Hello and thank you for joining us for this week's sermon from Trinity Church, Streetsville
in Mississauga.
This week we are continuing our sermon series Around the Table where we look at the hospitality
of Jesus.
And this week Rob is going to dive into Luke chapter 14 with us as we look at Who is on
God's Guest List.
Today's reading is from the Gospel of Luke chapter 14 verses 7 to 24.
When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table, he told them
this parable.
When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor for a person
more distinguished than you may have been invited.
If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, give this person your
seat.
Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place.
But when you are invited, take the lowest place so that when your host comes, he will
say to you, friend, move up to a better place, then you will be honored in the presence of
all the other guests.
For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will
be exalted.
Then Jesus said to the hosts, when you give luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends,
your brothers or sisters, your relatives or your rich neighbors.
If you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid.
But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you
will be blessed.
Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.
When one of those at the table with him heard this, he said to Jesus, blessed is the one
who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God.
Jesus replied, a certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests.
At the time of the banquet, he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, come for
everything is now ready.
But they all alike began to make excuses.
The first said, I have just bought a field and I must go and see it.
Please excuse me.
Another said, I have just bought five yoke of oxen and I'm on my way to try them out.
Please excuse me.
Still another said, I just got married so I can't come.
The servant came back and reported this to his master.
Then the owner of the house became angry and ordered his servant, go out quickly into the
streets and the lies of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and
the lame.
Sir, the servant said, what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.
Then the master told the servant, go out to the roads and country lanes and compel them
to come in so that my house will be full.
I tell you, not one of those who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.
The word of the Lord.
Because I'm a minister, my wife Sally and I get invited to perhaps more than our fair
share of weddings.
And it's not that we know a lot of the people at the wedding.
In fact, what makes it awkward is we usually only know like one or two people and that's
the bride and the groom.
So anyways, we love going to the weddings, but there's always this, I don't know how
to explain it, it's kind of a painful moment at weddings when you come to see where you're
going to be seated at the wedding reception.
And again, because nobody really knows us, we don't really go up to that poster with
very high hopes.
You know the poster I'm talking about, the poster that looks like it's from Pinterest
and it tells you where all the people are sitting and invariably we look down, down,
down the list until we come right to the very end and we realize, yes, once again, we have
been seated at the reject table.
You guys know what I'm talking about when I talk about the reject table.
It's when the bride and the groom, it's where they put all the odds in the ends.
It's where they put all the people they don't know what to do with.
At the reject table, that's where you find the girlfriend of the photographer.
And that's where you find the piano teacher of the groom from 10 years ago.
Where are you going to put these people?
And that's also where you're going to find Sally and me.
And so we take the walk through the banquet hall by the head table.
Hello, hi there, and here's all the family and the friends.
Oh, they're all having a good time laughing, taking selfies of each other.
When you get to the reject table, you know you've arrived because nobody is talking to
each other.
They don't know each other and they're all kind of just staring at their phones.
So I just want to say a little word to you that if you ever find yourself at a wedding
and Sally and I start walking toward your table, if we pull out our chairs and we sit
down at your table, I don't know how to break it to you, but you're at the reject table.
Sorry.
I think we can all point to moments in our life when we have wondered, are we the rejects
or not?
Are we included or not?
Are we the friends or not?
Are we popular or not?
Are we on the in crowd or are we on the out crowd?
I think it probably begins very young actually when we're still in school, when we're at
recess and they're picking teams for soccer and you're like, please, I don't want to be
picked last.
I don't want to be picked last.
I don't want to be kind of rejected until the very end.
Maybe it's in the cafeteria at lunch.
You remember that time that your friend, your best friend turned their back on you and then
went to sit at the cool table with all the cool kids, which apparently you were not one
of, right?
But most of us know this feeling of being rejected, whether it happened to the classroom,
the lunch room or even the board room.
Well, we are in the middle of a teaching series right now, which is called around the table.
And we're looking at all the meals that Jesus ate with people throughout the gospels.
And one thing we are learning for sure is that when Jesus ate a meal, it was about way
more than food.
No, no, no.
Jesus' meals were about how barriers between people were broken down and how people's thinking
was challenged in major, major ways.
And what we learned in today's story is that in Jesus' time, reject tables were a reality.
Jesus finds himself at the home of a prominent Pharisee.
There's a great big party going on and nobody wants to be at the reject table.
And so Jesus said, uses this opportunity to teach people three things.
He's using this opportunity to teach us three things this morning too.
And so there's three words that Jesus has for us.
One is a word for guests, for any of us who will be guests.
Jesus has a word for us.
Another is a word for our hosts.
Anyone who's ever going to host someone, that Jesus has a word for you.
And the third is a word for all of us, a word for all of us.
So let's start with Jesus' word for guests.
And by the way, we've given all of you a sermon notes, so you should be able to follow along.
This is kind of important stuff, so I'd encourage you to do that.
First of all, Jesus has got a word for all of us who are guests.
And his word is simply this, choose the lower seat.
You see, at this party, Jesus notices something.
He notices how people are jockeying for position around the table.
And he takes advantage of this opportunity to teach them a little something.
And I want to teach that to you now as well.
In fact, one thing you should know is I just said around the table, but actually in those
days the tables weren't round.
If you had a banquet like the one Jesus was at, you weren't sitting at a table.
You were sitting at a three-sided table that was called a triclinium, trie because it had
three sides to it.
And clinium comes from the same word that recline because you didn't sit at this table.
It was a solid table.
You couldn't get your feet under it.
You reclined at the table.
So at risk of hurting myself, I'm going to demonstrate.
This is how you would sit at a table in Jesus' day.
You would recline.
Here's the table here.
You kind of sit on your cushion.
You put your weight on your left hand.
The food is all here.
You've got guests to your right and to your left.
And this is how you would recline at the table.
Now, of course, you wouldn't wear your shoes because that was considered very bad form
to wear your shoes.
So you would be barefoot at the table.
And actually, this might help you understand a few things.
Do you remember that story that happens in Luke chapter 7 where Jesus is having a dinner
with another prominent Pharisee and we're told that a woman, a prostitute, comes to
the meal and starts weeping at Jesus' feet?
And you may have wondered, well, how does someone weep at the feet of someone who's
sitting at a table?
But when you see how these tables were arranged, now you understand that really the feet of
Jesus were the only thing that the woman could really reach.
It also helps us understand something else.
In John chapter 13, we get a picture of Jesus at the Last Supper.
You guys will remember that.
And at the Last Supper, we are told the disciples started talking about, hey, Jesus, who is
going to betray you?
In fact, the scriptures say that John, Jesus' beloved disciple, who was sitting in one of
the places of honor next to Jesus, it says he leaned back against Jesus' breast and asked
Jesus who is going to betray you?
And now you can kind of understand why he would lean back against his breast because
this is kind of the arrangement.
That's how you would say something to someone if you were seated at a triclinium.
And then what's even more, I think, amazing is that Jesus tells John, he says, the person
with whom I dip the sop, which is another way of saying you would dip bread and stuff
into sauces.
And he says, the person that I dip my bread into the sop with, that's the person who's
going to betray me.
So if we already know that John is on one side of him, then who must be the only person
on the other side of Jesus in the other position of honor?
Who must it be?
Judas.
Isn't that amazing that at Jesus' Last Supper, the two places of honor were occupied by John,
the beloved disciple, and Judas, the one who would betray him?
Now you might think, oh, isn't the place of honor up here?
And the answer is no.
I tried to do a lot of reading on this this week, but at tricliniums, this was thought
to be the place of honor.
This was the place that was most accessible.
And this is where the host would sit.
And their most valued guest, the most honored guest would sit to their right.
That was position number one.
And to their left, that was position number two.
And then basically what happens is you just kept going down the line, down the line, until
you got to this end of the table, which you could call the reject end of the table.
This is where the people who weren't so close to the host would sit.
And so what you really have is this connection.
The closer you were in proximity to the host meant that you were closer in relationship
to the host.
And I also read this, that there was actually a pretty big disparity with the food at these
tables.
That if you were seated here in the honored section, you got the best food.
You got the filet mignon and the lobster thermidor.
But if you were sitting over here in the reject section, you were like, oh, Mr. Noodle, thank
you.
And maybe not even the real Mr. Noodle, maybe the fake stuff they sell at the dollar store.
So within this situation, in this triclinium, what happens here?
What happens here?
Well, Jesus comes along and he speaks a word to any one of us or anyone listening who will
ever be a guest at a party like this.
He says, listen, when someone invites you to a wedding feast, don't go and take the place
of honor, right?
Because this is what he says, if someone who's more distinguished than you comes, the host
will say, well, give this person your seat.
And then humiliated, you're going to have to walk all the way over to the place of rejection,
to the lowest place.
He says, rather do this.
Go and first choose the lower seat.
Choose to sit at the reject table.
And then what might happen is the host might come in and say, friend, friend, what are
you doing here?
Come on, get up here.
You deserve to be in the place of honor.
And you're going to be honored in the presence of all those guests.
Now you need to understand something about Jesus' day.
In Jesus' day, he lived in what was called an honor shame culture, where gaining honor
was everything, and losing your honor was absolutely devastating.
To be asked to move from the honored seat to the reject table was humiliating and represented
a huge loss of honor for you and your family.
But on the other hand, to be invited from the reject table to a higher seat, to a place
of honor, that was a way of gaining honor.
I just hope you understand that most people went through their days and went through their
weeks just trying to figure out how to gain more honor for themselves and not lose honor
in the sight of others.
There's a New Testament theologian who said in the world of Jesus, honor was the core
value.
Right?
And he said it was a zero sum game, which means that one person's gain in honor always
resulted in another person's loss of honor.
So let's say, for example, if this person was going to be elevated from the reject table
to a place of higher honor, it necessarily means mathematically somebody is losing out
now.
Somebody is dropping down from higher honor to lower honor.
This social currency of honor, he writes, was the foundation of social life.
So now I want you to imagine that here you are and you've been invited to this party,
and maybe it's the first time you've been invited by this host and you're trying to
figure out where to sit.
You're pretty eager, so you arrive early, the guests aren't all there yet, and you think,
oh, geez, well, where should I sit?
I do know the host pretty well.
We're pretty close.
So maybe I should sit kind of here because I'm pretty tight with him.
But what if somebody comes in fashionably late and they know the host even better than
me?
Whoa, what do I do?
What do I do?
Well, Jesus says, this is what you do.
Here's what you do.
It's always best to guess down.
You don't know who else is coming and you certainly don't want to be sent down and humiliated
and lose honor.
So guess down because you might actually be sent up.
And then Jesus concludes with this great and famous piece of scripture.
He says, everyone who exalts themselves will be humbled and everyone who humbles themselves
will be exalted.
Now this flies in the face of our culture and our culture, we say everyone who exalts
themselves will be popular and well liked and everyone who humbles themselves will be
forgotten and
God in the kingdom of God, everyone who exalts themselves will be humbled and everyone who
humbles themselves will be exalted.
C.S. Lewis kind of talked about this once in one of the essays that he wrote.
He said, isn't it interesting that the people who want friends the most are the ones who
can never seem to get them.
And I think I know what he was talking about.
He was saying that some people, if they're so concerned about, I want to sit with this
person, I want to be with this person, I want to be at the cool table, I want to be friends
with them, then actually people don't want to be around someone like that.
They can see that a mile away and they're like, ick, you know, get away from me.
I don't want to to sit with you.
People see that desperation and they move away from you.
But then C.S. Lewis goes on to say that until you conquer the fear of being an outsider,
an outsider, you will remain.
So if you don't care whether or not you're liked, you're more likely to be liked.
But if you let the fear of being excluded consume you, then ironically you end up feeling
excluded.
So this morning Jesus begins with a wonderful word for all of us who will ever be guests
at a party.
A word for anybody really who's on the outside and wants in.
A word for anybody who's desperate to have a seat at the table, whatever the table is,
the table of power, the table of influence, the table of friends, the table of the cool
people, whatever.
He says, just remember, guests down.
Guests down.
Choose the reject table because those who humble themselves will be exalted.
But those who exalt themselves will be humbled.
That is a word for the guests.
But Jesus also has a word for all the hosts.
Any of us who will ever host people in our home.
Jesus wants to tell you something as well.
And here's what it is.
He says, check your motives.
That's right.
Check your motives and figure out why are you inviting the people that you're inviting
into your home and around your table.
Jesus says it this way.
When you give a luncheon to all you hosts, don't invite your friends, your brothers and
sisters, your relatives and your rich neighbors.
If you do, then they may invite you back and so you'll be repaid.
Instead, when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind
and you will be blessed.
Now this was actually more controversial than you might think because you see Jesus lived
in what was called a patronage society or the system you might say.
The system that everybody operated in Jesus' day was the patronage system.
And this is what the patronage system meant.
It meant that if you want to get ahead in life, if you want to get ahead in business,
if you want to get ahead in your own status or in society, it all came down to who you
know.
You needed people who were above you.
You needed to make friends with the higher ups.
You needed people who could open doors for you.
You needed people who could offer favors to you.
You had to be connected and well connected with people who could take you places that
you couldn't get on your own.
That was called the patronage system.
And so when you had a party, of course, who did you invite?
You invited the movers and the shakers.
You invited them to impress them.
Yes, to maybe increase the chance of doing business deals with them.
Yes, hey, can I be your supplier?
Sure.
Can I be your...
Yeah, sure, sure.
Making deals around the table.
Maybe they can do a favor for you.
Or maybe at the very least, they're going to invite you back to their place where you
can continue to network and get ahead in life.
In other words, if you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.
If you do business with me, I'll do business with you.
If you come to my party, I'll come to your party and so on.
And so that's why they were constantly, they were constantly having dinners and having
events because this is how business was done.
This is how life was done.
You were building your network and you were inviting people because you wanted something
for yourself.
You wanted something from them.
That's just how it works.
That's the patronage system.
But Jesus smashes the whole thing to pieces.
He says, if you want to be my disciples, you have got to reject this system.
Do not, he says, do not invite people into your home just so they can repay you or just
so you can get something from them.
Do not invite your friends.
Do not invite your brothers and your sisters and your relatives and all your rich neighbors.
Now, I just time out here, time out.
I think Jesus is exaggerating a bit.
This does not mean you can say to your mother-in-law, oh, sorry, I can't invite you over.
Sorry, Jesus said, no, I'm not allowed, not allowed.
No, no, no, no, no.
He's exaggerating.
He's exaggerating because his point is this.
Instead, when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind
and you will be blessed.
Why invite this crowd?
It didn't make any sense in the patronage system because these people can't pay you
back.
These people can't open any doors for you.
They can't scratch your back.
They can't do you any favors.
But Jesus is saying the patronage system is out.
And instead, what he puts forward is this radical idea of Christian hospitality as an
alternative to that whole patronage system.
You know, in the Bible, hospitality, it comes from this Greek word phylozenia, which basically
means the love of a stranger.
The love of a stranger, not the love of someone who can open a door for you, not the love
of someone who can do you a favor and get you ahead.
It's loving the strangers and not even just tolerating the strangers or putting up with
the strangers, but actually loving them, actually inviting them into your home.
Now I know what you're thinking.
It's the same thing I was thinking when I read this.
You know, I got a family, we got four kids, we got, are we really supposed to open up
our doors and invite strangers into our house?
What does Jesus mean by this?
It's really important to ask, what does the Bible mean when the Bible uses the word stranger?
And when you do that, what you discover is that stranger can mean one of three things,
one of three different groups of people.
The first one is going to surprise you because the first way that the Bible uses the word
stranger is to refer in fact to other Christians.
If you read Romans 12, it says, share with the Lord's people who are in need, practice
hospitality.
In that sense, hospitality, love of the stranger is being connected with the Lord's people,
the church.
So look around you this morning and you will see not just a bunch of strange people, but
you will see a bunch of strangers.
Even though we're all here in this church, it does not mean that we are not strangers
from each other.
In fact, that is one of the reasons why it's so great to attend a bigger church in a diverse
city like Mississauga.
You don't know everybody here.
And so church and Christian community becomes a place for you to extend hospitality, becomes
a place where you can practice the love of the stranger.
And especially here in Mississauga, we can practice loving people who are very different
than ourselves, people from different races and backgrounds, people who have come to Mississauga
from different countries.
Having a big church is a great place to practice hospitality.
So that's the first meaning of the word stranger is actually love each other in the church,
practice hospitality with each other in the church.
But the Bible also uses the word stranger to refer to neighbors.
Those are the people that live around you in your neighborhood.
Those are the people that interact with you in your workplace, in your school and so on.
And yes, these people are not going to share your Christian faith.
They're not going to share all of those convictions, but that is okay because Jesus ate with people
all the time who did not believe in who he was because Jesus knew that people are loved
into a relationship with God, not argued into a relationship with God.
Jesus knew that when we practice hospitality and we develop an actual relationship with
our neighbors, then they come to know who God is far more so than if we're just trying
to argue a point with them.
It's actually loving your neighbor.
And the third thing that the word stranger can mean is the poor.
The Bible uses it to refer to, again, the poor, the blind, the lame, and those who are
crippled and those are also people that we should be seeking to invite into our homes.
If you're thinking of throwing a party and your mind always goes back to, ooh, I would
love to be friends with those people.
I would love to make a connection with those people.
Or wouldn't it be cool if we were kind of on their level?
Then you're still working from the patronage system and you're not grasping the full depth
of Christian hospitality.
You want something from them.
You want to be seen with them.
It's about getting something from them.
It's not about loving those who cannot repay us.
And the amazing thing is that when you start inviting strangers and all these meanings
into your home, then pretty soon some of them stop being strangers.
And they start becoming friends.
So let's just get practical here before we move on to the last part.
What are some ways that we could practice hospitality in this kind of way and love strangers?
Here's five ways.
One first is connect with your neighbors.
Invite them on over, right?
Or take them out to dinner or something like that, right?
And if you sense they might be open to it, why not invite them to church?
But that's not what it's about initially.
Secondly, like we said, invite Trinity members.
If you've been at Trinity for a long time, invite somebody who hasn't been here very
long.
If you've been in Mississauga for a long time, invite somebody who hasn't been here very
long.
If you've got a great big old house, I would encourage you to invite somebody who doesn't
have a lot of space.
Maybe they're living in a basement apartment.
Maybe they have a futon and that's their bed at night, right?
Just yeah, invite each other.
Thirdly, you could offer to host a life group in your home.
You're going to hear more about life groups at the end of the service, but that's a way
to extend hospitality.
You could serve at the community dinner.
Our community dinner coming up this week, all the volunteer spots are full, but we're
going to have more.
You could volunteer there or you could volunteer as a greeter or a host or whatever, help at
coffee hour on a Sunday morning.
These are all ways that you can love strangers, that you can practice hospitality and push
back against that culture of, what do we call it?
Patronage, the patronage system, right?
Push back against that because it still exists today.
So there you have it.
Jesus got a word for guests.
Choose a lower seat.
Jesus has got a word for hosts, right?
Check your motives, rethink who you're inviting and why.
And now we're going to end.
Jesus has a word for all of us, a word for everyone, and that is to change your priorities
around all of this.
Here's what I mean.
After Jesus has finished this radical teaching on Christian hospitality, somebody tries to
lighten the mood and they're like, oh, blessed be all those who eat and drink at the feast
of the kingdom of God.
Jesus isn't going to let them off the hook that easy.
And so Jesus, he instead tells a parable about a man who was God in the parable, about a
man who was preparing a great banquet.
He invites a whole lot of guests.
But guess what, all those guests start to make excuses and say that they can't make
it in the end.
One says, I just bought a whole bunch of oxen.
I can't make it.
Another says, I just bought a new field.
I got to go check it out.
Somebody else says, I'm getting married.
I can't be there.
Right?
They've all got their excuses.
By the way, all these people seem to be doing pretty good, don't they?
They've got fields.
You're doing pretty good.
Oxen, you're doing pretty good.
You're getting married.
You're doing pretty good.
Right?
But the problem is it's because they're doing so good that their priorities are all off.
And the good things that are happening in their life are actually causing them to miss
out on the great feast of the kingdom of God.
And so when his servants get no response, what do they do?
They go out and they go out to the town and they bring in the poor and the blind and the
crippled and the lame.
And they even say, go even to the alleyways and go into the fields, into the side streets
and compel those people to come in.
And why do they need to be compelled to come in?
Because they are so used to sitting in this seat.
Heck, they're not even used to being invited into the room.
They can't possibly believe that they are invited to come to be the guest of someone
like this man in the parable.
Right?
So they have to be compelled.
Plus, in the patronage system, they don't have anything to pay back.
If I accept this invitation, how could I possibly return the favor?
If he's going to scratch my back, I can't do anything to scratch his back.
But anyways, they can't reciprocate.
They can't play the patronage game.
But it's those people, it's those people who end up coming to the feast of salvation.
In this way, the reject table has become the head table.
And how true it is that those people are often struggling the most or hurting the most.
They are the ones who receive the invitation of God with the most joy and they gladly come
to the table.
The rest of us are often so busy and so tied up with all the good things and all the business
and all the events of our lives that we miss the party.
We may even think that, well, goodness gracious, I can't possibly be at the same party as these
lowlifes, as these deadbeats, as these yahoos, as these guys from the side streets.
I don't, I'm higher than them.
They're beneath me.
They didn't earn their way to this meal.
But none of us earn our way to the feast of God's kingdom.
Jesus Christ is the one who paid the way for us all to be there.
And here's what I mean by that.
Jesus was once, Jesus was once at the greatest party in all of eternity.
He was at the head table in heaven surrounded by the Holy Trinity.
And Jesus, by his own choice and out of love, he stepped down from that table and he took
the long walk around to come over to you and to me and to the rejects.
And he said, let me take your seat so that you can come up and you can be given a place
of honor in the kingdom of God.
Yeah, Jesus knows all about the reject table.
Jesus knows what it was like to be despised and rejected.
A man of suffering, familiar with pain.
It cost him so much to take that walk, so much humiliation, so much loss of honor so
that you could be exalted and you could be honored.
It cost him so much.
Hospitality always costs you something.
If you go home today and you invite your neighbors out to lunch, it is going to cost you.
Bring your credit card, bring your wallet.
This cost Jesus everything.
He had to sacrifice everything.
His own life he had to lay down in order that you could be the recipient of his great hospitality
and come into his home.
And because of his sacrifice, that means that now the reject table has in fact become a
round table.
The triclinium is gone.
The special seats of honor are all gone.
There are no seats of honor at Jesus' table because all the seats at Jesus' table are
places of honor.
It's a completely circular table.
It's filled with honored guests.
And this is good news for some of us and it's hard news for others of us.
For most of us this is very good news.
For anyone who's ever felt excluded or overlooked or left out or the fifth wheel or felt that
sting of humiliation, the table is open and there's a spot for you at this table, a place
of honor.
But there's hard news because some of you are making excuses and not accepting God's
invitation.
You're too busy, too many good things going on in your life.
And so this hard news is a challenge to you to get your priorities straightened out.
The kingdom of God is here.
The table of God is prepared.
Why are you not at that table?
And there's also hard news here for those of you who think that certain people shouldn't
be invited to this table.
You might have people in your families or your schools or your offices, people that
you can't stand and people that you are certain have no right to be at this table.
They should be excluded.
Hard news is the table is open for them too and every seat is a seat of honor.
So for all the guests, here's a word for you.
Take the lower seat.
For all the hosts, here's a word for you.
Check your motives.
And for all of us, here's a word for you.
Get your priorities straight.
The kingdom of God is a great banquet.
The seats at the table are not reserved for the proud and the powerful, but for those
who humbly accept God's invitation.
So let's take our place at the table, the place of honor, not because we have earned
it, but because the one who took the lower seat prepared that seat for us.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
Thank you so much for joining us for this week's episode of Trinity Sermons.
I hope that you enjoyed the sermon and are learning a lot from it.
Today's sermon was recorded at Trinity Church, Streetsville in Mississauga on September 22nd,
2024.