Here's a link to my homily for this weekend. Below you'll find the gospel (Luke 14: 1, 7-14) on which I preached, followed by the text of my homily.
On a sabbath, Jesus went to dine at the home of one of the leading Pharisees, and the people there were observing him carefully. He told a parable to those who had been invited, noticing how they were choosing the places of honor at the table.“When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not recline at table in the place of honor. A more distinguished guest than you may have been invited by him, and the host who invited both of you may approach you and say, ‘Give your place to this man,’ and then you would proceed with embarrassment to take the lowest place. Rather, when you are invited, go and take the lowest place so that when the host comes to you he may say, ‘My friend, move up to a higher position.' Then you will enjoy the esteem of your companions at the table. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” Then he said to the host who invited him, “When you hold a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment.Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” (Luke 14: 1, 7-14)
Next weekend, I'll be back in Massachusetts. My two months of sabbatical hear in Georgetown will sadly come to an end. But I'll be back just in time to attend my 60th high school class reunion. (I know I don't look that old, right? Well, I am!)
I’ve forgotten a lot of what I learned back then - but there's one thing I haven't forgotten about high school over these six decades of my life. And it’s this: I can tell you who I ate lunch with every day for four years in that high school cafeteria - where there were tables where you always ate, and there were tables where you never sat down. There were the tables where the cool kids sat - and there were the tables where I sat.
Such experiences are lodged in our memories because they tell us enough a lot about who we were, or at least what we thought about who we were – and what other people thought about us.
Who gets invited to the table and where we sit makes a difference.
And the same dynamic is at work in today's gospel, where Jesus uses the example of a wedding reception. Have you ever planned a wedding? How much time, how many hours did you put into making the guest list? Who's going to be invited - and who, for any number of reasons, is not going to be invited. And a seating plan: where are we going to put them? Who are we going to sit them with? Who will sit with that person - but not with that person?
Jesus spoke about a guest at a wedding who tried to snag a seat at the head table – someone whose place card had assigned him to, oh - maybe Table 29. I can never preach on this gospel without telling a story of a wedding reception that I went to many, many years ago. It was in the 1980s and I was a campus minister at Northeastern University. And I celebrated the wedding there of a young couple who were students, graduate students from Nigeria. They didn't have a lot of money, so they had their reception in the gym at the local boys' Club.
When all the guests had arrived and were seated at the many tables in the gym, a friend of the groom came up to me and introduced himself as the “master of ceremonies” for the reception. He invited me to take a place at the head table next to him. The head table was empty because the bride and groom and the bridesmaids and the ushers hadn't made their entrance into the hall yet. Then the MC took a microphone and began calling forward people from the individual tables and announcing them as the honored guests at the wedding. The head table started to fill up, so I tugged on the MC's sleeve, and I said, "You're making a big mistake. We have to save those seats for the bride and groom, and the bridesmaids and the ushers, the groomsmen." And he very politely shushed me and said he knew what he was doing.
He filled up the whole table, except for two seats. And then he announced the bride and groom, and they entered the hall, and they took the two seats in the middle of the table. Then the MC said, "Let the feast begin."
And you know how gymnasiums have huge double doors. Two big double doors on the other side of the hall opened up. And out came the bridesmaids and the ushers in their gowns and tuxedoes, each one carrying a huge serving platter laden with food, and they began to serve the wedding dinner to all the guests.
When they did this, I felt really stupid. I was put in my place. Nobody said a worry. The MC just looked at me and smiled. I smiled back. Let the feast begin! What a wonderful story - Oh, I shall tell you this, too. After all the people were served, the bridesmaids and the groomsmen sat at tables 29 and 30 and 31. And they ate their dinner, and after that, they were table to table and cleared the tables. And there was dancing.
What a wonderful example of how Jesus turned the tables in the story he told at the Pharisees' dinner party. He's taking our preconceived notions, turning them inside out. He's changing the rules of the game. He's asking us to look at the table as he sees it - and he always sees the table through the eyes of the other.
There are so many places in the gospel where Jesus teaches us with examples of dinners, feasts, banquets, weddings. He always sees the table through the eyes of those who have no table to go to, those who aren't invited, those who have been turned away from other tables, those who are hungry.
He does this so often that scripture scholars often speak of the table ministry of Jesus.
Jesus sees the table through the eyes of those who hunger - not only for the table’s food - but perhaps, even more, for the company, the community of those who are gathered around the table. Jesus wants everybody to have a place at the table. And he's teaching us that the best way to find our place at the table is to follow the example of my Nigerian friends. First, find a place for others. Then serve them. Then take your place with them.
Let me suggest a way for us to understand how Jesus is turning the tables here…
Let's each of us try to imagine our hearts as cafeteria tables or tables at a wedding reception - tables with many places and lots of food – right in our hearts. And then let's ask ourselves:
• Whom do I welcome to the table in my heart?
• Is there anyone looking for a place at my heart's table whom I've ignored or turned away?
• Do I need to enlarge the table of my heart to make room for others?
• Do I need to find more ways to serve others, to serve more people at my heart's table?
• Who’s waiting for a place at my heart's table?
• Who's hungry for a helping of the food I eat?
• Who has no table to join, no place to eat - while there's still room and food at my table?
• Who's going hungry while my table has leftovers and my cupboards are filled with food to spare?
Jesus actually gives us an answer to all these “who” questions. He counsels us to invite “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” He suggests these particular categories of people, because in his day (perhaps in our own too) these were precisely the people who had no way to return the invitation, no way of socially repaying those who might welcome them.
So Jesus is telling me that I need to make room at my table, my heart's table, not only for those who have no place to go, those who have no food to eat -- but also and especially to make room for those who have nothing, for whom it's impossible to return the favor.
Jesus is reminding us here about table manners. He wants us to mind our manners at the table. What are manners? Manners are simply commonly accepted customs and social conventions that help us live together more easily - in an orderly manner. Good manners, good table manners, help us recognize and attend to the presence of the people with us: the dignity of the people who are at table with us; the needs of the people who are at our table; and the responsibility of each individual to contribute to, to provide for, the well-being of those who have no table to go to.
Living with manners is simply living with respect and reverence for everyone around us - near and far: everyone who needs, who seeks an invitation to, a place at and a plate on the table of our hearts.
So we’ve got some work to do… But the good news is this: Jesus is having a party. Jesus is having a banquet, to which everyone is invited - and he has reserved a seat, a place at his table for every one of us - and not at Table 29! At his table, the head table. We pray, don't we, at every mass, “Blessed are those who are called to his supper.” That's us! There's a place for us, each of us at the table of the heart of Jesus. And he will hold that place for us, no matter how late we may be in coming to that party.
There's only one catch in that invitation of his. Jesus asks, Jesus expects us to arrive at his banquet filled, even crowded, with all those we've invited there to be fed with the food and the resources that are ours to share, to be served by the love and the companionship that we have to offer.
We are here this afternoon at our Lady of Lourdes Church because we have been invited to the Lord's table - where he has reserved a place for every one of us.
Pray with me that his company here and the nourishment he offers us - his very life in the bread and cup of the Eucharist - will open the tables of our own hearts to those who are hungry and to those who are alone.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please THINK before you write
and PRAY before you think!