The Unexpected Dinner Guest

This sermon was preached by Pastor Ted Carnahan for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost on Sunday, August 31, 2025.

Grace, mercy, and peace be with all of you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Have you ever entertained someone for dinner who just didn't fit? Jennifer and I did. Early in our marriage, before we had kids, before I went to seminary, we were just in our very first apartment. We were married less than a year?

I invited him to join Jennifer and I for dinner at our apartment. We invited him over, and he agreed. (We'll call him Tom, because that was his name.)

He came to the apartment 20 minutes late. But that was okay, because supper wasn't quite ready yet. He was reticent to engage in any kind of conversation.

Then, as soon as Jennifer pulled dinner out of the oven, which I don't remember exactly what it was, but I want to say it was meatloaf or something, he announced that he was a vegetarian. We ordered pizza from Domino's, cheese pizza.

But about 15 minutes later, he got a phone call on his cell phone and took that call, spoke for a number of minutes, and announced before the pizza had even arrived that he needed to get going, and that his ride was waiting for him outside.

He was not the dinner guest that we expected. We never really talked to him again after that.

Jesus as the Unexpected Guest

Today, in our reading from Luke's Gospel, Jesus is not the dinner guest that this leader of the Pharisees expected.

Some background first. Jesus has been invited to dinner, is hosted by someone who's described as a leader among the Pharisees. That doesn't mean that there's a rank system here, but in any social situation, you've got people of higher rank and lower rank, and everybody kind of figures out where they fit into that.

He's very prominent and respected. That's what makes him a leader of the Pharisees. He's presumably, because he's hosting a big dinner party, fairly wealthy.

He has invited Jesus and a number of other people, among whom are Pharisees, who are going to be there with him to join him for dinner. Jesus is being welcomed as a guest of honor. He's a traveling rabbi who's being welcomed into this dinner party.

But he doesn't get there right away. He starts off in the beginning of the chapter. He's on his way to dinner with some of the guests, presumably because the Pharisees are right there with him.

We don't know if he's right in front of the house or if he's down the street, but as he's walking along, he encounters a man who has dropsy.

Healing on the Sabbath

I don't know how many of you know what dropsy is? I had to Google this. This is basically edema. It's a specific kind of edema, a swelling, water retention. It can be very uncomfortable. It can be very painful. It can be debilitating.

This man has this disease, and it's on the Sabbath. As Jesus is walking along, he happens upon this person who's suffering with dropsy. There are other Pharisees nearby, and they are watching him. They're watching him because they want to see whether Jesus is going to cure this man on the Sabbath.

The Sabbath is, by Jewish law, to be a day of rest, and no work may be done. The Pharisees' argument is that work on the Sabbath includes Jesus. You can't be a doctor on the Sabbath, they would say.

He turns to them before he does anything, and he says, "Tell me, is it legal, is it lawful for me to cure on the Sabbath or not?"

Well, they're kind of stuck. This is why they were watching. They wanted to see whether he would do the thing that they were going to accuse him, attack him for later.

Instead, he turns to them and preempts it and says, "Well, you tell me. This guy is right here, and he's suffering. Should I do something for him or not? Is it lawful or should I make him wait?"

They don't have anything to say because they know that no matter what they say, they're going to be in trouble. He does it anyway. He's not looking for their permission. He intended to cure this man from the very beginning.

Then after he does, he turns to them and says, "You would rescue your child or even an animal from danger on the Sabbath, wouldn't you? So why not for him?"

The reason why not for him is because they have put the law in the driver's seat of their lives. They have made their righteousness contingent upon how good they are instead of how good God is.

Already we have trouble. Jesus has confronted some of the guests that presumably are going to the same party on the road on the way to the dinner.

The Parable of the Banquet

Then he arrives, and as they sit down to eat, he notices an interesting phenomenon. In those days (and this is also true to some extent in our society too) the closer that you're sitting to the person of the host of the meal means something.

I mean, maybe that doesn't mean something in family gatherings, but you'll notice that when you have your head table for a wedding banquet, the wedding party is seated at the head table, and that oftentimes family will be seated at special reserved tables close to the front so they can be close to the host.

This is also true in the ancient Near East. As they would recline around their low tables, the places of honor were the ones that were closest to the host.

He noticed, Jesus did, that as these people are getting ready to be seated at this great banquet, there are people who are kind of jostling each other, hoping to get that place of honor right next to this notable Pharisee, this leader among the Pharisees.

Jesus starts in with a parable. The parable starts off, parable of a wedding banquet, and he says to them, when you're jostling for position to take the place of honor, it would be better for you that you would take a place lower down the table because the host is not going to let things stand wherever they fall.

The host is going to speak up, and it would be better for you to humble yourself, to put yourself at the foot of the table as far away from the host as possible, and then the host to recognize that you have put yourself in this subservient, low place, lower than you ought to have, and to come over to you and say, "Friend, no, come up here. Come closer to me. I want you next to me. I want you to be my right-hand man at the table. I want you to be sitting close to me" than to be the guy who's chosen the choice seat close to the host who says, "I'm sorry, sir, but this is his seat. You need to move down."

That would be humiliating. It would be embarrassing. But everybody wants to be close to the one who's the guest or the host, the honored person.

Advice to the Host

If Jesus hasn't made this dinner awkward enough, he later admonishes his host at the dinner, and he gives him advice. He says to the guy who's hosting the dinner party, "You know, when you give a dinner, you should stop inviting all of these Pharisees. You should stop inviting your friends or relatives or rich neighbors because, you know, what you're really hoping is that by inviting them over to your house, you should be inviting the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind because they can't repay you. Invite the humble and the lowly, and God will reward you."

He says to the host, not only should you be, you should seat yourself at the foot of the table as well. He says that the one who is standing among them, making this dinner party so incredibly uncomfortable.

Can you imagine being a guest at that party and seeing the interplay of Jesus and the host and him telling this parable? Really awkward.

The irony of it is that Jesus should be the most honored guest of all. Jesus is the incarnate Son of God. If Jesus were in his proper place, he would be sitting at the head of the table, and even the host of the dinner would be sitting beneath him.

Kind of a buzzkill, isn't it? Invites people over for dinner, and Jesus shows up and kind of shows you the hypocrisy of it all.

But Jesus' purpose here and in many other places in Scripture is not to make you happy or to make you feel good, but it is to make you holy.

He uses his opportunity with the Pharisees not to hobnob with the high rollers, not to be close to the people of honor, not to hope that a little bit of that celebrity will rub off on him, and certainly not to ingratiate himself to the Pharisees so that they'll treat him better.

Instead, he uses his opportunity with the Pharisees to speak the truth to them. He's pointing out that they have become obsessed with fame. And status. And wealth.

This is not of God. In fact, I would say that a big part of the problems that we see in our society today are people who have made as their idol, as their God, power, fame, status, and wealth.

Because in these things, they try to find their security. But this is not how we as Christians are called to live. In fact, all who live this way will suffer in this life and in the life to come.

Let Mutual Love Continue

The author of Hebrews in our reading today starts off his passage by simply saying, "Let mutual love continue." He's writing to a church, a church of Hebrews who have become Christians, and he says, what do you need to do in the meantime as you're waiting, as you're suffering, as you're facing persecution? Let mutual love continue.

Then he says, here's what that looks like. Most of the rest of that reading, then, is just a short discourse on what does mutual love look like?

He says things like:

• Show hospitality to people. Welcome people.
• Visit prisoners and the hospitalized. In other words, people who are in prison, who are sick, go and see them so that they're not so isolated and alone.
• He spends a couple verses telling us to honor the marriage bed, to not go after sin like fornication, which is sex outside of marriage, or adultery, sex with someone who's not your spouse.
• Do not be a lover of money and do not covet greater wealth, but be satisfied, be content with what you have.
• Share what you have been given with others so that they might also be blessed.

He finishes up with a favorite of all Christian pastors: obey your leaders because they have to give an account for you and it'd be better for you if they had to do that with smiles instead of with tears.

This is not, however, a pathway that is going to make you famous or rich or first and foremost among others. In fact, it's a recipe for obscurity, for being a small part of a big world, for not trying to claim a place of prestige, but rather simply loving others and loving Jesus.

When we serve people and spend time with those, especially as Jesus is pointing out later in that dinner, with those who are of low position in the world, we are spreading the love of God and letting mutual love continue.

When we honor our spouse, you know what? They're not going to throw us a parade. We might get a nice party if we make it to 25 or 40 or 50 or 60 years and that's a good thing and we should celebrate that because we need more examples of faithful marriage that go into the later decades. But basically, not trading up and not sleeping around should be a basic minimum expectation and no one's going to throw you a parade for just doing the right thing.

But if everybody does that right thing, think how family flourishes and how society is upheld!

We are called not to pursue money, but to be content with what we have right now, to find our contentment in God and Jesus Christ, in the love of friends and family and working and doing good in this world, not in the love of additional things that we might grasp and worry and stress about in order to build ourselves up and protect ourselves against the world.

We're called to share what we have, not to be hoarders, not to be overly prepared, but to simply do the right thing in the world and work to make sure that all people have what they need.

Yes, even simply to obey and submit to your Christian leaders because we're responsible to God for you one way or the other. You might as well make it easier.

But mutual love in this sense, it doesn't puff us up. It's not meant to give us big heads. It's not something that's going to be recognized by the world as this astonishing, amazing thing.

In fact, mutual love of this sort lowers us. It's us choosing to take a low place at the table, to sit ourselves all the way at the other end at the foot of the long banquet table so that others can be put ahead of us and have a higher status than we have so that other people might be closer to the host.

When we do that, it changes the world. But when we don't, life becomes a curse.

• When we're constantly trying to climb above others, always putting others down, trying to trade up, trying to get over on others, life becomes a curse.
• When we're not content with what we have, but still occupy ourselves constantly with how do I get more?
• When we pursue greed, we may build ourselves up in this life, but no one who sees someone who is greedy honors them behind their backs.
• We've become so conceited that we don't make ourselves humble enough to receive the instruction that leads us to greater holiness and eternal life. Life becomes a curse.

But when we do let mutual love continue, God gives us a promise that there will be love, mutual love, love between others and love between us and God.

• When you do show hospitality, you will be respected, especially when you show hospitality to those who, at least in the world's eyes, don't deserve it.
• When you visit people who are in jail or those who are in the hospital, you may be associating with people who are sick or cast-offs from society, but you will be rewarded with their gratitude. That is worth much more than the world gives us credit for.
• You will live a long life with your wife or your husband. That relationship, full of mutual submission and mutual love, will become a wellspring of contentment for you.
• You can be confident in your contentment with money because you aren't so worried about making sure that you get more, that you can simply rest in what God has provided you with in this life.

You can be assured in your relationship to God in the gospel.

Conclusion and Benediction

It really all starts with an attitude, and that, I think, is what Jesus is confronting most of all in our gospel today.

It starts with us saying:

My master was a servant, and he told me to be a servant. I'm not going to hold myself up as being better than other people, but I'll simply present myself to the world as one thirsty man showing other thirsty people where to find a drink of water.

If my Lord sees fit in this life, he can exalt me in this time, in this life. If he does, then may he receive all the glory for that because I don't need it.

But if he doesn't in this life, I will continue in my faithfulness because I know that I will be rewarded in the life to come.

As the author of Hebrews says, here we have no lasting city, but then we will have a city that nothing can destroy.

No, Jesus was no conventional dinner guest, but the Christian life is not conventional. He calls us to simple mutual love, a path of love that gives us contentment and peace.

May you know this peace, and may the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds strong in Christ Jesus our Lord, to life everlasting. Amen.