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God’s “A” List
By Administrator | September 10, 2007
God’s “A” List
Luke 14:1, 7-14 and Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
September 2, 2007
Alicia S Rapp
I. This Wednesday, we are beginning a new ministry in our
church.
Programming will begin at 3:00 for our elementary children,
weave in the youth as they get out of school,
continue later with a short Bible study at 6:30 for the
entire church community,
and then adult programming will be from 7-8:30,
an offering of choir,
a book study,
or a leisure activity—your choice.
The center of the Wednesdays Together program is the
dinner table, of course.
We all, children and adults, will be invited to come and eat
between 5:30 and 6:30.
That seems appropriate to us.
The most serious of business,
the most routine bits of life,
and the most joyous of occasions,
include people gathered around a meal.
II. If all the gospel writers understood the table as a central
symbol for the teachings of Jesus,
Luke was foremost among them.
The parables he collected remember life in the presence
of God as a great banquet where everyone is
invited and everyone is fed.
So it is that Jesus, on the particular sabbath in question
in the story we heard this morning, was going to dine at
the house of a leader of the Pharisees.
This may be jolting to us at first,
accustomed as we are to a Jesus who champions the
rights of the poor and downtrodden.
Politically, he could be accused of waffling, flip-flopping.
Shouldn’t he choose a party, a people,
a religious denomination,
and stick with it?
We’d like that kind of clarity and judgment.
We’d like to be a one-party church.
We’d like Jesus to choose our side and sit at
our table, and no one else’s.
But the gospel does not read that way.
Jesus is often at the home of Pharisees,
and also in the home of tax collectors.
He is caught in the presence of women and Gentiles,
but also with good, law-keeping Jews.
Wherever he is found,
he will not be pinned down,
signed on,
co-opted.
He is God’s man, but no one else’s.
Or, conversely, he belongs to everyone at once.
III. Jesus was in the home of a leader of the Pharisees and
they were watching him closely.
He was watching them, too.
It was nothing big really, that they did wrong,
nothing extraordinary.
They were watching him for breaches of the law:
doing something on the sabbath that would constitute
work,
failing to ritually wash his hands,
perhaps using the wrong fork.
Jesus was watching them for breaches of relationship. It wasn’t hard to catch them.
I imagine it isn’t hard to catch us.
Nothing big, really,
nothing extraordinary,
but the very small and routine ways in which we
choose to live outside of the presence of God,
insisting that these are the small pretenses of
society and they really don’t matter.
For heaven’s sake, Jesus picked on them for their
dinner party etiquette,
things such as who will sit where.
Any visitor to a decent restaurant in Israel would find that little
has changed.
Pictures adorn the wall: the owner, his arm slung around
the shoulders of each of the famous people who have
dined in his establishment:
President Bush, both George and George W.,
not Mr. Clinton, but his daughter, Chelsea.
The owner, in fact, continues to dine with guests of honor:
those in places of power and prestige,
those who just may bring guests back on the next tour.
One would think, from a visit to Israel, that some guests
are more honored than others,
generally those who have something, possibly,
to give back.
Hmmm. I wonder what a visitor to our country would
find in our finer restaurants?
IV. Though we know little of the actual experience,
we have all read of the Hollywood “A” list.
These are the top stars, athletes, producers, shakers
and makers who get invited to the best places,
the best parties.
Their names are on the “A” list for one reason:
because they are in a position to give back.
An “A” lister can return the favor.
There is another list: the “B” list.
The “B” listers have burned out.
You know who they are.
You can see them on television’s reality shows,
hosting local events,
or occasionally read about them in
“where are they now” articles.
The “B” list is full of the names of people who have
been determined to have little left to offer,
no power to trade.
They’re just trying to survive.
V. Of course, even though we’re not in Hollywood,
we still organize ourselves by a subtle
“A” and “B” list.
It’s a part of every community,
working on several different levels at the same time.
Which list are you on?
Do you have something to trade?
Something to offer?
Power? Money? Prestige?
Do you get invited to all the best parties?
Or are you often left at home,
alone to watch the other “B” listers on reality television?
Maybe the question is,
why are you sitting at home watching the world go by?
Why not throw a party?
Jesus told the people at that long-ago dinner some
very short parables that they might be jolted into
some new understandings of table etiquette in God’s
house.
Jesus said that inviting “A” listers is no big deal.
It’s just a matter of favors:
“I’ll do this for you,
then it’s you turn to do something for me.”
So what? he said.
But who, he asked, can hope to be on the same list as God?
And if God invites us to the greatest party of all,
who can hope to repay that favor?
Who can hope to repay God?
What that essentially does is put us all on the same list.
“A” or “B”, it doesn’t matter.
But then, just in case those Pharisees missed it,
Jesus made his own list:
the poor, the crippled,
the lame, the blind.
In his culture, this wasn’t the “B” list.
This was the “F” list.
“Failed,” “forgotten,”—whatever, you pick your word.
There was no way one of these would be at the table of
a religious Jew, especially on the sabbath.
They were unclean. Considered unfaithful.
Jesus argued, in his little parable, that these were the
ones who were blessed.
Invite them to your table, he said,
because they cannot repay you,
a reminder of your own relationship with God.
VI. Both church and synagogue through the ages would
readily concede that caring for the least among us
is part of our call.
Indeed, according to our sacred texts it is not even an option.
It is commanded.
What we have carefully constructed is a two-party system:
an “A” list and a “B” list.
We may, quite hygienically these days, share a common cup
and break bread together.
Then we head, most of us ignorantly and happily,
into our very separate, divided lives.
What we forget is that the cry of public opinion is
quite fickle.
Consider Jesus, who was most in demand at the houses of
the wealthy Pharisees in one moment,
and was hanging on a cross in the next.
Consider the early Christians, who endured such persecution
that wealth and the “A” list came to mean very little.
People from all walks of life:
rich and poor,
Jews and Gentiles,
were suddenly dependent on one another for the
very means of survival.
The writer of Hebrews, in this desperate time,
encouraged the people to endure in mutual love.
He recalled for them the most sacred of Jewish traditions—
the offering of hospitality—
not to those who could repay the favor,
but to the stranger,
to those in prison,
to those who were being tortured.
And then that quite-famous text:
“for by doing that, some have entertained angels
without knowing it.”
Stick to the “A” list, and you might miss the best party of all.
VII. We all aspire to those highest seats at the table,
to get close to the host,
to get noticed.
No big deal, just a little thing.
We’re not breaking any laws,
any of the commandments.
Jesus watched for those small things, though,
those minute wedges in relationship.
He knew that when we sort ourselves one from
another, we sort ourselves from God.
The table is about remembering that
life lived fully in the presence of God
is about living fully with one another,
all on the same list.
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