Then Again...

It probably goes without saying, but in every sermon I write, I make choices. A lot of choices. One of the choices I have to make when preaching a story from Scripture--like the one I preached last week from Luke 14:12-24--is which characters we, as listeners, ought to identify with. In this story from Luke, the choice was between two basic groups: the prominent Pharisees playing host to Jesus or the poor, the crippled, and the lame who were left out in the cold. I chose the Pharisees.

I hope that those of you who heard the sermon understood the choice: the Pharisees with whom Jesus is dining in this passage have prestige, they have power, they have their acts together. They were the up and up in their society who turned their backs on the down and out. And so I chose to identify us with them, because by the world's standards, most of us at First Church are fairly well to do, we are people of power and influence, people who appear to have our acts together. Again, by the world's standards.

But perhaps we might hear this text a little differently if we chose a different standard--the standard of the Kingdom of God. Because it seems to me that by Kingdom Standards, all of us at First Church have a lot more in common with that other group in the text--with the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.

By Kingdom standards, all of us are people who arrive at the banquet by grace alone. By Kingdom standards, all of us are people who are broken and dirtied, people who are dependent on God for everything we need, people who can never hope to repay the One who invites us to the dinner to have fellowship with him. By Kingdom standards, all of us are people who receive an invitation to dine with Jesus in the Kingdom of God--not because we are so pious, powerful, or polished--but because God, in his grace, went prowling through the back alley's and country lanes and dragged our poor, pitiful selves in from the cold so that we could party with him for eternity.

I'd like to think that if we remember the way God's grace levels the playing field, we who are guests at Christ's Great Supper will be more prone to reciprocate the "heavenly hospitality" that has been shown to us.