“Table Manners”

Jeremiah 2:4-13

Luke 14:1, 7-14

Ordinary 22

August 29, 2010

Rev. Martin R. Ankrum

 

He said also to the one who had invited him, ‘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.’

 

 

              Dr. Diane Komp, Professor of Pediatrics at Yale University School of Medicine, wrote about her experiences with children dying of cancer in an article for Theology Today.  Amongst the stories that she related, one stood out to me: the story of “Doctor Donny.”

              Donny was a nine-year old boy with Downs syndrome who also had leukemia.  He loved the Smurfs.  He covered the small pump that injected him with morphine with Smurf stickers and since he wore it around his waist, he called it his “beeper” just like all his doctors had.  His “beeper” controlled the pain associated with the terminal disease and allowed him to stay at home.  Donny got worse and Dr. Komp was called.  Here’s what happened:

 

“My phone rang one evening after the nurse had visited and told his parents that he might die that very night.  His mother called to ask my opinion.  When I arrived, Donny was dozing peacefully on his Smurf sofa, surrounded by a half-dozen assorted friends [Smurf dolls].  He was paler then I had last seen him, but his pulse was steady.

              “‘I went out of the prophecy business a long time ago. I wish I could be sure, but you know how unpredictable these things are.’  As if on cue, Donny rose from his ‘deathbed’ with a luxuriant yawn.  The Prince of Smurfs was hungry and decided to take his guests ‘out’ to dinner.  He assumed the role of maitre d’hôte at a mythical restaurant and escorted us to our tables.

              “Invisible pad and pen poised in hand, Donny went from guest to guest, reciting the specials of the evening.  For each guest, a different ethnic restaurant was presented with a complete selection from suppe to nuez.  After he took the order from his last guest (in a Mexican restaurant), he flopped back into Smurfland and resumed his nap with a self-satisfied sigh of contentment.

              “‘It won’t be tonight,’ I confidently prophesied, and Donny grinned in his sleep.”

 

              What a story!  Here’s a little boy, not yet ten years old, suffering from a terminal disease, affected already by Down’s syndrome, assuming the role of host and displaying incredible hospitality to his guests.  The doctor shows up in order to analyze his chances of living through the night and she becomes the focus of his gracious hospitality and welcome.  He plays the role perfectly, in between the times when his terminal illness forces him to sleep.  Doctor Donny is a mental image I want you to hold during the rest of this sermon.

              You and I live in a world of “quid pro quo.”  That’s Latin to describe the kind of relationships and the pattern that marks a good many, if not all of our relationships in this world: you get what you give.  Or more nakedly put: “You do something for me and then I’ll do something for you.”

              We might disparage this way of managing human life and culture, but we live in the midst of it.  None of us are free from the pressures of reciprocity: doing for others precisely because they have done for us.  Or, maybe even more accurately put: doing for others so that they might just do something for us.

              In the story from the Gospel of Luke, Jesus makes his feelings known about this way of life with which we are all so familiar.  Jesus advocates something far different for life within the kingdom of God.  He says don’t do that; don’t do things so that others will do things for you.  He says, mainly, do things because they are right and just.  Do for the least in your midst and let the wealthy and well to do to do for themselves.

              I kid you not; that seems exactly to be the message of Jesus in his parable about the Wedding Feast.  If don’t believe me, listen again to the very end of the reading:

 

“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 …”

              In a world that is so saturated with “quid pro quo” Jesus’ words seem quaint at best, naïve and silly at worst.  Who lives like that?  Who holds a dinner party in their home and invites those who cannot repay?

              By the way, this is not patronage.  Jesus is not advocating that those with resources exhibit generosity so that they can feel better about the wealth that they have accumulated.  Jesus is not saying that one ought to give of one’s self to make one feel better.  Jesus is actually saying that the followers of God, the ones in God’s kingdom are the ones who see to others’ needs and lack.  The followers of Jesus Christ are the ones who participate in true hospitality, humbling themselves in order to make room for others. 

              In our world of quid pro quo, making room for others is a difficult concept for us to understand; both corporately and individually.

              Ronald Harbaugh, Lutheran minister, tells a great story about this particular issue within Christ’s Church:

 

I remember an incident that once happened in a congregation that I had attended, in which the pastor had visited with a family that had recently moved into the community, and invited them to come to worship. The next Sunday, they came to church, and took a seat in the middle of the nave. Shortly after they were seated, an established family from that congregation arrived for worship, walked down the center aisle to where the new family was seated, and rather curtly told them, “We’re afraid that you will have to find a different seat. If you look at the plate on the end of the pew, you will see that we purchased this pew. This is our seat.

“That was an unfortunate day,” that pastor told me, a month or so later. “Not only will that new family not come back to our church, but we have also lost two families who had purchased pews during our remodeling of the nave, when I convinced council to remove all the plaques designating those who donated the pews. No one owns a seat in this congregation. As long as I am pastor, we take our place before the Lord’s table in total humility, and solely by the grace of God.”

 

              Gosh, but we’re good at protecting our place over the claims of others, aren’t we?  It’s fascinating and troubling all at the same time that Christ’s church should be like this.  This is not what Jesus wants, I am convinced.  No, the parable that we have heard and the implications for our behavioral as followers of Jesus Christ, I think are obvious.  We are called to be a hospitable and humble people; we are called to be the ones who make room for others, who allow our places to be subsumed by those in need and want and lack.  We are called to give of ourselves and find room for others for this is precisely the very heart of the living God.  This is the heart of the One who, in Jesus Christ, has made room for us.

              I like what theologian Christine Pohl has written about this:

 

“The freedom that comes with knowing that we are loved and sustained by God is a freedom to give generously of ourselves and our resources, to give the best place to others without concern.  Because of our confidence in God’s larger purposes, followers of Jesus can take risks and remain secure, welcome status reversals and live without fear.”

 

              It is this freedom, of which Pohl writes, that pushes us to do the hard and self-denying work of authentic hospitality; giving up the places that we believe have been reserved for us due to our good work or dedicated attendance and make room for others.  We do that not only in our sanctuary on a Sunday, but more authentically actually, in our hearts and minds throughout the week.

              The followers of Jesus Christ cannot be the ones who hold to their positions and doctrines so closely that others are turned away and shut off from the grace of the living God.  When that happens, when the church seeks to do just that, limit the grace of God from others of which they apparently disapprove or consider somehow deficient or beneath them, then the church ceases to be Christ’s body in the world.  I don’t know what we would become, but it wouldn’t be the body of Christ anymore.

              I am, time and time again, so gratified by what I have witnessed here at First Pres.  You have, time and time again, opened your hearts to those who are seeking a place.  Through a variety of things, from the Presbyterian Preschool to the Second Sunday program, from the Logos & Deep End programs to the beginnings of a Campus Ministry project, you have opened your hearts and provided a place for others.  We do this corporately and it is something in which we can find contentment and peace as followers of Christ; we are answering this call.

              However, where aren’t we doing this?  This is the question that the passage places before us: in what ways are we failing to make room for others, to give up our seat and create a space in which the grace and love of God can grant freedom and hope to others?  That question remains or should remain upon the heart of each of us, for indeed, Jesus wants us all to continually learn this lesson of hospitality.

              Remember that story we started with at the opening of the sermon; the one about “Doctor Donny”?  Well, here’s the end of it:

 

“For years after Donny’s death, his mother continued to find Smurfs in closets and drawers where he hid them for her to find.  At Christmas time, she remembers him standing by her side, dictating the placement of every ornament on the tree.  There is no event in her life that does not recall the little servant she birthed and nurtured for nine years.  Following his death, she went to work in a restaurant that employs adults with Down’s syndrome.  There, she teaches them how to invite others to the feast.”

 

              May we all learn the lesson as surely as Donny’s mother has: may we all learn to invite others to the feast.  Thanks be to God.