The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, August 29, 2010

Jeremiah 2:4-13
Psalm 81: 1,10-16
Hebrews 13: 1-8,15-16
Luke 14:1, 7-14

The Rev. Dr. Katharine C. Black, preaching

O Lord, graft in our hearts the love of your Name, and bring forth in us the fruit of good works, though Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN

Food, banqueting, honoring the food provider or not, and the essence of hospitality intermix in the readings for today. As I was musing yesterday, I heard the good NPR program called "On the Media." The topic was how hard it is to change misperceptions of stories even adding real facts, and what makes that so hard. One example discussed was this statement, "Obama is NOT a Muslim." Some people simply don't believe it, while others remember the force of the statement, but not the NOT. One technique that worked to change people's opinions was to say, "Obama IS a Christian." There also was some difference in who spoke to whom to do the persuading, but by and large it simply was best to let it slide and have people learn some other way, learn by example.

What it set me to thinking was how hard it is for people to believe me when I say, "At this altar, all, all people are genuinely welcome." Some people don't accept the invitation because they think their Real church doesn't permit it. I think what their real church doesn't permit is to be away from home. Many Catholics ignore that prohibition, because if in the eyes of the Catholic Church, it's not real Eucharist, then they didn't do anything wrong, they just had a picnic with not much food, and bad wine. The problem then for Catholics really is NOT going to mass, but they can make it up, if they make time. If it IS real Eucharist, then the Catholic Church is recognizing the validity of our Mass, and it is not about to do that. Catholics do often find this is a real Mass, and that I "count" as close to a priest, or if not a real one, close enough for our Mass to "count" as church, so they usually join our communion circle quite easily, as do other church goers.

Some people, though, who haven't been to church for a while don't accept the invitation, because they feel unworthy. They think they should do or should have done something other, different, better, to be worth enough. Showing-up is all it takes, and not putting our own assessment of the invitation in front of the genuine reality of the welcome. Of course, some people just don't want to come, because they find it disrespectful to their own beliefs, but even then, if they believe it is only bread and wine, and a sincere invitation, why not accept-they would at someone's picnic or home. How to make hospitality heard as real, is the point.

The lessons today cluster around this question. Jeremiah reports that the Lord complains that the people have strayed, even after the Lord had brought them to a plentiful land to eat its fruits and its good things, and they'd defiled the land. They'd forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked ones that can hold no water." They had misused the hospitality and reality of the good food and drink from the Lord.

Similarly, the Psalmist observes that the people whom the Lord had brought out of the land of Egypt still didn't do it right, yet the Lord would "feed Israel with the finest wheat and satisfy Israel with honey from the rock." Seemingly in refusing the food, Israel was refusing the care and concern of the Lord.

The Gospel tells about ways to go to a banquet wrong. The tradition was to arrange the men dining in reclining groups of three, by rank. The groups were then ordered towards the group of the greatest importance. It was an honor to be asked to move up to a higher group, but deeply embarrassing to be asked to move down. It's a system we don't have or do, but we can each understand the awkwardness of being asked to move down. Think of the effort people expend in arranging families and friends at a wedding. Don't you notice where you sit, or with whom? It is a study to consider where the priest is seated, and it's hard not to translate that location to the value the family puts on the wedding compared to the reception. It's not hard to imagine sitting "higher" than we're meant to and needing to move down.

Jesus then adds this story, suggesting that people invite the "poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind," because they would have no expectation of having to reciprocate. It would make the invitation one of true generosity, rather than one angling for something in return. When a friend lived in Israel years ago, she'd invite her colleagues to dinner and they would say "no." She eventually caught on to the reality that they could not invite her back, because they couldn't afford a reciprocal meal. She learned to meet her friends in a coffee house, because whoever initiated an invitation, the other could invite back comfortably. As the author of Hebrews explained, "Let mutual love continue."

The hospitality to be shown, though, is about more than our meals, dinners, and guests. These meal-images all lean to the Lord's eternal welcome and hospitality. The six verses omitted from the Gospel include Jesus asking the Pharisees whether it was ok to cure a person with dropsy (congestive heart failure) on the Sabbath, and, then, whether it was ok to rescue an animal from a ditch on the Sabbath, and the Pharisees maintained silence. The set-up was about eating with the Pharisees who were watching Jesus closely and his teaching about the heavenly banquet. No one is equal to the One who invites us to that banquet, yet we're all invited and we'll all be welcomed. (Of all lessons, these provide the background for understanding the Eucharist as a foretaste of that banquet.) If the Lord, the one above who loves us each and all, is the one issuing the invitations, then we must be as generous in our invitations to all. We must include both all who might be useful to us, and also all who might be in need.

I read an illustrative story in a preaching aid. It spoke of helping a homeless person, stopping in the rain, for once, to give money to that person in need. The person's eyes seemed lit with a clear light, and I quote, "The exchange was brief, I told him to take care, and we both smiled, his eyes shining with something extraordinary... And then it hit me. I've seen those eyes before...the same shade of light blue, same brilliance of spirit...same otherworldliness.... and seen it in several other homeless gentlemen over time who either I or my son has handed money to... Then it struck me... 'Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so, some have entertained angels unaware'... which left me wondering about the eyes... Just made me wonder if anyone else has noticed the eyes of the homeless." Glop. The assumption, that clear, light-blue eyes are the tip-off to angels in our midst, horrified me. I am positive that that's not what the author of Hebrews meant writing of not neglecting to show hospitality to strangers.  I am sure that our hospitality is neither to be selective, nor will some choices be markedly and secretly a test by being better choices. "Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them " That's about genuine empathy, not trying to spot the prized object for our love or welcome... "Be content with what you have," and more, for Jesus said "I will never leave you or forsake you... Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever... Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God." This is neither sentimental nor condescending. It is as clear an outline of the faith: both what to believe, and what to do, as there is.

People's prisons, blindness, poverty, crippling, or lameness can be real or metaphorical. There is no category, even blond and blue eyes, that gives us inside ID-ing ability on who's an angel and who's just a plain old person. Even if we had that sorting hat, we are still to treat everyone with equal hospitality, at whatever cost that may be to us. God is pleased when we do that, but note there is no extra prize or reward for making sacrifices. Suffering is not the object, but instead a genuine warm putting ourselves in the other's place, and helping, welcoming, being involved, as we can. Some of that reaching towards another will come at a real cost, and some will be simpler and more easily wonderful. We are not always to choose for the simpler, but to try to be the same to all, always. "Then we will be blessed... at the resurrection of the righteous."

The collect asks the Lord to "graft in our hearts the love of the Lord's Name...and bring forth in us the fruit of good works through Jesus Christ." We think of grafting as a surgical word, but grafting was an agricultural word, and trees were frequently grafted both in early Israel as well as in any later time in England. Almonds can be grafted onto peach and other fruit trees and they live well together on one tree, and the point of grafting is to bring forth not only good fruit, but also better fruit and more varied fruit.  Loving the Name of the Lord is to love an edge of the reality of the Lord, like loving an ikon, not for its image, but to enter its world and being. With that stronger graft on our heart and being, we then want the Lord also to increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, so that we bring forth the fruit of good works through Jesus Christ. That grafting of the love of the Name would help us each bring forth that good fruit to show hospitality to all, to welcome all, to say the "Lord is my helper and never be afraid."

Jesus is the constant, the same then, now, and forever. The Lord showed hospitality to Jesus, his own true human son, and was not demeaned showing welcome to just a human, not finding that slumming behavior. Rather that became the model for God's mercy to all people and the model for us to show to all others. God showed welcome and grace to Jesus, through his life, death, and resurrection, but even for God, God's mercy is for all, and all is all. God's hospitality extends to each of us, now and always. God really, really does mean that promise.

When we work together to show hospitality and welcome to all, we are working to strengthen that graft of the true reality of Jesus with us. When we stand together at the altar to share in this meal together, we are demonstrating the equal reception to all at the heavenly banquet, and the equal treatment once we're received there. God will show mercy to each of us however blind, lame or whatever we are, to get to paradise, and to that table equally. Jesus will be our continual helper and will be the same there always to us each, to us all. The invitation here is to all-how could we offer less to fewer. Extending this circle to others shows them God's grace to all. Janet Morley offers this small prayer in All Desires Known: "O God, at whose table we are no longer strangers; may we not refuse your call through pride or fear, but approach with confidence to find our home in you through Jesus Christ." We pray this, knowing that as we mean our invitation to all at this altar, so we trust in God's grace to receive us all into Paradise: Good News.

© Katharine C. Black 29 August 2010