A Beautiful Gathering
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC October 6, 2024, the 18th Sunday after Pentecost, World Communion Sunday, and Stewardship kickoff. “How Beautiful!” series.
Texts: Ezekiel 36:24-28, Luke 14:12-24
This week I found myself searching out some good news to soothe my spirit in the wake of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene in the south, escalating violence in the Middle East, and the stress of the presidential election. My search led me to The Washington Post’s “The Optimist” newsletter where I found a story of people engaging in beautiful acts of love and generosity. It is a story behind an iconic photograph taken in 1974. “Five decades ago, a dozen friends gathered…on the National Mall, for breakfast. They wore morning coats and floor-length dresses, dined on oysters, drank champagne and danced together as a string quartet played in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial.” They gathered around a lavish table set with candelabra and crystal next to the reflecting pool. The moment was captured by a just-happened-to-be-passing-by “Washington Post photographer…in an image that would ricochet around the country in newspaper reprints.”
This iconoclastic scene wasn’t just a group of people being outrageous or having fun—it was a group of young adults who had, over several years, found one another in DC, connected over shared experiences, and had become family. When one of the members of this found family, 27 year old Janet, was diagnosed with terminal cancer, they were devastated. “About a month before [Janet’s] 28th birthday, several of her friends came up with an idea: They would celebrate [their friend’s] life with the most over-the-top gathering their group had ever concocted.” And, oh, what a beautiful gathering. They weren’t throwing the party with hopes of any repayment or to assure that someone would throw that kind of party for them. They gathered at the banquet table out of love to celebrate life together and the life of their friend who wouldn’t be with them much longer.
I think Jesus would approve based on his teaching while at a banquet in our Gospel for today. First he says to the host of the party, “do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid.” Notice—Jesus says to invite those who cannot repay you. Not to expect repayment from people runs counter to pretty much everything in the worldly economy. Jesus is advocating a completely different kind of economy, one that draws us into the realm of God’s Kin-dom. What Jesus suggests is that the Kin-dom of God employs an economy of grace. That is, all is a gift—not a right, not earned, not a hard, cold fact of material being. Everything is a gift from God. Out of love, God sets the table and invites you to come and receive. And, as Ms. Natalie preached last week, and like Janet at that banquet table in 1974, we get to just receive that blessing even though there’s no way we can pay it back.
But in the parable Jesus tells next, the people who were initially invited to the feast have all sorts of excuses for not attending. Still, the host is determined to throw the party and extends the invitation to the poor and differently abled, folks who—in that time—dwelled on the margins. When it is discovered that there’s more room at the host’s table, the invitation is carried outside of town to the “roads and lanes.” Folks on the margins and “outsiders” are welcomed to the feast of the wealthy and powerful. That is the story Jesus tells. Perhaps some among all these groups made excuses and didn’t come, just as those first invited sent regrets. We don’t have the breakdown on RSVPs. But the point has to do with the invitation. God extends an invitation to loved ones who have the means to buy property and oxen and to loved ones who are poor; God extends an invitation to loved ones who are married and to those who are not; God extends an invitation to those on the margins; God extends an invitation to outsiders. Some choose to reject God’s hospitality. But the table is set, the door is open, and everything is free for the taking. When Jesus ends his story with the host saying “none of those who were invited will taste my dinner,” I hear both an angry, hurt, disappointed host whose gift has been rejected AND a sad moment of truth: those who rejected the invitation are missing out. The table is set and folks refuse the blessing.
In Jesus’ teaching at this banquet, he upends worldly ways of thinking, completely resets the rules and values, and offers a vision of radical hospitality, democracy, and equity at the table of God. The Kin-dom, he teaches, is fueled by a grace economy and all are invited to feast and be filled without a reservation, credentials, or entrance fee. God takes all comers, all whose hearts pull them to enter the banquet and take their place at the feast of love, compassion, and sustenance.
This sounds pretty great, right? But think for a moment, since ALL are invited, you never know who’s going to show up. // Anyone ever waited to decide whether to attend a party only after you found out who was on the guest list? What if there are people you don’t like, or people you don’t find fun, or people who make you uncomfortable, or people you’d just rather ignore or avoid?
It makes me think of one of my favorite anecdotes from Kathleen Norris’s beautiful book, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith. Norris shares her experience of joining the small Presbyterian church in the Midwest town where she lived. She says: “Before the service, the new members gathered with some of the elders. One was a man I’d never liked much. I’ll call him Ed. He’d always seemed ill-tempered to me, and also a terrible gossip, epitomizing the small mindedness that can make small-town life such a trial. The minister had asked him to formally greet the new members. Standing awkwardly before our small group, Ed cleared his throat and mumbled, ‘I’d like to welcome you to the body of Christ.’ The minister’s mouth dropped open, as did mine—neither of us had ever heard words remotely like this come from Ed’s mouth. Like distant thunder, the words made me more alert, attuned to further disruptions in the atmosphere. What had I gotten myself into? I was astonished to realize, as that service began, that while I may never like Ed very much, I had just been commanded to love him.”
The Body of Christ is not made up of people who are alike, who agree about everything, who are here to make us feel comfy-cozy—that’s a cult or a club, not a church. We don’t get to choose who’s on the guest list in the Kin-dom or in the church. The Body of Christ “takes all comers” and is specifically designed to welcome broken people—who, by the way, include all of us.
Of course we want to be in spaces where we will be comfortable and where we will get what we need. There are plenty of places where we can find those things—the market economy assures us of lots of options. But there’s something about God’s invitation and God’s Kin-dom vision that asks us to show up in Christian spaces for more than getting our own needs met.
In Christian community it’s about loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself. Again, Kathleen Norris shares the words of a wise pastor who said that “we go to church for other people. Because someone may need you there.” Norris adds, “and I may also need to admit that I need them. Wretched as I am, it may do someone good just to see my face, or share a conversation over coffee before the worship service…”
When’s the last time you thought, I need to go to church today not to try to get what I need, but because someone might need me there? What a beautiful thought…
What Jesus teaches and models is truly a radical vision—so very different from the ways of the world. And in our small way, Foundry is seeking to practice, create, and model this radical way of gathering and of sharing life. I believe that this endeavor—to be a congregation who strives to offer to the world an alternative way of living, loving and serving—is one of the most powerful things we can do.
Some folk may never join such Christian communions, having their own deep and beautiful spiritual paths and practices or bearing too many scars from experiencing perversions of the Christian story. But even for those who will never actively participate, simply knowing that such congregations exist is a powerful witness, a sign that there is a God in the world who still cares and can accomplish miracles after all. Because as I once heard someone say, a miracle isn’t when God does what we want, but when we do what God wants! Here and there and now and again, communities respond to God’s gifts of grace and gather around the table and a miracle happens.
In a world that teaches us to look out for number one, to gather only with those with whom we agree or like, to focus on our own needs and comfort, and to withhold the abundance we have out of fear or entitlement—in that world, striving to embody God’s vision of love and grace and generosity and justice is sacred resistance of the highest order. It takes commitment from each of us to make such a vision come to life. It takes us sharing our time, it takes us showing up for one another, it takes us being generous with our resources—whether those be financial resources or skills. Everything we do, this community we share, the ministries and mission that flow into the lives of others through Foundry, all of this is only because each one of us contributes. Thank you for your contributions of every kind. How beautiful to be invited to share in such life-giving, vital, growing community!
On this World Communion Sunday, we remember the Body of Christ that gathers around God’s table of grace, love, and compassion in every corner of the world. The tables and peoples are all different, the languages spoken, the music sung, the spaces in which people gather are all diverse. And yet all are invited by the same host, all—no matter what—are fed at the table with the same food, strengthened to go out into the world to love and serve God and neighbor. If only there was a way to capture a photograph of all of us all over the world at once—what an image that would be to have splashed across the media landscape. What a witness to a world in need. Oh, what a beautiful gathering.
