The Mission of the Church: The Open Table

Luke 14:1,7-14
The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
(1st in a series of 5)

“Why does the church need to concentrate more on mission?” an interviewer recently asked Reggie McNeal, the author of a new book titled Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church. McNeal’s answer to the question suggests that the church has gotten the question of mission the wrong way round. McNeal said, “We have thought. . . . that the church had a mission. The truth is that God's mission has a church. It's [God’s] Mission, not ours. The work of the church comes out of God's redemptive mission in the world.” “God’s mission has a church,” Reggie McNeal says. God’s redemptive mission in the world is the reason the church exists, not the other way around.

The mission of the church was already decided when God called Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 12:1-13: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” The mission of the church was already decided when God called the people of God in Isaiah 49:6: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I Will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” The mission of the church was already decided when “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16).

When it comes to mission, we sometimes forget that we are not the home office; we are merely franchisees. We don’t decide the mission, we only choose to accept it or not. God’s mission is that “all the families of the earth shall be blessed”; God’s mission is that God’s “salvation may reach to the end of the earth”; God’s mission is that “everyone who believes may not perish but have eternal life.” Again and again Scripture reminds us of God’s redemptive mission in the world. And that mission has a church.

This morning, I am beginning a five-sermon series on the redemptive mission of God in the world through the church based on the gospel lessons in the Revised Common Lectionary. The five passages in which we will be listening for a word from God about God’s church are not the standard “mission-of-the-church” passages. For this series, I’m not “cherry-picking” the typical church-mission passages such as “On this rock, I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18). Or “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people” (Matthew 4:19). Or “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). Instead, we are going to be listening in on the gospel of Luke as Jesus teaches and preaches along the way from the Galilee in the north to Jerusalem in the south.

In chapter 9 of Luke’s gospel, there is a single verse that turns the story of Jesus’ teaching and preaching and ministering and healing in a new and ominous direction: “When the days drew near for [Jesus] to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). For the next ten chapters, the largest part of the gospel of Luke, Jesus will teach and preach and minister and heal his way toward Jerusalem. This section of Luke’s gospel from chapter 9 through chapter 19 is sometimes called the “travel narrative” because over and over again in these chapters the text reminds the reader that Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. Jesus “set his face to go to Jerusalem” right after he clued the disciples in to what is ahead for the very first time in Luke’s gospel: “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (Luke 9:22). For a reader who has eyes to see and ears to hear, there is a foreboding drumbeat in these chapters: “to Jerusalem, to Jerusalem, to Jerusalem.”

Commentators on the travel narrative point out that in his teaching and preaching and ministering and healing in these chapters, Jesus is preparing his followers to carry on his mission after his earthly ministry is over. So, as we listen in on Jesus’ teaching in these five passages, it is as though we are overhearing directives from the home office about what kind of franchise we are engaged in at First Baptist Greenville.

Before we focus on the content of the teaching of Jesus in this morning’s gospel passage, we would do well to take note of the narrative context. It’s mealtime. Whenever I come to one of these meal-time passages in the gospels like the one in front of us this morning from Luke 14, I am reminded of something my brother’s pastor said years ago about the calling to be a minister of the gospel. He told his congregation that he had the best job in the world, because after all, as a pastor called to follow in the way of Jesus that meant that he was to spend his life “eating and drinking with sinners.” What could be any better than that? I have discovered, however, that the gospels also call ministers to eat and drink with Pharisees too, and that’s not nearly as entertaining.

For a time, we are told in Luke 14, the journey to Jerusalem pauses for the Sabbath and for a meal (verses 1-24). They are eating and drinking together. It’s remarkable, really, how often the gospels illustrate God’s redemptive mission in the world as sharing a meal together, as feeding the hungry, as breaking bread with friends and with strangers. It turns out that God’s redemptive mission in the world is as basic and earthy and material as our common human need for physical sustenance. The church has always made a grievous error when it has forgotten or ignored the gospel picture that God’s redemptive mission in the world is every bit as much about biology as it about theology. It is true that we “do not live by bread alone” (Deuteronomy 8:3; Luke 4:4), but it is just as true that down through the centuries people have starved to death while the church fiddled with doctrine. We must never forget that “daily bread” is every bit as important a petition in prayer as “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Breaking bread together and providing others with bread to break are both literal and symbolic expressions of the mission of the church which is God’s redemptive mission in the world.

Luke 14:1 tells us that at this meal in the house of a leader of the Pharisees, they were watching Jesus closely. But it turns out that Jesus was watching them as well. Verse 7 tells us that he noticed how the guests chose their seats at the table. He noticed their maneuvering and elbowing and jockeying for position. We all have preferences of one sort or another about where we sit and with whom. Some of them are as trivial as the answer to the inquiry, “Would you like a table or a booth?” Some of them are more serious. Those of us who occasionally eat lunch or dinner with a law enforcement officer in our congregation know not to bother choosing a seat until he has chosen his because there are certain parts of an establishment that he will not sit with his back toward.

Jesus uses the occasion of table-time jockeying for position to remind everyone of a familiar Jewish proverb. It’s Proverbs 25:6-7: “Do not put yourself forward in the king's presence or stand in the place of the great; for it is better to be told, ‘Come up here,’ than to be put lower in the presence of a noble.” But Jesus goes on to interpret that proverb as more than self-protective table etiquette. The larger issue when it comes to God’s redemptive mission in the world, is the spiritual discipline of humility, because among the franchisees of the gospel of Jesus Christ, “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (Luke 14:11), Jesus says.

But even more importantly, Jesus didn’t just say that; Jesus did it. Listen to what the apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 2:3-9: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name.” The mission of the church—the mission of each of us individually and all of us collectively—is to reflect God’s redemptive mission in the world as it is reflected in the life and ministry and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in which Christ humbled Christ’s self. Living out that mission begins and ends with humility in our every encounter and every transaction.

After speaking of the guests at the meal, Jesus turns to speak of the host. Jesus is one of those folks at the party who can be an equal opportunity offender. God’s redemptive mission in the world is every bit as much about the guest list as it is about guest behavior. You have to understand that what Jesus said about the guest list at this dinner party would have offended the sensibilities of his listeners. Everyone there would have smiled and nodded along as he repeated the familiar proverb about choosing a seat at the table, even if they didn’t live by it. But what he said about the guest list would have elicited a change in their body language and their facial expressions. In antiquity, you see, poverty and physical and mental disabilities were misunderstood as indications of the judgment of God. Remember the passage in John’s gospel, where Jesus and his disciples are walking in Jerusalem when they see a blind man by the side of the road, and Jesus’ own disciples ask, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?” (John 9:2). Jesus answered immediately, “Neither!” Jesus broke the misguided link between disability and the judgment of God.

God’s mission in the world is a redemptive mission, a mission “to bring good news to the poor. . . . to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor” (Luke 4:18-19). And so Jesus says, invite to the table exactly the people whom you and others in society would not think to invite or might choose not to invite: “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind” (Luke 14:13). Insofar as the mission of the church is God’s redemptive mission in the world, then it always and everywhere to invite and welcome those persons whom others ignore, to invite and welcome those persons who make others uncomfortable, to invite and welcome those persons whom others believe are outside the blessing of God. According to Jesus, God’s table is an open table, open to those whom others exclude, ignore, neglect, abandon. God’s church is an open church, open to all who respond to the invitation to come and to eat and to drink and share in the fellowship of the grace of God and of one another.

Fred Craddock tells the story of the first church he served as pastor in the hills of east Tennesse, not far from a sleepy little hamlet called Oak Ridge. In the 1940s when Craddock was pastor there, Oak Ridge became one of the leading centers of work on the Manhattan Project, the now famous code name for the U.S. government’s operation to develop the atomic bomb. Overnight, says Craddock, “that little bitty town became a booming city. Every hill and every valley and every shady grove had recreational vehicles and trucks and things like that. People came in from everywhere and pitched tents, lived in wagons. Hard hats from everywhere, with their families and children paddling around in the mud in those trailer parks, lived in everything temporary to work.”

The church Craddock pastored met in a beautiful little white frame building over a hundred years old. “It had beautifully decorated chimneys, kerosene lamps all around the walls, and every pew in this little church was hand hewn from a giant poplar tree.” After church one Sunday morning, Craddock asked the leaders of the congregation to stay, and he said to them, “We need to launch a calling campaign and an invitational campaign in all those trailer parks to invite those people to church.” “Oh, I don’t know,” one leader said. “I don’t think they’d fit in here.” Another said, “They’re just here temporarily, just construction people. They’ll be leaving pretty soon.” “Well, we ought to invite them, make them feel at home,” Craddock said. They debated the matter, he says, and time ran out. They said they’d come and vote the next Sunday. The next Sunday, they all sat down after the service. “I move,” said one of them, “that in order to be a member of this church, you must own property in this county.” Someone else said, “I second that.” It passed. I voted against it, Craddock says, but they reminded me that I was just a kid preacher and I didn’t have a vote. It passed.

Decades later, after Craddock and his wife Nettie retired to north Georgia, they took a ride one morning north to Tennessee to see if they could find that little church for which Craddock still held such fond and painful memories. The roads had changed, so he had a hard time finding it, but he finally did. He found the state road, the county road, and the little gravel road. Then there, back among the pines, was that building shining white. The parking lot was full—motorcycles and trucks and cars packed in there. And out front, there was a great big sign: Barbecue, all you can eat. It was a restaurant, so they went inside. The pews were pushed against a wall. They had electric lights, and the old pump organ was pushed over into the corner. There were aluminum and plastic tables, and people sitting there eating barbecued pork and chicken and ribs—all kinds of people, lots of different people from lots of different walks of life and lots of different places. In the course of the meal together, he said to his wife Nettie, “It’s a good thing this is not still a church, otherwise these people couldn’t be in here.”

So why is it, exactly, that the restaurant industry is more welcoming and inclusive and invitational than the church? Why is it, exactly, that the church promotes doctrines and policies intended to exclude and discriminate, to marginalize and sometimes even demonize persons, in order to keep them away from the table—or to keep them from sitting at the head of the table? If the teaching of Jesus on the way from Galilee to Jerusalem is any indication, God’s table is an open table, and if the church is to share in God’s redemptive mission in the world, then the church must be an open church, open to all and to everyone who responds to the invitation to share in the life and death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Mission Statement of this congregation reflects the fact that First Baptist Greenville is committed to being just such a church, a “whosoever-will” kind of congregation, a “just-as-I-am” kind of place. Our invitation hymn this morning invites us all to participate in God’s redemptive mission in the world through this church. The invitation of Christ and this church is very, very open as we stand and sing together our invitation hymn, #311.

Diverse in culture, nation, race, we come together by your grace.
God, let us be a meeting ground where hope and healing love are found.

God, let us be a bridge of care connecting people everywhere.
Help us confront all fear and hate and lust for pow’r that separate.

When chasms widen, storms arise, O Holy Spirit, make us wise.
Let our resolve, like steel, be strong to stand with those who suffer wrong.

God, let us be a table spread with gifts of love and broken bread,
where all find welcome, grace attends, and enemies arise as friends.
Ruth Duck, 1991
Words © 1992 G.I.A. Publications

The Fred Craddock story is a mix of paraphase and direct quotations from Craddock Stories, by Fred B. Craddock, et al (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2001).

This material is Copyrighted © 2010 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

Next Week: "The Mission of the Church: Beyond the Ties That Bind"