Read the Gospel here.
I do not know the financial or social status of each one of you here. I do know, though, that people who live in Orleans and people who attend Anglican churches are, statistically, the beneficiaries of more education than average and enjoy higher incomes and more substantial social capital than most people in the country – never mind the world.
You – we – are people who have claim to significant amounts of respect; who understand how to make the give and take of society work in our favour; who host dinner parties and are invited to dinner parties (or at least used to, a couple of years ago, and hopefully will one day again).
Jesus is speaking directly to us – at a dinner party, about dinner parties.
Dinner parties for us do not have quite the social power that they did in Jesus’ culture. The rules about who could eat with whom and who would sit where encoded a whole world of social relationships which governed every aspect of life – work, religion, family – for generations. Failing to observe these rules was more than simply embarrassing. It was unacceptable.
And yet Jesus is advocating violating the rules, both as guest and as host, by applying a different frame of reference to the dining table.
Jesus wants the dining table to reveal the heavenly banquet – where the lofty are brought low; the humble are brought high and those with greatest need are first on the guest list.
This collapsing of heaven and earth – of the final fulfilment of God’s great promises and the current time – is at the core of all of Jesus’ teaching – at the core, in fact, of his very being.
Jesus is the Word made flesh; God with us. Jesus reveals that the barrier between heaven and earth is not a barrier to God – and that the earthly is both worthy and capable of hosting God.
And from that miraculous birth on – or at least, once Jesus began his public ministry of teaching and healing – Jesus proclaimed to all with ears to hear that the Kingdom of God was at hand; the prophecy fulfilled; the day of the Lord’s favour had arrived.
Which meant that the outcast were to be drawn in and the sick were to be healed and the hungry were to be fed – which meant that the old ways of tracking status and value and belonging were to be cast aside in favour of God’s radical, restorative justice.
This is good news for the poor and the marginalized. It’s a little more complicated for the wealthy and significant.
But they matter, too. Jesus clearly teaches that the poor and weak have a special claim on God’s attention but he does not leave the powerful out. He heals their sick; he entertains their questions; he attends their dinner parties. God’s love is for them, too – but they have to learn to make room at the table.
And making room at the table is about more than squeezing in more chairs; more than sharing the food out amongst more plates. It’s about willingly giving up your seat for someone else, risking your own status and comfort and, maybe, even your own dinner portion.
So what would it look like to take “the lowest place”. What would it look for you to do that here at St. Helen’s? Or for St. Helen’s to do that in this community?
Those of you who enjoy pride of place here – who are consulted and listened to; who have influence and respect – are you prepared to move aside to allow other voices to hold sway?
Those of you who are fed here and have been fed here for a long time – are you prepared to make changes if it means those who have been hungry will feel themselves invited to the table…even if you risk a little hunger for a while?
Are you prepared to use your resources in ways that may not “pay off” in the form of financial or labour resources but will be life-giving to those in need and reflect the wild generousity of God?
And are we able to see that the call to make these kinds of sacrifice is, indeed, Good News?
It’s not good news because it will make you look good or because of some sort of deferred reward system – good deeds done now repaid in heaven. It’s good news because it is an opportunity to experience heaven now, to live in Jesus’ reality, fully alive to the active presence of God in the world. Privilege and power might feel pretty good but they are cold comfort compared to a life in God – Jesus brings us the good news that we can release the former and trust in the latter. But in order to experience that joy we have to give up our seats of honour and offer them to other people – that’s the only way to discover that we are, in fact, already at the heavenly banquet of God’s kingdom.
This is one of the reasons that I walk in the pride parade with our diocese. As a straight, cis woman – and even more so because I am also married and a mother, never mind a priest – I am given a kind of honour and respect that members of the LGBTQ community have not – and often still don’t – receive. Walking in the pride parade is not just a way for me to witness to my faith in God’s unconditional love for all people, each one created by God and in God’s own image. It is also a way for me to give up my seat of social prominence and priority, at least for an afternoon, by taking a small, supportive part in an event the centres and celebrates the LGBTQ community. And, every time, I am blown away by the joy I experience as the Good News is made newly real along that parade route.
Because the Good News is good news for all.
I know, from your profile and your responses to the shape of parish ministry consultations and from conversations with a growing number of you that you want to share this Good News. You have a vision of growth for St. Helen’s; a deep desire to nurture the faith of young people; and an awareness that the gifts and resources you enjoy are meant to be used for ministry in the whole area and not kept only for yourselves.
Living into those dreams will be costly. There will be growing pains and disappointments and frustrations as we grapple with how to give up our place at the table; how to acknowledge that we have claimed an honoured seat in our society that God wishes to give elsewhere; how to prioritize other people’s needs and other people’s voice. But there will also be joy and wonder as we grow into new expressions of faithfulness and encounter the Spirit in new ways.
I am excited to discover what the Spirit has in store for us – who the Spirit might, even now, be calling to join us at this dinner table – how the Spirit might challenge us to make room so that we can truly know the beauty and abundance of God’s heavenly banquet.