The Park Road Pulpit

  Sermons from Park Road Baptist Church

      Russ and Amy Jacks Dean, Pastors

 “Stepping Up” to Prepare a Feast

Luke 14:15-24

Amy Jacks Dean, October 13, 2002

            When we got married 16 years ago one of my biggest fears was that no one would attend our wedding. Oh, sure, I knew my family would come, and I knew of a few friends who would be there, but we had sent out a bunch of invitations and had prepared for a pretty large occasion. I had the illogical anxiety that not many would show. About 20 minutes before the ceremony was to start, as I waited in the bride’s room with my bridesmaids, my soon-to-be mother-in-law came by to see me and to say in her sweet, caring voice – “Amy, there just are not many people here, but it will still be a beautiful occasion.” My heart sank – my worst fear had come true. Then she burst out laughing and said, “I’m just kidding. They are lined up, coming in the door, out to the street!” She thought she was so funny, and I suppose she was – though I still think it is a good rule of thumb to not mess with the bride before the wedding! Indeed the church was full. It was a wonderful celebration – every girl’s dream occasion – because everyone came to the party.

            In our passage from the gospel of Luke, we hear a tale of someone who threw a party. He invited many and when everything was ready he sent his servants to tell the people it was time to come. They all made excuses for why they could not make it to the great feast. One by one, they said they were too busy with business or with family to attend. When the servants reported this to the host, he became angry and sent his servants into the streets of the city to invite the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame. When there was still room at the feast, he sent his servants outside of town – outside the city gates – to compel the people to come so that his house may be filled. “The homeless and landless lived outside the city gates, which would have been closed in the evening to keep them away from the homes and holdings of the well-to-do. Their social ostracism was enforced, so the servant might well have had to “compel” them to “come in” where they were normally not allowed.” (New Interpreters, Vol. IX, page 290)

            Traditionally, this parable of the great feast has been interpreted as one of the “Great Reversals” that Jesus loved to preach about. He loved to upset the way of life for the religious and the powerful. In this one story, Jesus paints a picture of how the Kingdom of God will really be. “Many of those who presume that they will be included will find themselves excluded [by their own poor excuses], and their places will be taken by the outcasts. [In other words,] the future will not be a continuation of the present but a reversal of its exclusionary and discriminatory social codes.” (New Interpreters, Vol. IX, page 290) The first shall be the last and the least shall be the greatest – that is the theology of Jesus.

            And that is a good, and probably proper, interpretation of this text. But if you will allow me some liberty with interpretation, I’d like to tell you the image that came to my mind as I studied this passage. Instead of seeing the characters in the parable as the master representing God and the invited guest being me, and then contemplating my own excuses for why I am not always participating in the feast that God has prepared – I began to think like this: What if God is calling me to host a feast? What if God is calling Park Road Baptist Church to “give a great dinner and invite many?” (verse 16) What if the master is us?  If I believe, and I do, that God created me – in God’s own image – and called me good, and if God sees something in me that I sometimes can’t even see in myself, and that God needs me as Co-creator and partner – then perhaps I (we) have been called to prepare a feast and invite many.

            At this point my mind is rolling, and I leave the parable, and I begin to see at our feast a co-mingling of the have’s and the have-not’s. I see the givers and the people in need dining together. I see a simple gospel feast. (Phrase borrowed from Diane M. Komp – see reference after Pastoral Prayer) I say to you this day that I believe that God has called on us – this particular community (family) of faith to be the hosts of great feast. God has called us to prepare a simple gospel feast, and I think it looks something like this:

• Care Teams – that care for our own church members in great need. We have 2 teams (about 20 people in all) that prepare food, visit, clean house, and all sorts of wonderful work. You don’t hear much about them because there is an agreement of confidentiality that we all honor. But I can tell you now, with permission from the family, that one whole team of people took care of Cathy Blackwell in the last year and a half of her life and it was beautiful to watch.
• Mission Trip to Ground Zero – but where will be go next? Flood relief in Louisiana? Gypsy people in Romania? Habitat in Honduras? Homeless in Milwalkee? Where will we use our skill and our minds and our excitement and our love for God’s children who hurt everywhere?
• Our youth and our children, who come to this place – some eager and wide-eyed and some forced by parents – but they come needing to hear Good News in a place that is safe and accepts them for who they are and a people that want to help them become all that God has created them to be.
• Basic improvements in our facilities that make us, not just more attractive and pleasing to the eye, but more user friendly.
• Room in the Inn – housing homeless families on cold winter Saturdays

That’s some of what our current feast looks like – but what if we dream. What if we dream of a simple gospel feast that looked like:

• English as a Second Language offering for Sedgefield Elementary School parents – the school is at our back door and many of its population are poor and undereducated and in need of better communication skills to adequately guide their children.
• An Afterschool Fine Arts program for children who cannot afford piano, dance, and art lessons. There is untapped talent and unrecognized success just waiting to be nurtured – that could help at risk children find an outlet other than the streets.
• A more direct and comprehensive relationship with the Uptown Men’s Shelter of which its Executive Director is a member of our church, as well as, another employee of the Shelter in our midst.
• 2, 3, or 4 Mission Trips – national and even international
• An advocate’s office who would work with people to sort through the bureaucracy and red tape of the many systems and give voice to those in our city who have no voice.

Tony Campolo tells a great story about one morning at 3:30 AM when he found himself in a diner drinking a cup of coffee and eating a doughnut. About 9 prostitutes came walking in. He could hear their conversation and one woman said, “Tomorrow is my birthday.” To which another woman responded, “What do you want me to do about it?” “Nothing,” the woman replied, “I was just saying it’s my birthday – I’ve never had a party or a cake – I was just saying . . .” When the prostitutes left the diner, Campolo asked the guy behind the counter if those women came in every morning. Yep, like clockwork he told him. Campolo said he had an idea – let’s through her a party! The guy at the diner would get the cake, Tony would bring decorations. He arrived at the diner at 2:30 AM the next morning to get everything ready. At 3:30 AM when the women walked in – they all started singing Happy Birthday to You. She was overwhelmed – even speechless. When they suggested cutting the cake, the woman said no and asked if she could just take the cake home. She had never had a birthday cake before and she’d just like to have it at home for a while. With that she got up and walked out of the diner. Campolo suggested that they all pray, and he led them. When he finished praying, the diner guy said, “Hey, you didn’t tell me you were some kind of preacher - what kind of church to do belong to?” Campolo replied, “I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for whores at 3:30 in the morning.” (The Kingdom of God is a Party, Tony Campolo, pages 3-9) That’s the kind of church I want to belong to.

Surely by now you see where I am going with this. All of this, plus the ongoing ministries of pastoral care and education and music, in addition to salaries and lights and water and heat – require money. I have tried to wait to the end of this sermon to mention the word “money” – not because I’m afraid of the word or ashamed to ask you for it – even in this economy. But I save the word until the end because I believe it is our mission that will drive our growth – numerical growth, financial growth, spiritual growth. We ask you to give to finish out this year in the positive. We ask you to pledge for our 2003 budget. And we ask you to give more next year than you gave this year. How can we ask such? How can we not? All signs say that we are healthy. Russ and I believe in this place, and we are asking you to “step up” to prepare a feast. We all are the hosts, and God is anxiously and excitedly waiting on us. What kind of church do we belong to?

Pastoral Prayer

            Lord, you gather us from the east and the west, north and south for a royal banquet. Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God! There we will meet the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. May our lives be that sort of simple gospel feast: the spirit of Jesus be in our midst, the work of Jesus be in our hands, the spirit of Jesus be in our work. Lord, now let thy servants depart in peace, according to thy word. Amen.

(Prayer by Diane M. Komp found in Theology Today, Vol. 49, No. 4, January 1993, “Invitation to a Simple Feast”)