Sermon preached by Dr. Dennis Okholm
August 29 & 30, 2009
Copyright 2009, Dennis Okholm
All rights reserved

Jesus' Target Audience
Luke 14:1, 7-14

Some of you may be familiar with a long-standing practice in the Christian church—the use of the lectionary. The lectionary is simply a list of biblical passages from the Old and New Testaments for each Sunday such that in, say, a three-year cycle the congregation has worked its way through the entire Bible.

One of the good things about the lectionary is that it keeps preachers from picking their favorite texts and ignoring ones with which they’d rather not deal. Occasionally, as a matter of self-discipline, when I am asked to preach I assign myself the lectionary passage. And quite often that means I have to unpack a text that I would rather not deal with or preach a sermon that might rub some folks the wrong way. Well, guess what . . . ?

Now, Trevecca and I just got back from two weeks on the island of Moorea. I wish I could be self-righteous and tell you it was a mission trip, but, in all honesty, I have to admit it was simply one of the best vacations we’ve ever had. We did attend a Tahitian Sunday worship service in the oldest church building in French Polynesia—established by the London Missionary Society. We didn’t understand a thing they said, but the music was great, and when they broke into a chorus of “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” Trevecca and I sang along in English.

But nearly every evening we joined a small crowd of Club Bali Hai guests to listen to the stories of Muk, one of the three original Bali Hai boys from the U.S. In fact, Muk attended Harbor High School. Occasionally Muk would get close to a controversial topic in answer to someone’s question, and he would say, “I’m not arguing the case. I’m just stating the fact.”

Well, brothers and sisters, this morning as we unpack this story, I’m not arguing the case. I’m just stating the fact. Blame the lectionary if you don’t like what you hear.

The fact is that as I read the passage for this Sunday my thoughts went back to some of the discussions we had during the visioning process—specifically, our deliberations about who should be the “target audience” for St. Andrews Presbyterian Church. And I remember feeling uncomfortable about that discussion because we seemed to be more concerned about who we wanted to attract than asking who Jesus might target.

Who would Jesus pick as his “target audience”? Or, in light of our passage, put it this way: Who would be first on Jesus’ guest list for a “Dinners for Ten”?

I made a list of all the stories of Jesus’ encounters with people in the four Gospel accounts and I discovered this: Jesus sought out men, women, and children of all ages from all strata of society. But Jesus spent most of his time seeking out or being sought by the marginal people of that day. And, though he made appeals to some leaders such as Nicodemus, he never seemed to go out of his way to attract what we would call the “key” players in the culture. In fact, he often targeted the people whom the key leaders despised.

I thought about that in light of my experience in high school. Young Life was going strong at the time, and part of its philosophy was this: Target the cheerleaders and the jocks, and the rest of the kids will come. Now I was not a jock, but I was consistent: I tried out for the basketball team during my Freshman and Sophomore years and didn’t even make the first round of cuts two years in a row. And I began to see Young Life as an exclusive club meant only for the “cool” kids. Fortunately, my Baptist youth group was led by some sensitive adults who invited all of us into the fold—the Alice Averages who would end up temping all of their lives but joyously share with their workmates how God blesses them, and the Mickey Minors who would never get to the major leagues but who would end up faithfully ministering to others who come and go on the farm teams.

Actually, that sounds a lot like Jesus’ mission statement that he took right from the prophet Isaiah. One day he told the synagogue congregation what he was all about as he read the text from Scripture: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has chosen me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed, and to announce that the time has come when the Lord will save his people.” (Luke 4:18-19)

Some time later, after another synagogue service, Luke tells us in our text that Jesus was invited to the home of a leading Pharisee so that he could be monitored . . . scrutinized. Little did they know that they would end up being the ones scrutinized by Jesus after he healed a man suffering from edema—healed a non-life-threatening situation on the Sabbath.

As everyone came to the house they probably found the table arranged in a U-shape, with the host sitting at the base, surrounded by seats for the most honored guests—honored guests that usually made a late entrance. So where one sat relative to the host was a public indication of that person’s status. The guest list for the dinner—the “target audience”—included the social elites, the powerful, the prestigious. Being invited to such a meal could do wonders for your social standing.

Once, when Trevecca and I were visiting London and touring Buckingham Palace, as we walked through the queen’s immense dining room I whispered to Trevecca, “I think I’ll write the queen when I get home and ask if I could be guest at one of her dinners.” You would all be impressed if I pulled it off!

That’s the way it was in Jesus’ day as well. And the dinner invitation was supposed to be reciprocated. You were supposed to invite the host to your place for dinner in the near future. Imagine the queen eating at the Okholm residence in Costa Mesa! You would really be impressed! My social standing would soar. I’d be on the society page of the Daily Pilot. Actually, I’d probably be on the front page of the Register and the Times.

But I wouldn’t even be noticed if I simply invited a handful of poor homeless people to eat at my house. That is why this leading Pharisee probably would never have made a guest list that included the poor or the imprisoned or the lame. After all, it would reflect on his social status as the host. And the invitation would be wasted because he could never expect an invitation in return. It might even be embarrassing for the poor person who would be required to decline the dinner invitation in order to be socially correct.

A poor person would have been of no social value to this leading Pharisee.

Now, in one sense you don’t want to fault the Pharisees. In fact, the rabbi Jesus was probably closer to the Pharisees than any other group in the Jewish circles of his day. They were good folks—never missed religious meetings, studied the Bible, tithed, set the moral standards for the culture. And they are concerned about Jesus’ religious values, even though Jesus will be testing theirs.

At first, as Jesus watches the early arrivers take seats of honor next to the host, it seems as if he is playing into their own cultural values by recommending to the early ones that they would avoid later embarrassment if they chose the last place so that when more honored guests walk in the presumptuous ones would not have to slither down to the cheap seats. In fact, he tells them that they might even receive greater honor if they are not so presumptuous to begin, sit in the cheap seats, and get asked to move up by the host. He’s just applying what he learned from his mother Mary when she responded to being chosen to be the mother of the Savior: God humbles the proud and lifts up the lowly.

But then, when it seems that Jesus is just giving Emily Post tips on proper etiquette at a formal dinner, Jesus unloads a zinger. He gets to the real point (vv. 12-14). He turns to the host and gives advice that goes against all social protocol: “Don’t invite your friends or religious buddies or relatives or rich neighbors so that they will repay you by inviting you to their next dinner party. Instead, throw a party and invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. If you only invite the folks who can repay you now, then that’s the only repayment you’ll get. But if you invite the ones who can not repay you, then you will be repaid when the righteous are raised—the ones who have lived as God’s covenant partners.”

That is true religion according to Jesus’ brother James, who wrote in his letter: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” (James 1:27)

You’d think Jesus and James would preach true religion as reading your Bible, going to church regularly, saying your prayers, tithing—all the things Jesus’ dinner host did. And those are good practices. But the evidence of true righteousness is to serve those who cannot repay you with money, status, favors, or a good reputation. And that cuts right against the grain of our own social values, because we love to cater to the rich and famous, the powerful, the movers and shakers.

But Jesus is changing the categories of who is on the inside and who is on the outside. He is engaged in some social engineering—resocializing the community of God’s people to change their values and their allegiances in a world that cares deeply about what one eats and with whom one eats. And he not only articulated that to his host at this dinner, but he demonstrated it first by curing an ostracized man who was probably suffering from congestive heart failure or kidney disease—curing a man on the Sabbath to embody the good news for the poor, to indicate that the time for the Lord to save his people had come . . . that there is now a new world order, a new vision of life known as the Kingdom of God—an upside-down kingdom where the humble, the socially marginalized, the underprivileged are the most valued. Jesus was replacing the comfortable social status quo with a scandalous alternative.

The question for us today is this: Have things changed? The average person—you and I who are considering this text—would find it difficult to criticize the host in this story for inviting his friends, his social equals or superiors, interesting people, people who are in a position to advance his career and enhance his social standing. But Jesus upsets us average people—he shakes up the norm: When you have a party—not a mission soup supper—invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind—people who would even make a Jewish Sabbath ceremonially unclean. Jesus is not condemning the socially elite for being present at this dinner party, but he is chiding them to open up to the Sabbath joy of doing God’s will by inviting all people—to cross the socially prescribed boundaries.

Jesus was inviting sinners and the marginalized . . . even IRS tax collectors to the table—so much so that he was accused of eating with sinners and tax collectors (Mk 2:5-16) and labeled a glutton and a drunkard (Mt 11:18-19). Jesus was even inviting these socially elite Pharisees and scribes to be healed of and liberated from their hypocrisy, honor seeking, and exclusionary practices. Jesus was announcing that when he is at the table, the Sabbath will be a time of healing, of divine restoration, of sharing, of celebrating. In other words, Jesus was transforming this ordinary meal into the banquet where he will one day be the host—at the resurrection of the righteous when we all sit around the table of the marriage feast of the lamb. And the only invitation we will need will be the one that comes from the God who is unimpressed by the social credentials—our family name, our network of friends, our wealth, our title—the credentials that so impress people in Luke’s world and our world.

Jesus invites those who cannot repay him, from whom he has nothing to gain. In fact, in the Gospel accounts it is precisely those who are poor and lame and blind who seem most responsive to Jesus’ invitation to enter the Kingdom. Those who place confidence in their wealth or social position, as Jesus said, need no physician. It is the difference between the penitent sinner who cries out for God’s mercy and the self-righteous publican. And in inviting us he brings together a new community of people who will follow his lead and target the same audience in ministries that often involve quiet works of service that may not even get noticed in Highlights. He invites us into a new community that creates a culture of gracious and uncalculating hospitality, rather than one that merely reflects a culture of consumerism and marketing.

As this chapter in Luke moves on, Jesus tells the story of a man who invited prestigious guests who refuse his offer. But not to be deterred, the host eventually went even into the “roads and lanes” of the city—the places where those of low status dwell—to invite them to the table, regardless of their family heritage, wealth, or position. And this is good news, for it means that the table will be full.

It is interesting that Jesus says they were not only to be invited, but they were to be compelled and led to the table (v. 23). This reminds me of our first time in Khartoum, Sudan. During the five weeks we were there we attended the International church on Sunday evenings where a newly assigned British pastor preached before a crowd of poor Sudanese and sacrificing missionaries. Each week he never failed to mention his dinners with embassy and government officials. It provided us with a marked contrast to one of the last meals in our home as we invited the young man who had served us by cleaning and shopping, along with his wife, to be our honored guests at the table, his wife having to be compelled in the face of the cultural convention that a woman was not to be eating at the same table as men. But I think it may have been one of the far too rare times in my life when I saw a glimpse, even in my house, of the table that Jesus hosts.

Yet, we are the ones who to go out to the “roads and lanes” to compel others to become part of God’s covenant people. You have no doubt heard the phrase “seeker church.” I am afraid that the “seeker” mentality has done some damage to the church, perpetuating a strategy of marketing ourselves in such a way that we attract people to our church and to our campus. It has made Christ’s church attractional rather than missional. It is true that at times people sought Jesus, but most of the time he was seeking them. And he told us, his followers, to be the “seekers” so that, with him, we are to seek and save the lost (vv. 21b-23). We, St. Andrews Presbyterian Church, are to be “seekers.”

I read a beautiful account of this perspective in Leighton Ford’s recent book The Attentive Life. He tells the story of a Masai elder explaining to their missionary, Vincent Donovan, who the real seeker is :
We did not search you out, Padri. We did not even want you to come to us. You searched us out. You followed us away from your house into the bush . . . into our villages, our homes. You told us of the High God, how we must search for him, even leave our land and our people to find him. But we have not done this.  . . . We have not searched for him. He has searched for us. He has searched us out and found us. All the time we think we are the lion. In the end, the lion is God—the God who began to seek us even before we knew it.

As St. Andrews Presbyterian Church, whom are we seeking? If our target audience takes its cue from Jesus’ life and ministry, we will be seeking or targeting the “lost” . . . but especially those who are marginalized—those who cannot repay us with increased status or money or privilege.

Who are we inviting to the table at St. Andrews? At the great banquet feast of the Lamb—at the resurrection of the righteous—even though God invites all kinds of people, Dennis Okholm probably will not be able to get a prime seat near the host, Jesus Christ. I will most likely be sitting with a bunch of other Presbyterian pastors (Baptists will no doubt get better seating assignments!) and published professors and CEOs and celebrities and the well-to-do at the far end of the table, looking on as Jesus invites up to the dais those who are poor, the crippled, the lame, the impure, the blind, the homeless (like himself)—the least and the left-out.

Next time we have communion, remember something: Remember that the Lord’s Supper is not only a participation in the last meal that Jesus had with his disciples in the upper room, but, in a “back to the future” sort of way, it is a participation in the coming great banquet that we will share when Jesus drinks the cup with us again. And then, as you imagine the arrangement of guests around that table, think about the table here and ask yourself, “Who would be my ‘target audience’ to invite to this table to drink and eat with me and the Lord? Whom would Jesus invite to this—his—table?”

Whom do we seek to serve as guests at our table? Jesus is calling the truly righteous to serve those who cannot repay our kindness—not even to enhance St. Andrews Presbyterian Church. During the coming week those are the persons whom we are to seek—whom we are to target. And don’t be surprised if some of the elite refuse your invitation, for often they are not even aware of their need, captive to a consumer culture that seeks reciprocity and status. But then, while God the lion hunts down the unaware, you can take the invitation out to the streets, to the lame of the city and the poor and the crippled and the blind . . . and then even to the roads and lanes so that the house will be filled, because the Lord wants a fully attended party. And then will be fulfilled the promise God made to Abraham—that through his children all peoples will be blessed.

What’s in it for you? You will be repaid at the resurrection. You will eat bread in the Kingdom. For you will have participated in a new social order governed by the rules of God’s Kingdom. Your invitation to the great banquet will be confirmed because you have experienced how widely God’s mercy flows to the point that you gave to the destitute and the outcast without expectation or hope of repayment. This is better repayment than career advancement and social status in a secular society. This is laying up treasure in heaven.

Dennis Okholm
St. Andrews Presbyterian Church
30 August 2009