Luke 14.1, 7-14 Places of Honor Invite the poor to your banquet

What is the place of honor in your life?

This might seem like an unusual question, but I want you to think about it for a moment. Where in your life, in your day, in your week, in your physical, emotional, and mental space, is a place of honor that if you invite someone to enter it, you are doing it to honor them?

There are so many places in our world that people can freely come and go. If you invite someone into your place of residence, though, there are probably places you don’t show them on the tour or you are uncomfortable if they wander into. Maybe it’s a messy room, or a closet where everything was shoved prior to a new guest’s arrival. Maybe it’s a topic you just don’t want to discuss until you’re comfortable. There are probably a great many places of “honor” in your life that only people who know your own personal rules of hospitality can recognize as they are being honored by it.

I hope you are now thinking about different places and conversations and sharing in your own life that are places of honor. Inviting people into your life, just as into your home, or in our case, to a dinner, causes people to seek out places of honor in their lives. Being part of a church is no different despite how often Jesus Christ tells us that it is supposed to be.

When you come into church on Sunday morning. There are people you will immediately rush to greet. You will walk past others deliberately to hug them, say good morning, and maybe have an important conversation with them. Many people come to church just for this reason: to see the people they only see on Sunday. They choose the place of honor in greeting them, rushing in to say hello.

Jesus is telling us this in this parable. He is telling us that all those people whom you love so dearly, there’s no need to rush to and monopolize. There’s plenty of time. Instead, prioritize people you don’t know to greet first. Invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. Invite the outcast, the marginalized, the foreigner, the alien, the one you don’t know, into the congregation before you welcome those who are already a part of it in. Make them feel like the ones who are being honored in this building, not those who are already here. Give them your place.

It is easy to push aside the idea that we are the God of lost sheep. God leaves the 99 to find the one. Which means, that’s our job too. We prioritize them, we lift them up, we give them our place.

One of our biggest problems, is that the place of honor that we keep hidden away in our lives and only show to a select few is… the church.

The people you are supposed to invite with you to church on Sunday are the people you need to get to know better. The ones you don’t know hardly at all. The ones who need to get to know God better. We forget that this hour, Sunday morning, is the wedding banquet. We are to invite those who cannot repay the favor. Those who do not have such a sanctuary to call their own.

Many have heard the story or experienced themselves the glare of having sat in someone else’s pew. Or, you are the one who felt affronted when someone else was sitting in “your pew. If this happens, in this church, I sure as heck hope someone speaks up and says, “Give this person your place.” because if they don’t, God is certainly shouting it from above.

Hebrews 13:2 reads “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” Hospitality is supposed to be geared toward strangers so that they might no longer be estranged. We are so hospitable to people we already know, and then we fail to show that honor to those we don’t know.

We try not to look at ourselves in unflattering ways. We rush to greet those we know and love because we like how it exalts us. It makes us feel good to have someone to greet. I know I’m guilty of this. When I go to a clergy gathering, it makes me feel great about myself if I can quickly identify people at the gathering I already know and I want to talk to them. We also know that it makes other people feel good to have someone enthusiastically come up to greet them.

I have this clergy friend who I’m just going to describe as… extremely socially awkward. Which, considering how socially awkward I feel most of the time, that’s significant. Whenever I see them, I make a point of enthusiastically and publicly shouting “Jennifer!” That’s not their name, I just don’t want to embarrass them if you ever encounter them. I do this because they’ve never had someone single them out this way before. They have never been a popular person. They have never been shown this kind of honor in seating where someone has told them, “Friend, move up higher.”

The way they glow when I do this for them warms my heart. It exalts me, and it exalts them. I am not, nor have I ever been, popular. But that doesn’t mean I can’t make someone else who isn’t feel as if they are. I do not recommend doing this to everyone; it needs to be something that makes them feel good about themselves, not something that embarrasses them so they never come back.

This parable is about making the unwelcome feel welcome. Giving them spaces of honor. Stepping out of those places ourselves and giving them our seats. I’m not the head of the table, but I will gladly give what I do have. Give guests a place of honor in our church. Take your feelings of self-importance and invite someone into that circle to help them feel important too.

The church should be a place of honor in our lives that we invite everyone to. I want you to invite your friends, relatives, and neighbors, but I also want you to feel comfortable inviting people you don’t know. If you don’t feel comfortable inviting them, why not? What do we need to do or be as a church so that it is a place you want to invite people to? If we are a place you don’t want to invite people to, that’s a problem that we as a congregation need to know about and fix.

The church is a place of honor and we need to treat it as such. That means we maintain it. We love it, we respect it, we pay attention to it. We’re grateful for it. We’re grateful for all the people who made it possible for it to be here for us, previous generations and future generations. We show hospitality to anyone who walks through and anyone who walks past that door. Not because they might be an angel but because they are a human being, one of God’s children.

Our ancestors, those who walked this land before us have gifted to us this place of honor. It’s big, they obviously wanted us to have a large community. It’s sturdy, in an apocalyptic film, most of this building would remain covered in moss and vines. It is expensive to maintain, our ancestors assumed we would continue to invest in it and care for it as they invested their lives and finances to build it.

Every stone was cut and laid in prayer. Every tree was carved and polished with love and reverence for God. It is a reminder of who we are and where we have come from. Whether we like it or not, it’s what we have been given. It is a place of honor, and we have been given seats at the head of the table to be responsible for it and all who come here seeking its sanctuary.

Jesus Christ is the host in this building. We, the lowly followers who remain are now the wedding planners. It is our job to extend the invitations and prepare the venue. We are to invite those who can never repay us for the invitation. Feed them, clothe, them, introduce them to Christ, give them places of honor within these walls that each generation to follow can do the same and one day the banquet hall will be filled. We give them our places but not just in our pews.

We step aside in leadership and let them make decisions while we support their endeavors. We honor their ideas and goals. We help them become the best disciples they can be by giving them places of honor instead of taking them for ourselves. To be grateful for what you have been given is to share it with others.

Every church I have ever encountered that is dying has some of the same problems. The biggest of which is too many people who immediately take a place of honor, they have laid claim to a pew or chair and have gotten comfortable, sitting for far too long instead of deliberately finding someone and saying “I think you should take my place.” They stay in their place of honor instead of stepping down to make a spot that needs to be filled. They think only of their friends and neighbors as replacements instead of trying to find someone they don’t know anything about, the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind are seen only by the titles imposed upon them and it is assumed they cannot do the job.

I have news for you. God summons the ones who don’t want the job not the one’s who do. God is the one who takes those in back row and moves them to the front. God grabs those who are lowly and gives them a place of honor. God invites the uninvited much to the dismay of those who hold places of honor.

Now, don’t misunderstand me, those in places of human honor are to give up their seat of honor and their power. In God’s kingdom, the greatest place is to serve. To help people take on new roles and to help them be successful at it. Those who humble themselves will be exalted.

Jesus saw the Pharisees and their hypocrisy. He called them out for what they were doing. He humbled the exalted. He removed them from their chairs, not from the banquet. He simply wanted to make space for new life. To bring honor to the ancestors by making room for their successors. To take those with nothing to give and provide them with something to give. Not so they could repay those who raised them but so that they could in turn do the same for another.

We have this beautiful building. We have all these empty pews. We have so many places of honor in this church that could benefit from seeing someone new sit in them. But, we have to invite them. They shouldn’t have to fight for them. We bring honor to our God not by coveting this place of honor but by sharing it with his people.

Because we, God’s people, know that we will be blessed because they cannot repay us, for we will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.