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United Church of Paducah
4600 Buckner Lane
Paducah, KY 42001
(270) 442-3722
Worship Times
Sunday Service: 10:00a
Refreshments &
Fellowship: 11:15a
Christian Education
For All Ages:
11:20a - Noon
Nursery Services Provided Handicap Accessible
All Are Welcome!
A Congregation Of The
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From September 2, 2007
Tuning into Jesus' Food Network
Luke 14:1, 7-14
We all have favorite TV shows. One of mine
is the Food Network's Iron Chef America. A spin off of a
wildly successful Japanese program, Iron Chef America is an
hour-long culinary battle set in Kitchen Stadium. Each week,
world-class chefs try to outdo one of the Food Network's
four masterful Iron Chefs.
What makes this head-to-head competition especially
challenging is that each chef is judged on five different
dishes, all of which highlight a secret ingredient revealed
at the beginning of the hour. One week the secret ingredient
might be the lowly onion, another week it's wild boar. The
secret ingredient has been just about anything you could
imagine: tofu or salmon or fennel or pumpkin.
My favorite part of Iron Chef America is judging at the end.
Each chef presents his five culinary creations, so in the
end viewers will have seen a total of ten different ways to
feature the secret ingredient. I am in awe every time. Who
would ever guess that one single item could give rise to so
many expressions of deliciousness?
Iron Chef has helped me see Jesus in a new light. In his own
way, Jesus was every bit the master that super-chefs Bobby
Flay and Mario Batali are. Jesus, too, could take a central
ingredient and fashion from it countless incredible
offerings.
Admittedly, Jesus' ingredients weren't tangibles like onions
or tofu. Nor were they kept secret until the last possible
moment like they are on TV. Still, Jesus was the master of
inventiveness in the kitchen of faith.
Take forgiveness, for example. Jesus serves up this
important ingredient all sorts of different ways. In one
gospel Jesus puts forgiveness on a platter by teaching about
it. In another gospel, Jesus interacts with a sinner in such
a way as to highlight what forgiveness looks and sounds
like, and what happens as a result. Elsewhere Jesus dishes
up a parable about forgiveness, and later he folds it into a
prayer the disciples have ordered up.
Jesus has all kinds of not-so-secret ingredients in his
ministry pantry.
Take today, for instance. Jesus puts on his ministry apron,
rolls up his sleeves, and whips up a little big lesson using
one of his most favorite not-so-secret ingredients: who's
important to God and why.
What serves as Jesus' inspiration? His own meal-time
experience in the home of a Pharisee who invites him to take
a place among the host's Pharisee friends.
Jesus quickly observes that the men use this gathering as an
occasion to out-rank and one-up each other. Like little boys
playing a game of musical chairs, they each make a mad dash
for a seat. And not just any seat either, but one that is
better, more prestigious, more honorable than the others.
We've seen this before in scripture and not just with the
Pharisees, either. You may recall Jesus' own disciples,
James and John, coming to him asking for the best seats in
Jesus' heavenly house when that time comes. Jesus seized
that teachable moment and turned it into a spicy
conversation about true greatness.
Jesus takes one look at this hierarchy-of-importance mindset
and just can't help himself. Right then and there he mixes
up a little parable.
When you are guest at a wedding banquet, Jesus says sounding
more like Miss Manners than food wizard Bobby Flay, don't
presume anything. Don't be so greedy for recognition that
you plop yourself down in the spot where the really special
guests are to be seated. Doing that may put your host in the
unenviable position of having to humiliate you by moving you
to a less honorable spot.
Instead, Jesus continues, when you get to the banquet,
humbly settle in off to the side. An attentive host will see
that you deserve a more prestigious seat. When this happens,
he will come and lead you to a place of greater respect, and
this will double your honor. That said, if by chance your
host doesn't reseat you, then you haven't lost face; you can
party all night with your head held high.
Jesus' wisdom here sounds, pardon me, like the mac-and-cheese
of the etiquette world. Where's the "flava" here? The
artistry? Where's the unconventional twist we've come to
expect from our first-century religious Iron Chef ?
Not to worry! Jesus may have started with the predictable
but there's more to this recipe than we expect.
Jesus turns to his Sabbath meal host, and in a voice strong
enough for all to hear, adds this big handful of jalapenos:
"When you give a luncheon or a dinner, 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."
In other words, don't follow society's over-used, highly
conventional recipe. Don't mimic everyone else and invite
the A-listers, men of stature and standing, people of power
and position, the guests whose presence will make you look
good and every one else jealous.
And by all means don't limit your invitations to folks who
have the means to invite you back. Humanity has tasted that
dish for eons and it's always the same - exclusionary and
non-nourishing.
No, Jesus says, when you cook up a party take it up a great
big notch. "When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the
crippled, the lame, and the blind."
When you're the host, put extra leaves in your table, get
out your fancy china and special silver and play host not to
the first and the foremost but to the last and the least.
Invite in all those folks who will never ever, ever, ever be
able to reciprocate or repay you. Let the people at the
bottom of society's list be the ones at the top of yours.
Chew on that for a minute.
How many times have you seen that happen? Not many. And
there's reason for that. Generally we prefer to invite
people who are like us...or people we'd like to be like. We
have a hard time reaching out to those whose location on the
social ladder is lower than ours.
No, let me put that more clearly. We don't mind reaching out
to the people on Jesus' list. It's that we want to serve
them drive-through window style, giving them a little
something but not putting ourselves all that close to them.
Certainly not in a position to listen to their stories over
a long meal so that we might be changed by them.
I got myself into a heap of trouble one time with a minister
who wanted me to coordinate his congregation's mission trip
to the Navajo Reservation. He planned to fill a full-sized
chartered bus, travel for 24 hours, where everyone would
pile out, engage in some worthy project, and then trek home
again with their spiritual bellies warmed by all the good
they had done.
He had no idea what he was asking. The Navajo are a proud
people. They would want to reciprocate; they would want to
play the hosts with the most. But their tiny church was a
poor church, and they were an impoverished community. (Few
earned more than $10,000 annually.) The Navajos in this
church had no way to throw their guests the kind of feast
their guests deserved. More importantly, and this is why I
did not fulfill the minister's request, these Navajo
Christians would want more than come-and-go connection with
their guests. They would want their newfound friends to
become friends for a lifetime. Because in the Navajo world,
relationships are more valuable than silver or gold or
anything else.
Jesus knew that those who are last and least are our best
givers. Not in a worldly sense of course. What they give to
us is a chance to see what is truly important, which is not
our pedigrees or our achievements or our acquisitions.
What is truly important is our common bond of humanity. What
is truly important is that each one of us, regardless of our
station in life, is a beloved child of God who has a place
at God's table. In God's world there is no such thing as an
outsider. In God's world, there are only two kinds of
people: sisters or brothers. But we often miss the
opportunity to discover this because we fail to reach out to
those least like us.
One of the most profound of Jesus' teachings was this: we
can, by the way we live, show the world what God's kingdom
looks like. Right here, right now. There is no velvet rope
around God's kingdom, no maitre'd keeping out the riffraff
and the underdressed. In God's kingdom everyone is included.
God flings wide the doors to God's heart and invites every
single one of us to the feast of life knowing full well that
none of us can return the favor, not even the handful of
people who occupy a spot on the Forbes' list of
billionaires. We are all the recipients of love so gracious,
so spacious, so lavish that all we can do in its presence is
be humbled.
No, that's not entirely right. All we can do is be humbled
and then be inspired to reach out to the person least like
us, who in turn does the same, until each of us has been
invited in to feast on the one thing, the only thing, our
souls have ever craved: the knowledge that we are - no matter
what--welcomed, loved, and fed by God. Forever and ever. Amen.
© Rev. Karen Winkel
United Church of Paducah (UCC) You might want
to check out The Questions of Jesus: Challenging
Ourselves to Discover Life's Great Answers. Written by
Father John Dear, the book organizes Jesus' questions around
themes and includes thoughtful, approachable comment
following each one. |
"Never place a period where God has placed a comma." - Gracie
Allen
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