Embrace husbands and wives, parents and children, in the arms of your love, and grant that each, in reverence for Christ, fulfill the duties You have given. Bless our homes that they may ever be a shelter for the defenseless, a fortress for the tempted, a resting place for the weary, and a foretaste of our eternal home with You. Amen (LSB Collect 2)