Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16; Luke 14:1, 7-14
I’ve noticed that whenever there’s a potluck at a church, everyone stands around awkwardly after grace is said, waiting for someone else to go first. And, here, you all insist that I go first, something about the shepherd leading her sheep, and so I, feeling self-conscious, line up first and you all follow. So here’s my question––are you all secretly hoping that by making me go first and yourselves last that I’ll end up last and you’ll end up first?
It’s a risk we take with this passage, right? When you’re invited to a wedding banquet, don’t waltz your way up to the head table, in case you’re asked to move to the back, and then you would be disgraced. Instead, take the most humble spot, and then your humbleness will be noticed and you will be rewarded by being asked to move up closer. “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
But we’ve all heard this so often that it becomes easy to game the system, as it were. If we want to end up first, we start by going last, and vice versa. My kids’ preschool would have a graduation lunch every year and everybody knew that the tables farthest from the food were always asked to go up and serve themselves first, so, naturally, everyone would cram into the tables at the back and leave the tables at the front empty. We all knew how the system was rigged.
It becomes so easy to turn this passage on its head. Well, if I humble myself, then I’ll be exalted, so I’ll go last, in the hopes that I’ll end up first. Which, of course, begs the question of how often does this cycle repeat itself. If I humble myself in order to be exalted, doesn’t that mean I’m trying to exalt myself, in which case I’ll be humbled? And then exalted? Where does it end?
And then, when we read this parable with the one right after, where Jesus says, When you host a party don’t invite people who would invite you back to their party, but invite people who have no hope of even hosting a party to invite you back to, because then you will be “repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” And so what it sounds like Jesus is saying is that we should humble ourselves in this world in order to receive exaltation in the next. And this begs the question of why are we doing all this in the first place? If we’re humbling ourselves and inviting the poor and all of that good stuff simply for the sake of getting ourselves a better seat in the world to come, is that truly righteous? Or isn’t it just a fancy way of being self-serving? When we get into the world of Christian ethics––Christian ways of living morally and rightly in this world––we always run into the question of motivation. Are we truly doing this for others, or are we ultimately doing it for ourselves?
Well, today I want to suggest that those two things––doing it for ourselves versus doing it for others––actually go together. That is, when we do something good for others, it benefits us, and when we do something good for us, it benefits others. That we are all so interdependent on one another as God’s children that it becomes impossible to isolate my own well-being from yours, or yours from someone else’s. This is the idea behind the letter to the Hebrews and the first verse we read today, “Let mutual love continue.” The emphasis in this verse is mutual. Mutual love is back-and-forth, where the good of one contributes to the good of the other and vice versa. In a community built on mutual love, strangers become friends, and enemies become those whom we would die for. God’s relationship with us is with the community as a gathering of individuals. God does not have a relationship with only one of God’s children but not with the others.
Now this is important when it comes to our Gospel reading of who is exalted and who is humbled. Because we often approach this passage with a bit of panic, trying to figure out a way to make sure that somehow we’re first, because we don’t want to get left out altogether. The danger of being last, of course, is that the seats might all be filled by the time we get there, and there will be no room left for us at all, and we’ll be sent home again, hungry.
But that is not what this passage is telling us. The writer of Luke uses the word “parable” to describe what Jesus is saying, and that is our clue that Jesus isn’t talking about an actual wedding banquet. In the Bible, whenever there’s a reference to a feast or a great banquet, it’s usually the case that we’re talking about God’s great feast for all of God’s children at the end of time. And here’s the important thing about God’s feast. We get so caught up in who’s going to be first and who’s going to be last that we overlook the fact that, first or last, everyone is going to be there. Those who are first and those who are last. The remarkable thing about God’s feast is that everyone is invited––the rich and the poor, those who can afford to host banquets and those who don’t even have a place to call their own. We see this in the letter to the Hebrews, too. After talking about mutual love, the writer talks about strangers, and then angels, and then prisoners. We are to build a community that includes angels and prisoners, just as God does. Martin Luther makes it a constant point to talk about the sinners and the saints, each one us being both. At God’s great feast, absolutely everyone is invited––those who have followed Christ their whole lives and those who show up at the last minute. Those who know they are God’s children and those who don’t.
But this glorious feast is not something we have to wait for. One of the important things that Jesus tried to convey to us, over and over and over again, is that God’s kingdom is breaking into this world now. Today.
And so we find in our Communion liturgy, when we sing the offertory, “Grace our table with your presence, and give us a foretaste of the feast to come.” Holy Communion is our foretaste of the feast to come. The reason I always invite you up to Communion by saying, “The gifts of God for the people of God; all are welcome to God’s table,” is because our Communion table is God’s table. Our holy meal is God’s meal. I look like I’m the one hosting it, but I’m just a proxy. God is the one hosting this meal, as an earthly symbol of our heavenly meal-to-come.
But don’t misunderstand what I mean by the word “symbol.” A symbol is something special. Karl Rahner, possibly one of the greatest Catholic theologians of the twentieth century, said that a symbol is the very thing that it represents. When we celebrate Communion, as a symbol of God’s great feast-to-come, Communion becomes God’s great feast. In the moment that we celebrate Communion, we are experiencing the unity and presence and love of God that we will experience at “the resurrection of the righteous.”
And that is why we, as a church, are compelled to invite everyone to God’s table. Without exception. Whether they fully understand what’s going on or not, no matter their age, church background, cognitive ability, whether or not they can fully appreciate the grace they are receiving in the meal (and who among us can really truly fully appreciate it). There are very few things in the church that I get angry about, but restrictions around Communion are definitely one of them. If you want to see me get angry, ask me what I think about the Catholic church not allowing divorced people to take Communion, or about other denominations having closed Communion, or even about churches that deny children Communion until they’re old enough to understand what’s going on, or churches that no longer commune those who are suffering from advanced dementia. Because Communion is a symbol and foretaste of God’s heavenly feast, and because we know that God welcomes everyone to that great feast, we have absolutely no right to deny anyone access to Communion. It is not our table. It is God’s table.
So, now, whether we sit farthest from the buffet so we can be first, or closest so we can be last and therefore most exalted in our humbleness, whether you sit at the front of the church so you can go to Communion last, or at the back of the church so you can go first, in the end it doesn’t matter. We are all invited to the feast. Those of us who exalt ourselves and those of us who humble ourselves, those of us who are exalted by others and those of us who are humbled by others. At this table, and even more so at God’s table in the kingdom to come, all are welcome, invited by Christ to be one of the innumerable exalted saints, sharing freely in the goodness of God, whose abundance knows neither limit nor end. Welcome to God’s table. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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