Sunday, August 31, 2025
Proper 17C, 2025
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Luke 14:1, 7-14
The other day I was pumping gas over at Sheets on Lee Highway and a man approached me. He had been sitting in his car two pumps over and he said he was living out of his car and that he needed some help with gas. It was an awkward moment. It was awkward not because he scared me, not because I was disgusted with him for begging, not because panhandling is or should be illegal and not because I didn’t believe him. I did. It was awkward because I couldn’t help him and I wanted to. There are all sorts of scenarios like this which can be dangerous or cross lines so helping another human who is down on his luck is not so easy anymore.
I joked last week about “preaching to the choir” (in an off manuscript ad lib) because this assembly - and that one - seems to be the tried and true part of Redeemer - the folks who show up every time the doors are open - well, almost every time the doors are open. The joke was that this “choir” this “us” doesn’t need to be reminded of our discipleship, the stuff of this part of the Gospel we are studying - the stuff about working in the Kingdom which includes showing up. Neither does this core group need to be reminded to invite others. So I reminded you to invite others!
In that sermon, I also talked about the journey of discipleship, how we have to pay attention to the path we are on when we are following Jesus.
Today we have a different sort of story from the next chapter in Luke in which we reflect on meal time. I suppose eating together is as important as traveling together as we follow Jesus. And I am told Redeemer Lutheran folks know how to cook and eat together!
Jesus was invited, we are told, to dinner with some Pharisees. It was on the Sabbath - so it would have been a sabbath meal. Today the sabbath meal would have some challah bread, maybe some chicken soup, and roast chicken - you know, like we used to call Sunday Dinner after church.
Jesus uses this opportunity not to advise them what to serve, how to serve it or which fork to use! Jesus uses this teaching moment to reflect on the status of who sits where at a dinner table.
The setting of a communal meal is significant here. In Luke’s narrative, meals are symbolic of the anticipated coming of God’s Kingdom - a foretaste of the Messianic banquet.
So, on this occasion, “when Jesus noticed how the guests chose the places of honor,” he told them a parable. He told them a parable about the preferred seating at a wedding banquet. He follows this with more teachings to further illustrate his point about the radical hospitality of God’s Kingdom. In God’s realm, worldly social conditions, like seating arrangements at banquets, are all turned upside down. “The last will be first, and the first will be last.” (Matt 20:16)
First Century Palestinian feasts were arranged so that guests reclined in groups of three. The position in the middle was the most favored place and was reserved for those with the most power, wealth, or social status. If a more prominent person arrived later, often the one in the highest place would be asked to step down.
So, Jesus advises that it is better to sit at a less prestigious place at the table with the possibility of being asked to step up to a higher place in this social stratum. In a lower place, the worst that can happen is that one would remain in the same seat or be asked to move up to one befitting true importance. In other words, don’t claim status that doesn’t fit you. Your status is not in this pecking order, it is in the Lord, and in the equality of God’s Kingdom.
Jesus is challenging us to think about hospitality rather than being first in line, most popular or even well fed.
Taking a week to drive across the country last month forced me to eat out a lot and encounter strangers every day. I was reminded of how our culture has turned, over the past decade or so, away from the everyday kindness and warmth we once enjoyed. The hospitality industry has become the least likely to provide that warm feeling, it seems. You are more likely to get stares, shrugs and eye rolls than smiles and comfort or even directions at restaurants and hotels these days.
This happens in the charming old South too. Most folks seem too busy, too preoccupied with their devices or too eager to be first in line to even acknowledge the presence of strangers. No wonder we have an epidemic of loneliness.
There is another point to this Gospel story from just hierarchy, and it’s not about being first in line to get into heaven either.
Jesus is modeling for us here how to treat each other, how to be hospitable, how to be merciful to the less fortunate, the sick, the marginalized.
You may remember the song, Let There Be Peace on Earth and if you do you remember the next lyric is and let it begin with me. Maybe we could work on changing the hater culture around us by becoming more hospitable and kind, each of us, one by one changing the tide. We could practice and intention of patience with clerks and servers remembering they’re doing the best they can. We could let someone else get in line in front of us, open the door for the next person, pay it forward. Let it begin with me, indeed.
The writer of the letter to the Hebrews builds on these words of Jesus from Luke this morning by giving examples of the “mutual love” the community is to exemplify. Such love manifests humility in which the needs of others are not less important than our own.
One aspect of this radical, unfailing love is to “show hospitality to strangers” who may in fact be embodiments of God’s presence. “Angels unawares” is the oft quoted translation we might remember. (verse 2)
This can be compared to a story from the 18th chapter of Genesis, which is not in our readings today but you must remember it. It is the story of when the Lord told Abraham that Sarah would bear a child in her old age. Sarah was eaves dropping on that conversation and she laughed out loud. And the Lord heard her laugh and called her out on it when she denied laughing and said to Sarah, essentially, “No, really, I’m not kidding!” And this promise came to be.
That story is set during a dinner party in which three strangers showed up unannounced and Abraham set out his best banquet for these guests. The icon image on the front of your bulletin tells this story.
This is an early 15th century Russian icon by Andrei Rublev. (Icons are said to be “written” not painted. This is because they tell a story.) In this icon you can see Abraham and Sarah’s house in the background and seated around a table are the three strangers who visited Abraham in this story from Genesis. These strangers were later understood as messengers, otherwise called angels. That is why they have wings.
But the icon is full of other symbolism and is interpreted as not just the three strangers who visited Abraham. They were later interpreted, and it is believed intended by the original artist as a depiction also of the Holy Trinity. At the time the icon was “written,” the Holy Trinity was understood as the embodiment of spiritual unity, peace, harmony, mutual love and humility.
And here they are, at dinner together.
The angel on the right symbolizes God the Father. If you’ll notice though, each angel seems both male and female in some way and so they fit the contemporary notion of “gender neutral.”
The Father blesses the cup, yet his hand is painted in a distance, as if he passes the cup to the central angel. The central angel represents Jesus who in turn blesses the cup as well and accepts it with a bow toward the Holy Spirit. There are different interpretations as to which angel depicts which person of the Holy Trinity and yet, to me, each person of the Trinity is seen in each angel. They are one.
This is the ultimate image of Christian hospitality, the heavenly banquet. And, yes, we are all invited to that banquet in due time. In the mean time, we are called to offer hospitality to strangers, all strangers; those in need, the hungry, the destitute, the sick and the lonely while we celebrate our meager imitation of the great heavenly feast at our weekly Eucharist - our practice of Thanksgiving.
So friends, in the mean time, how are we doing with that to-do list? Surely the list of our good works of hospitality to strangers is significant. But I ask you to consider this question: Is there some other way you can practice hospitality in this world, at this time? Can you quiet your busy-ness and listen prayerfully for God’s nudges for you to do something new, different, maybe even easier and more enjoyable - like hosting a party, visiting an old acquaintance in the hospital, volunteering at a food ministry?
One idea that has pestered me this week is an invitation popping up on Social Media to forgo all computer use for these 24 hours. I suppose we could do that - assuming the clock started ticking at 8:00 this morning, we have 20 hours left to try and enjoy a day without our phones! I dare you!
Let me share one more story.
A year before his death in 1924, the great novelist Franz Kafka had a very unusual experience. He was strolling through the Steglitz park in Berlin and he came upon a young girl crying and heartbroken. She told him she had lost her doll.
Kafka offered to help look for the doll and prepared to meet her the next day at the same place.
He was unable to find the doll so he composed a letter which was fictitiously "written" by the lost doll. And when they met again he read this letter to the little girl. It said, “Please do not cry, I have gone on a trip to see the world. I'm going to write to you about my adventures …"
This was the beginning of many letters. Kafka and the girl agreed to meet often and whenever they met he read these carefully composed letters of imaginary adventures about the beloved doll. The girl was comforted. When the meetings came to an end, Kafka gave her a new doll. She obviously looked different from the original doll. An attached letter explained why. It said, in the doll’s words, ”My trips, they have changed me …"
Many years later, the now grown-up girl found a letter tucked into an unnoticed crack inside the wrist of the doll. In short, it said: "Every thing you love is very likely to be lost, but in the end, love will return in a different way.”
We have so many opportunities to show hospitality to strangers. What gets in our way? What fear has been driven between us and our creative urges to care in such a way as Kafka did? What holds us back from truly following those nudges of the Spirit to show hospitality to strangers?
I for one hope that we can work on this invitation to not only dine at the heavenly banquet from the least status and to offer hospitality on earth to the needy, “for by doing that some have entertained angels unawares.”
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly