Rector's Sermon
29 August 2010

First Reading	Psalm	Epistle	Gospel
Sirach 10:12–18	Psalm 112	Hebrews 13:1–8, 15–16	Luke 14:1, 7–14

       It was a time-honored custom, that when a traveling rabbi came to town, someone would invite him for supper. People could ask him questions in a more relaxed and intimate atmosphere, and enjoy each other’s company. It isn’t too different today when a guest preacher from out of town comes to a church or a guest lecturer to IC or Cornell. Sharing a meal together permits others to see a different side of the guest and the guest is able to learn a bit more about the people and community. In today’s Gospel it is hard to tell where the epicenter of the tension lay. Was the host who invited Jesus real anxious to make a good impression, or was the host hoping Jesus would be asked some trick questions and made a fool of? Were the guests a little intimidated by Jesus’ learning or did they harbor hostile feelings and wished to show him up? I can imagine some of the guests really wanted to be close to Jesus and wondered who would sit at the head table and who would not. Come to think of it, for example, if Jesus invited a church choir to eat with him, would the basses be insulted if the altos sat closer to Jesus than they or the tenors surrounded Jesus when the hors d’oeuvres were passed and never gave anyone else a chance to be introduced?  It wouldn’t happen here, of course, but we could imagine it nonetheless. It would certainly happen at a clergy gathering. This tale of a dinner party seems so long ago and quaint, but who is considered in and who is considered out occurs in the faculty dining rooms at the Statler as well as in the IHS cafeteria.

       Jesus himself may well have been unsure from where most of the tension was coming. That is why he told those at the party to relax and enjoy each other’s company. “Don’t worry about places, the menu is the same, and I will get around to see you all.” He told the host, “You don’t have to worry about impressing me. You have given a party, now enjoy it.”

      In his teaching Jesus liked to use mealtimes as ideal settings to teach a vision of the way God intended creation to work. Examples during table fellowship became signs of God’s new community transforming our world. To put it a little more simplistically, if you want to know what heaven is like, pay attention to how Jesus behaved at mealtime.   In God’s banquet hall, there will be no scrambling for seats, with the fastest and most powerful getting a place and the others left behind. God offers an abundant feast for all. God does not permit a menu that allows for some to go hungry or to be slighted. Indeed sharing food is a hallmark of God’s meal plan and ego-enhancement of the proud quite certainly is not.   We all, in some way, get caught up in the ego- enhancement game and that is why we need for Jesus regularly to come to the table with us, cutting through all our sophistication, reminding us that table manners matter. God does not wish to embarrass any of us in front of our peers, but for all of us to enjoy mutual company together.

       There is a legend that on Sunday evenings all the cooks assigned to the kitchens in hell get the evening off.  Beforehand they prepare gallons of hearty soup and set soup bowls at the long tables in the cafeteria. The diners are given large spoons that they have to hold at the end. Of course those who sit at hell’s table are selfish, impatient and easily provoked to anger. They cannot get their long spoons into the soup bowls before them much less than maneuver the spoons to their mouths without spilling the soup and jostling their neighbor. All are angry at each other for knocking their spoons, splattering hot soup, and not being able to get hardly a drop to their mouths. You can imagine the nasty affair.

       Now there is also a legend that the cooks assigned to the kitchen in heaven also get Sunday evening off, and they too prepare a hearty soup and set up the bowls in the heavenly cafeterias and give the inhabitants of heaven, long-handled spoons that they must hold at the end. But those who dine at heaven’s table know how to share and help each other. They don’t try to spoon soup from their own bowl to feed themselves. Instead, they spoon the soup from their neighbor’s bowl across from them, and feed each other. It’s sort of fun every Sunday evening and everyone is nourished, has a good time, and no one is burned or gets his clothes soiled with spilled soup.

       Just as the sun shines and the rain comes down on us all, God provides the same menu to those in heaven and to those in hell. Those in heaven know how to share; those in hell do not. Is this spoon from the dining room of heaven or hell? It depends…it depends on us. In some way, that is the lesson Jesus may have wanted to convey, long ago at a supper along the shore of Lake Galilee.

       And I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.