"Different Tables"
Luke 14:7-14
Yonce Shelton, Westmoreland UCC
March 30, 2025
This is where I sit. In most situations with tables, I’ll look for the outward view. It provides a sense of comfort and control. At the dinner table at home, I look out the windows. My desk is positioned to see out the window. I also look for seats that keep me from being surprised by guests. I bet I’m not alone in choosing seats away from people that annoy me, or talk too much, or ask about things I’d rather not address.
Some of my table strategies may be about fear. And I’m not sure that choosing my positioning allows me to engage fear in the healthiest of ways. At the federal worker support dinner last Sunday, Kate Epperly grounded us with advice from the Persian poet and mystic Hafiz: “Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living in better conditions." This is the second time that I’ve lifted up Hafiz. It won’t be the last. Just wait until I find the right sermon for a favorite poem that will really mess with your mind! I like him because he grabs us and gets us to focus anew on life, God, our usual ways, and the usual spaces we inhabit. He shakes us up and invites fresh perspective.
I agree with Hafiz that we may need “better conditions” - but it's good to really understand current conditions before moving. And - and - we should recognize that dealing with fear should be part of a healthy inward/outward journey. Fear is relevant for our inner psychological and emotional life, as well as our social and cultural life. My fear is about what's around me - and what's within. There sits my fear. It's about what is happening in the world and who is in power - and the fear within me at the inner table of Yonce. How I use my power. By the way, that table has lots of other guests too, each presenting a different challenge.
Today's passage - and its conditions - is largely about others. But it also contains an invitation to inner exploration. In past months, the inward/outward dynamic has gotten both trickier and more important. It has taken on new meaning. It offers new ways to know others and ourselves.
—
In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us to sit at the lowest place when invited to a banquet; and he warns against inviting “friends or your brothers and sisters or your relatives or rich neighbors” when you host a dinner. Instead, He says, “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
Meals are where people get to experience who Jesus is and what He teaches. Much of what He teaches is that we must reorient our ways of thinking about God and being with others. We must rethink our places and relationships. One theologian says that “in coming to a table, we must choose humility, not humiliation, because being at the table is not a right, but a privilege, extended by the host’s generosity. By sharing a meal with those who cannot reciprocate, we
embody God’s hospitality — an invitation given with no expectation of repayment. As a pair, today’s parables teach us humility and hospitality are two sides of the same coin. Without humility, hospitality can become self-serving; without hospitality, humility can turn into self deprecation.”1
It is also important to note who Jesus might have been sharing a meal with: perhaps Pharisees. Of all I might say about the Pharisees, let me just note that they were obsessed with man-made rules, whereas Jesus is more concerned with God's love. The Pharisees scorn sinners whereas Jesus seeks them out.2 “Even though Jesus shared several meals with Pharisees (cf. 7:36), they often complained about his choice of table-fellowship companions (cf. 5:30). But Jesus calls into question this type of caste system, imagining instead hosts who choose to associate with people who are “poor, crippled, lame, and blind” (14:13) as their new network. … Yet, we have our ways of distinguishing one from another, in order to structure our contemporary world. Oftentimes, these distinctions among us hinder us from true fellowship with one another. Jesus’ story is a reminder to us about the company we keep.”3
Many if not all of you understand what this means: we should broaden our tables without regard for status and what we will receive in return. Many of you are acting on Jesus’ message right now at this time of struggle for many. I know it. I see it. You are rethinking the table and inviting many more. Just don’t forget about your inner table.
—
To expand your table. To rethink your guest list of all the “mini-yous” - all the parts of your personality populating your psyche. To wonder where you should sit and what that says. To seriously ask: how humble and hospitable am I? How open am I to the full, messy, scary me? That can be hard. It's intimidating to ask that of your inner table. But it can also be freeing. Remember, I sit here because I want control and comfort. But to stretch by naming that I need new relationships within can be a new form of control that is not fear-driven. But it's still not comfortable.
Can I welcome and refocus my own Pharisee within, who is obsessed with the usual ways and structures that don’t honor my fears? Who says: that's how it has to be. So hard. But I have hope. And I trust. This might be the view I really need.
On Sunday night, Kate used Margaret Wheatley’s views of fear to remind us that “all great spiritual traditions originated in an effort to overcome [fear’s] effects on our lives” (Parker Palmer) … Fearlessness is not being free of fear, but acknowledging that we do not need to be our fears. We can learn how to handle fear and what to do with fear by “bravely encounter[ing] fear, turn[ing] toward it, becom[ing] curious about it … until we’re in relationship with it. And then, fear changes.”4 I want to know what my fear feels like; what it smells like. I want to see the wrinkles around its eyes up close.
To be in a different relationship with my fear, I may need to set my table differently, invite new guests, linger longer, be less strategic and more open. I may need to bravely find a new place at the table.
—
Jesus used meals to address serious matters and to teach about true relationship with God, self, and others. Jesus wants our tables to be different. That requires more than just external action. It requires going deeper within to be strong enough to host dinners and banquets with the right spirit; the right spirit and intention that can change lives.
Tables are powerful. All are invited to this one, which is mysterious and welcoming and transformative - especially if we don’t try to fully understand it. Who all is invited to your inner table? How well will you get to know them? What can that mean for communities in need at this time? Just imagine what that kind of spiritual hospitality might mean.
—
A federal worker at the recent dinner said that serving others - especially through our meal packing program - has been an important part of her health and stability at this time. To some that may seem strange. To a community seeking to follow Jesus, it can make perfect sense. Creating and sharing tables with others.
We need new relationship with God, self, and others at this time: openness to new ways of understanding our roles as hosts and guests. If we do that well, perhaps we - and many others - can find the “better conditions” that both Jesus and Hafiz envision for us.
Amen.
