Last week we read from Luke 13, one of the many accounts of Jesus breaking the “rules” and stepping all over cultural expectations. In that passage Jesus was brazen enough to heal on the Sabbath. The Synagogue (church) leader was outraged at Jesus’ disrespect for one of the Ten Commandments. But I wonder if the angry outburst wasn’t so much about the “not working on the Sabbath” as it was about the who and why Jesus was helping. You see, in Jesus’ day and age, the people Jesus chose to interact with were almost never “at his level.” Jesus chose to see and call attention to a woman … and a deformed woman at that. According to all of his coworkers in the synagogue, other men with his level of education and religious status, this woman was beneath him in every aspect of life: socially, academically, religiously, and so on. Surely these religious leaders would need to put an end to Jesus’ way of drawing attention to the types of people they had worked so hard to ignore. Surely associating with this type of woman would threaten their authority and the respect they’d spent all their lives earning. 

Are there types of people you ignore because they would rub off on you? 

And then just a chapter later, today in Luke 14, Jesus is at it again. On his way to a dinner party on the Sabbath, Jesus once again calls out his church-teaching-comrades on their biases and judgmental attitudes toward those whom society rejects. In verses 2-6 (which we didn’t read this morning), this group of pastors and church leaders come across a man who had significant swelling all through his body, a condition called dropsy. On the basis of the “law,” the pharisees were about ready to tell Jesus, “Absolutely not, you can’t heal this man. That’s work. And it’s Sabbath. Nope.” But Jesus calls them on their judgmental hearts. The act of healing wasn’t really the problem. They weren’t innocently desiring to obey God’s Law. No, their problem was with who Jesus was healing. In acknowledging this sick man, Jesus enacts the whole crux of the law – loving God and loving people. He offers this man healing and wholeness, for the same reason any of those religious leaders would have stopped at nothing to save one of their children had they fallen into a well on the Sabbath. It’s just what you do. You love people.

Who would you be confused to see Jesus helping?

A short time later Jesus and his Pharisee friends arrive at the dinner party they’d been invited to attend. No sooner had they found the best seats in the house, when there goes Jesus making a huge party faux pas with his speech at a big ol’ banquet. 

Jesus starts his speech by calling their attention to a proverb they knew well. A word of wisdom that says, 

“When someone invites you to dinner, don’t take the place of honor. Somebody more important than you might have been invited by the host. Then he’ll come and call out in front of everybody, ‘You’re in the wrong place. The place of honor belongs to this man.’ Red-faced, you’ll have to make your way to the very last table, the only place left.

Nobody wants to be that person, right? I can remember the start of high school. I was the new girl, knowing a few faces from years before when I’d gone to the public school for kindergarten and first grade. But for the past 7 years I’d attended a tiny private school in the middle of nowhere. And now I was a nobody. When the lunch bell rang, I hurried to my locker to grab my sack lunch and then entered the bustling lunch room. Adrenaline flooded my body but I tried to keep my face from telling everyone how nervous I was. I don’t remember exactly what happened ( I mean it was 19 years ago…) but I’m pretty sure I picked a random spot by myself so as to not disturb any of the pre-selected groups. I did NOT want to be that person who just showed up uninvited. A few shaky bites into my sandwich, someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Hey, come sit with us.” And the next thing I knew I was making new friends, good friends, laughing and telling stories.

It’s just like how Jesus described it to the party-goers:

10-11 “When you’re invited to dinner, go and sit at the last place. Then when the host comes he may very well say, ‘Friend, come up to the front.’ That will give the dinner guests something to talk about! What I’m saying is, If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up flat on your face. But if you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.”

But he doesn’t stop with this sound advice. I mean, everyone of us wants to be honored not embarrassed at parties, right?  At this point Jesus shifts his attention to the Host:

“The next time you put on a dinner, don’t just invite your friends and family and rich neighbors, the kind of people who will return the favor. Invite some people who never get invited out, the misfits from the wrong side of the tracks. You’ll be—and experience—a blessing. They won’t be able to return the favor, but the favor will be returned—oh, how it will be returned!—at the resurrection of God’s people.”

Of course this message wasn’t just intended for the host, but for every person in that room who had the social status to host a similar party. And, in fact, it’s for every one of us.  Jesus knew none of them would ever even think to invite the man they’d passed on their way whose body was weirdly disfigured with swelling (I mean, neither would I) or the woman with the crippling arthritis he’d called to the front last Sunday in church, or what about that woman who’d been unclean from bleeding for more than a decade, or the kids they kept out of the synagogue because of the disruptions they’d cause. And yet these are exactly the people Jesus invites to his table.

In the Kingdom of God, a banquet is not a true banquet unless everyone is invited and welcome to the table. (Matt Skinner)

Ok hold that thought. Let me ask you a question: What are some of the ways we classify people? What words do we use to describe who we are and what we believe?

• conservative? liberal? 
• progressive? moderate? 
• evangelical? sacramental? 
• pro-life or pro-choice
• republican or democrat
• in favor of marriage and family or supporting gay rights?
• mentally ill or mentally sound? 
• white or a person of color? 
• employed or dependent on government aid? 

Friends, if we’re honest with ourselves these are all Dividing Walls. Defining ourselves by classes and distinctives such as these is like building a wall between “us” and “them.” The wall itself may not actually harm people so we justify to ourselves how the wall is just about space and “safety.” But the truth is these Dividing Walls hurt humanity and they hurts the mission of Jesus. The mission of Jesus is to bring healing and wholeness to the whole world. And the mission of Jesus – healing and wholeness – is accomplished by loving God and loving people, all people. 

When we make distinctions between ourselves and others, we are building invisible, soundproof walls that keep us from hearing one another. And when we refuse to hear one another, we are refusing to know one another and we are refusing to love one another, and, friends, I hate to say it, but refusing to love any person for any reason is in direct disobedience to Jesus. 

Jesus came to give us a physical example of how to live a life that’s actually loving God and loving all people. Jesus came to help us break down the barriers that keep us from listening to one another, from getting to know one another, from loving one another.  Jesus came to destroy the dividing walls between Christians and non-Christians, Jews and Greeks, women and men, People of Color and White People, Democrat and Republican, Progressive and Conservative, Gay and Straight…in order that we might love God and love one another. (And remember the metric for how to love people? Being willing to listen to them.)

Do you want to live like Jesus? Are you willing to let the Holy Spirit survey your life and point out the Dividing Walls you’ve built around yourself? And then, would you be willing to pick up the sledgehammer of love that Jesus wielded in order to break those Dividing Walls down? Are you willing to love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence [and] love all others as well as you love yourself?

Let’s return again to God with our whole hearts and a wholehearted confession.