For some reason, posting this was like swimming in Jello.

Sermon Southern Illinois Women's Retreat
September 23, 2012
Isaiah 55:1-13
Luke 14:15-24
Romans 12:9-21

“Invited and Inviting”

I don't know how it works in your household, but in mine I seem to be the person who is most responsible for making sure that we eat. I know that's not true everywhere, but that is my reality. So what we eat, when we eat and how we eat are in the end up to me. And on a daily basis, all I accomplish making sure that our hunger is met simply and adequately—though I usually overdo even that. But meals in general and some special meals in particular serve wider, deep, broader, special purposes.

Even though I can't always do it, I try to be home for our evening meal, for example, because my husband works nights and sleeps all day, so that evening meal is the one that we can share. We can talk face to face with one another, catch up on the stuff that we've forgotten to tell one another about schedules, events and work issues. And I'm sure with children that it's even more important. Families of any size and composition usually build, strengthen or neglect relationship over meals and probably always will.

Whoever is responsible for planning and preparation, the meal can and should mean something, provide more than physical nourishment. We know that instinctively and we can know it biblically and theologically as well. Whomever we are feeding, a meal is more than food, more than satisfying one kind of need or hunger.

One theologian and author tells this story. “I know what you people are up to.” Ryan looked up from his lunch plate and into my eyes. He said it simply, yet as if in on a conspiracy. I asked, “What do you mean?” “For months, I’ve been coming to this lunch,” he continued, “trying to figure out who you people are and why you’re doing this.” He paused. “You’re not from a church. You don’t talk about God or the Bible. You just smile and serve all this food week after week.” He paused again. “But then I figured it out.” I smiled back and waited to hear what mystery Ryan had solved about why we were there. We smiled and waited, as if naming it aloud would somehow take away from the truth we both knew. Finally, Ryan said, “You’re doing this because Jesus said you’d find him among the poor, and you’re looking for Jesus.” 1 

The meal had begun when a Bible study member heard Jesus' words, “You have the poor with always,” and as she put it, she “was convicted.” She was convicted because in her comfortable, suburban life she was never among the poor. So she set up a table with sandwiches and soup at the local food bank, among the poor, to see what would happen. It became a feast.
 Eventually they moved the feast to a large inside a city building, making it a weekly banquet for 50 people. Homeless folks, low income seniors, people who want a “free lunch” and volunteers share tables together. I firmly and deeply believe in the innate wisdom of the connections food and relationships because it creates miracles. And I do believe that unless we truly make our tables inviting to all peoples regardless of any personal characteristic, flaw of personality, psyche or even regardless of sin, perceived or real, we may miss out on the miracle. We may miss out on meeting Jesus there or anywhere else. We are invited to participate fully—to prepare, yes, and to eat and to drink and to wholly be there. In Isaiah 55, begins with a call, an invitation to share food and drink.
"Ho, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and you that have no money,
come, buy and eat!“ It makes good sense and may well be related to the actual practices of food and water-sellers in the markets of ancient Israel, hawking their wares with "Hey!" "Ho!" and "Hôy!" 
The second part of the call is odd,
"Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price. . . . “how does one buy without purchasing power (money)? And what seller would call for someone to (par)take of their goods without spending any money? And who is this seller anyway?”2 Yet it is this lack of practicality and pragmatism that tells us this text is about salvation and good news. Who besides God offers food without cost? Who besides God offers the essentials, milk and water, and also the superfluous, but the pleasurable, wine? Who besides God? In Proverbs, there are similar texts where food, wine and community are offered for the intellectual, spiritual, moral, and social improvement of all who attend and participate. 
9Wisdom has built her house,
she has hewn her seven pillars.
3 She has sent out her servant-girls, she calls
from the highest places in the town,
4 ‘You that are simple, turn in here!’
To those without sense she says,
5 ‘Come, eat of my bread
and drink of the wine I have mixed.
6 Lay aside immaturity, and live,
and walk in the way of insight.’ 

This invitational expression is divine; it is celebratory and it resonates with us deeply because we are often the ones who stand at the table in our homes and in our churches and beckon people to join in, to partake fully, to eat and drink deeply of our offer of love and relationship. We do it because we are daughters always, and mothers and wives, often. And because of this, I think we can understand God's desire for this community with, not only Israel, but also the peoples and nations, the gentiles, as the text from Isaiah affirms. And God beckons, invites, cajoles and deeply desires our presence and our relationship. God wants us gathered around, to see us together, to know us as a family, as a diverse, yet connected, loving body. 

The banquet where we are invited takes lots of hard work—as they all do—on the part of the host and on the part of the servants, who we are, as the meal is prepared and the setting made welcoming. A banquet is also means a kind of work on the part of the guests who must prioritize and prepare once he or she, once we (who are at the same time guests and servants in the kingdom of God) receive the invitation. 

Isaiah's feast of free food and drink, of sustenance and celebration, is a call given to the whole world of people, an invitation to see what it is that God has done or will do among God's people. It is a call to God's people to realize how far, how deep and how wide and how high the invitation stretches. The invitation to God's kingdom—the banquet hall of yesterday's parable—is given to us and given through us as we reflect the hospitality of our God and of our teacher and savior, Jesus Christ. So we live in and we live into the dwelling place of God—that comfy kitchen table or that regal and royal palace where we can be led forth in joy and peace as 
“the mountains and the hills before you
. . .burst into song,
and all the trees of the field . . . clap their hands.”3
Life itself responds and will respond to invitation and to the splendid transformation: “Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;
instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;
and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial,
for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”4 Amen.



1 WHOEVER WELCOMES By Wes Howard-Brook who teaches theology and biblical studies at Seattle University. In Seasons Fusion Pentecost 2 2012. www.abideinme.net
2 http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=7/31/2011&tab=1
3 Isaiah 55:12b
4 Isaiah 55:13