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Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent - March 14, 2010
If you were living in Lille, France in February of 1454 and had social ambitions, an invitation to a lavish meal hosted by Philip the Fair, Duke of Burgundy, was an absolute necessity. Everyone who was anyone was going to this event, known as the Banquet of the Pheasant, a dinner painstakingly chronicled by one Olivier de la Marche. Back then, because of their political and social significance, banquets often attracted the attention of chroniclers.
The banquet, as a unique form of merry making among the nobility flourished in Europe during the Renaissance, the mid-fourteenth to the early seventeenth century. Thoroughly secular, banquets were not to be confused with feasts, meals associated with special days in the church calendar, Christmas, Easter, and so on. By contrast, banquets held no transcendent significance and were therefore not subject to any kind of religious restraint. Instead, they celebrated individuals or accomplishments.
Indeed, the banquet tended to be an exercise in conspicuous consumption, a blatant demonstration of wealth and power, distinguished, say historians, not only by their extravagance and ostentatious scale, but also by their theatricality and use of symbolism.
All of which brings us back to the Banquet of the Pheasant, the purpose of which was not to celebrate a person or an accomplishment but to get a bunch of people fired up to join a crusade to recapture Constantinople, recently captured by the Turks. In a large room, decorated with tapestries depicting the life of Hercules, guests passed by a series of tables, on each of which was an elaborate model such as a young boy relieving himself with rosewater, a large pastry case in which were twenty eight musicians, and, on the third table, a tall dresser displaying platters of gold and silver, together with crystal jugs decorated with gold and precious stones.
Near the wall were two high pillars, one supporting the figure of a woman out of whose bosom, gushed spiced wine. On the other pillar stood a lion, guarding the woman. was supposed to inspire the knights into a holy land seizing frame of mind. I’m still not sure how all this symbolism was supposed to get the knights into a rescue the holy land frame of mind. Perhaps the wine - and where it came from - was supposed to do the trick.
As for the food itself, a typical banquet back then had to feature out of the ordinary and out of season food, offering the most prestigious and most expensive ingredients - calves’ heads, roast peacock, whole roast sheep with a sour cherry sauce, and so on; course after course until you could eat no more; in fact, you were not expected to consume everything; some of the food was just there to be admired; the art and skill of the cooks thereby reflecting glory back onto the reputation of the host. Such was the fashion among the well-heeled in Renaissance times.
In biblical times, feasting on an abundance of food and drink, while not only a sign of joy and celebration, also served to provide a foretaste of the heavenly banquet all would share when the Lord finally redeemed his people.
Isaiah describes such a feast; served not in a church hall, but on Mount Zion: “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.”
While lacking details regarding the exact menu, Isaiah is very clear about who is invited to this party: everyone. He’s also very clear about who’s hosting: the Lord himself, the Lord of hosts.
We will all be invited to this heavenly banquet. Now, down in our heart of hearts, most of us probably believe that there is a seat waiting for us at God’s table. Oh, we know we’re not perfect, but we believe, deep inside, that we are good people and that God will welcome us. What I’m not sure of is if we believe God when he says that not just good people but people who aren’t so good will also have a place card with their name on it at this banquet. After all, we’re careful about who we invite to our dining room, aren’t we?
Throughout human history, food has been a means of social bonding and establishing covenants; by eating together families and tribes create and maintain their sense of who is in the group and who is not. Indeed, dietary laws may be rooted in hygiene and health, but they are observed to maintain covenant and identity. Don’t eat this food because God said not to; do not eat this food because your neighbors do so and you are not the same as your neighbors. You have a special relationship with God.
Not just what we eat but with whom we eat it says a great deal about us. Enemies certainly did not share food, at least intentionally. Genesis reports that Hebrews and Egyptians could not eat together, “for it was an abomination.” In First Samuel, Jonathon refuses to eat with his father Saul because Saul sought to harm David. And Psalm 1 says, “Happy are those who do not take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers.”
In fact, that very Psalm may have been behind the criticism of Jesus that provides the context for today’s well-known parable. At the beginning of the chapter, Luke reports that “all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to (Jesus). And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’” Almost as if Jesus himself were hosting the meals.
Jesus responds by relating a series of three parables about God’s grace, beginning with one about lost sheep. When the shepherd who has left the ninety-nine finally locates the one who has wandered, Jesus says, “he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”
After the sheep come coins. When the woman finally locates the one lost out of ten, “she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me…’ Her joy is echoed in heaven, Jesus says, over one sinner who repents.
Then comes our story for today, commonly referred to as “The Parable of the Prodigal Son,” but which is more accurately described as “The Loving Father,” for this is a story about love - welcoming, unfailing love. A story of grace, centered in controversy. But then grace is often controversial to us. God, thankfully, sees things differently than we do. Where we would exclude, God would invite. Where we would grumble and grouse about propriety and unfairness, God would welcome and celebrate.
In chapter five, Luke says that Levi, a well known tax collector, throws “a great banquet for (Jesus) in his house; and there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others sitting at the table with them. The Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, saying, ’Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?’” By this time Jesus has gotten a reputation as a “glutton and a drunkard.” Not for his eating and drinking habits, but for the company he chose to keep.
Now, we can say, and say accurately, that Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners in order to bring them to God; to turn them around; to bring them to repentance. Jesus himself answered his critics, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have come to call not the righteous but the sinners to repentance.”
In order to call people, though, you first have to invite them; you first have to love them. And there’s the controversy; Jesus puts the loving first, rather than saving it until after repentance. Notice, there is no indication that the father in the parable for today knew that his son had repented before running out, greeting him, kissing him, and making preparations for the banquet; just as there is no indication that the tax collectors and sinners expressed an interest in repenting before Jesus consented to dine with them.
God’s love is not diminished because we fail to respond to it; only we are diminished, cut off, separated. This is not how God would have us live. He sees us from a distance, even if we have trouble seeing him.
While our young man was still far off, Jesus says today, “his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.” All before the son had uttered a single word.
This is the ministry of reconciliation; this is grace. “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ.” The one who makes us new. The one who invites us to a seat at that heavenly banquet when God “will wipe away the tears from all faces.”
All faces. People who once were lost but now are found; people who ran off to a far country but now have come home; people who wandered in the wilderness but now have been brought to the promised land. “It will be said on that day,” Isaiah promises, “Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”
Well, we don’t have to wait anymore. The table is here; the banquet is here; the fellowship is here. Our God, Our Lord, our Host, is here. We are all invited. What we do next is up to us.
Jesus does not say what the elder brother finally did; we do not know if he ever went inside and joined in the celebration. Perhaps he remained outside, arms folded; hearing the joyous laughter of grace but refusing to accept it, refusing to be reconciled; refusing compassion, refusing forgiveness - suffering alone, separated.
Paul Tillich said that “sin is separation….Before sin is an act,” he said, “it is a state.” A state of separation from other people, separation from ourselves, separation from God. Grace, he said, is the “unity of life” that occurs despite this separation. “In spite of the abounding of sin,” Tillich says, “grace abounds much more.”
Our young man today learned that lesson the way we all often learn it: the hard way. He wandered from God before he “came to himself,” overcoming one separation. He set off and went back to his father, overcoming yet another. And finally, he confessed, “I have sinned against heaven,” desiring no longer to be separated from God. He found his way home, where God had been waiting for him all the time.
Then it was time for the banquet; time for sharing in the holy food and drink of new and unending life with our gracious heavenly host.