Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

Luke 14:1, 7-14

¹On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely.

⁷When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. ⁸"When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; ⁹and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, 'Give this person your place', and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. ¹⁰But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, 'Friend, move up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. ¹¹For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted."

¹²He said also to the one who had invited him, "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. ¹³But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. ¹⁴And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."

Sermon:  “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”

Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong era.  I’d rather watch Audrey Hepburn prance through Rome than watch MTV’s Video Music Awards.  Give me Hitchcock over modern-day horror movies, and Sidney Poitier over Brad Pitt any day.  Which is why “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” is one of my favorite movies.

Sidney’s there, along with a constantly-weeping Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in the last role of his life.  Set in 1967, many said it was a movie “well ahead of its time.”  I was not around then, but I would say it was a movie right smack in the middle of its time, creating conversation about things like race and love exactly when that conversation needed to be happening.  But I’ll let you decide for yourself:  See here a clip where Joey (played by Katharine Hepburn’s niece) brings home John Prentice to meet her parents, and her mother’s reaction.

(movie clip from Guess Who's Coming to Dinner)

Scandalous for its time?  Probably.  So was the March on Washington, 50 years ago this week, when Martin Luther King uttered those powerful words, “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood…I have a dream that one day…in Alabama little black boys and little black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today!”

Dreaming of a time when the barriers between people are broken down with love is a dangerous thing.  The producers of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner knew this, presenting a movie about an interracial couple when 17 states still outlawed such a marriage (North Carolina allowed this in that same year, 1967).  Martin Luther King knew such a dream was dangerous.  So did Jesus, well before anyone else.

In Jesus’ time, the barriers between people, rich and poor, free and slave, healthy and sick, Jewish and Gentile, were never more evident than at a dinner table.  Of course the Pharisees knew this. 

So they watched him extra close at that table when he was invited to dinner, seeing if he ate with the correct fork and sipped his sweet tea without slurping.  And mostly seeing if he sat in the right place. 

But you see, Jesus was watching them just as closely.  He saw how all of the “important” guests sat themselves in places of honor without thinking twice.  And when they did, he spoke. 

“Don’t take the best spot at the table where the honored guests sit, y’all, where you get first dibs on rolls fresh out of the oven.  Honor isn’t something you take, like declaring yourself honorable just by sitting in a fancy chair.  Honor can only be given to you, when your actions prove honorable. 

“So sit at the awkward spot in the corner, away from the host, where your shins bump into the table legs and the food is cold by the time it’s passed to you.  And if the host thinks you’re honorable, you’ll be rewarded. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” 

 And those religious leaders looked at him with the same shocked look Katharine Hepburn gave Sidney Poitier when she realized he was who was coming to dinner.  That scandalous dinner guest Jesus went on to speak about how a dinner party isn’t complete when filled with neighbors who look, dress, speak and spend just like you.  A dinner party is only really honorable when the poor, the sick and the differently-abled are included, and not just included, but given places of honor. 

With those wild words, Jesus took the Pharisees’ version of Emily Post’s Guide to Etiquette and burned it before their eyes.  Like I said last week, I don’t believe Jesus got invited back to supper.  Actually, his incendiary words and actions including the poor and so-called dishonorable cost him his life.

As he always knew they would.  But for God-With-Us, the honorable thing was standing with, and eating with, those society said were meant to be kept separated.  And his honorable actions have inspired countless other acts of courage and self-sacrifice over and over and over again. 

I wouldn’t be here, speaking to you today as your minister, if it weren’t for the honorable and scandalous actions of women and men who said that the way things are is not the way things will always be.  Of people who allowed themselves to be labeled as radical or heretical by society for the sake of following the Savior who broke every barrier down, even the barrier between life and death. 

We are not honorable because we sit in the right place at a dinner table, or because we only invite the “right” sort of folks. 

We are not honorable because we sit in a pew (or stand at a pulpit, for that matter) each Sunday or because we read God’s Word regularly. 

We are honorable when we settle for the lukewarm rolls at the end of the table because the starving poor deserve to be at the center for once. 

We are honorable when this living Word of God, experienced here, takes root in our lives until we find within it the strength that Alabama preacher found, a strength that not even death can defeat, because it is rooted in the strongest thing there is in this life or the life to come: love. 

When we find ourselves looking at society, the church or our community and feeling that things are changing too quickly, or our understanding of honor is evaporating from this world, Jesus is with us. 

But while our anxiety causes us to distance ourselves from those we are divided from by partisan politics, income level, theology, race or lifestyle, Jesus just sticks his elbows on the table and says one thing:

“Guess who’s coming to dinner?”  Amen.