Setting the Table, Part 1: The Hospitality of Jesus
Victory Life Church — Sunday, September 8, 2024
Introduction
We have become an insular culture, caught in echo chambers of self-validation and reinforced by algorithms to ensure the moat around our fortress of solitude, certainty, and self-righteousness gets deeper and wider. We have progressed (or regressed) from being concerned about people who are not like “us” (the “other”), to being suspicious of “them,” afraid of them, isolated from them, and in some cases, hating “them” who are not “us.”
In a culture of hostility, hospitality is revolutionary.
This is not just the condition of our hostile “secular” culture, this is also the condition of much of the church. We offer very little contrast to such self-righteousness and hostility. When Christians (especially in America) disagree, we split from one another, gossip and complain against one another, accuse one another, we heresy hunt (YouTube and its algorithm offers a large platform for such a spirit) and cannibalize our own, becoming more and more insular, hard-hearted, and self-righteous.
Yet God loves the world, and He wants to save this world. How? Jesus, of course. But how did Jesus live in a world of hostility? Yes, He was (is) the herald and embodiment of truth and calls us to be a pillar and buttress of the truth. Yes, He was and is the ultimate in holiness and calls us to be holy. He is the light of the world, and calls us into the light and to renounce darkness, saddened by the reality that there will be some who love the darkness.
So how did He, the way, the truth, and the life, the light of the world, the holiness of God incarnate? With grace; and what did that grace look like? An open seat at a table of hospitality.
Jesus’ grace was revealed by creating an open seat at His table.
Luke 5:27–32 (NLT) 27 Later, as Jesus left the town, he saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at his tax collector’s booth. “Follow me and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him. 28 So Levi got up, left everything, and followed him. 29 Later, Levi held a banquet in his home with Jesus as the guest of honor. Many of Levi’s fellow tax collectors and other guests also ate with them. 30 But the Pharisees and their teachers of religious law complained bitterly to Jesus’ disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with such scum?” 31 Jesus answered them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. 32 I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners and need to repent.”
The hospitality of Jesus sets the table for people to encounter God’s transformative love.
The Hospitality of Jesus
Luke 15 is a section of three sequential parables Jesus tells to make sense of His ministry and how he has been extending hospitality to all kinds of people. They reveal how God feels about the lost people in His world.
Luke 15:4-7 – The Lost Sheep
Luke 15:8-10 – The Lost Coin
Luke 15:11-32 – The Prodigal Son
Luke 15:11-32 (NLT) 11To illustrate the point further, Jesus told them this story: “A man had two sons. 12The younger son told his father, ‘I want my share of your estate now before you die.’ So his father agreed to divide his wealth between his sons.
13A few days later this younger son packed all his belongings and moved to a distant land, and there he wasted all his money in wild living. 14About the time his money ran out, a great famine swept over the land, and he began to starve. 15He persuaded a local farmer to hire him, and the man sent him into his fields to feed the pigs. 16The young man became so hungry that even the pods he was feeding the pigs looked good to him. But no one gave him anything.
17When he finally came to his senses, he said to himself, ‘At home even the hired servants have food enough to spare, and here I am dying of hunger! 18I will go home to my father and say, “Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, 19and I am no longer worthy of being called your son. Please take me on as a hired servant.”’
20So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him. 21His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son.’
22But his father said to the servants, ‘Quick! Bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him. Get a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet. 23And kill the calf we have been fattening. We must celebrate with a feast, 24for this son of mine was dead and has now returned to life. He was lost, but now he is found.’ So the party began.
25Meanwhile, the older son was in the fields working. When he returned home, he heard music and dancing in the house, 26and he asked one of the servants what was going on. 27‘Your brother is back,’ he was told, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf. We are celebrating because of his safe return.’
28The older brother was angry and wouldn’t go in. His father came out and begged him, 29but he replied, ‘All these years I’ve slaved for you and never once refused to do a single thing you told me to. And in all that time you never gave me even one young goat for a feast with my friends. 30Yet when this son of yours comes back after squandering your money on prostitutes, you celebrate by killing the fattened calf!’
31His father said to him, ‘Look, dear son, you have always stayed by me, and everything I have is yours. 32 We had to celebrate this happy day. For your brother was dead and has come back to life! He was lost, but now he is found!’”
Of all the many things this story reveals, it certainly reveals the heart of God revealed through Jesus. The story reveals God as a Father who is looking for His lost son, and when He sees His wayward son come stumbling home, He runs toward him in love, embracing Him in forgiveness, and setting the table for a welcome home party. This sets the foundation for all Christian hospitality.
The foundation of all Christian Hospitality is God’s love moving toward us in Christ Jesus.
We are all welcome at His table. This is one of the ways Jesus became so counter-cultural, so revolutionary. He welcomed all kinds of people to His table. He welcomed tax collectors and sinners, He ate with lepers that He healed, the dead that He raised, and Pharisees and Lawyers whom He rebuked, and even let a prostitute crash the dinner party. He fed more than 5,000 Jewish men and their families, and another 4,000+ of mixed races and religions. Jesus welcomed children into His personal space, made space for both busy and contemplative women, as well as foreign and broken women. He told stories of how the Kingdom of God is like a party and a feast that some will come to and others will refuse; and He shares His last meal with his disciples and washes their feet; which included the one who would betray him, His best friend who would deny Him, and the rest who would abandon Him. After His resurrection, he shares a meal with two disoriented disciples in Emmaus, and cooks breakfast for Peter for his reconciliation.
It’s like Jesus was always up for dinner with whoever would share it with Him. He showed radical hospitality, setting the table and inviting anyone who would come. Jesus’ hospitality was setting the table for people to come and encounter God’s love, the kind of love that transforms those who receive it.
The hospitality of Jesus sets the table for people to encounter God’s transformative love.
Do we truly believe that all of us is welcome at his table? Do we think that all the parts of our story, our failures, the things we have done, the things that have been done to us, is welcome at his table? Do we really believe he welcomes all of us into his presence?
Or do we think that it is just the religious part, the good part of us that he welcomes? Do we think that there is part of us that God wouldn’t welcome to his presence? Your anger, lust, your disappointment, your hard-heartedness, your mistakes, your repetitious failure, the part of you that you hope no one would ever know about?
Do you know what it is called when you think there is a part of you, your story, that is beyond the reach of God’s love? Shame.
Shame is the place in your life you think God’s love cannot reach.
Luke 15:20, 23-24 (NLT) …And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him.…‘We must celebrate with a feast, for this son of mine was dead and has now returned to life. He was lost, but now he is found.’
The truth that Jesus reveals and embodies is that there is no place in your place in your life, your history, your personality, your brokenness that Jesus’ love cannot reach, nor His grace cannot heal, and His power cannot transform. Shame is real, and it’s really important, but in its toxic form, it is a lie that makes us hide the part of our life that Jesus’ love wants to heal and transform.
1 Timothy 1:14–15 (NKJV) 14 And the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant, with faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. 15 This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.
Christ has welcomed us, all of us, every part of us, to His table. But here is the key, the most important part: you have to heed the invitation, you must come to His table.
Luke 15:17, 20 (NLT) When he finally came to his senses…he returned home to his father.
Jesus’ hospitality is an open invite to the table, but He will not demand you come, nor force you come against your will. That would not be love. In the story, it’s the older brother who would not come into the party.
Luke 15:28a (NLT) The older brother was angry and wouldn’t go in.
Jesus shows that the same Father who ran to embrace his prodigal younger son is the one who goes out to connect with his angry older son…
Luke 15:28b (NLT) His father came out and begged him…
Conclusion
So will we come to the table Jesus has set for us?
The hospitality of Jesus sets the table for people to encounter God’s transformative love.
Cross References
John 1:14, 14:6
1 Timothy 3:15
1 Peter 1:15-16
John 8:12
1 Peter 1:9, Matthew 5:14, Colossians 1:13, 1 John 1:5-7
John 3:19-21
John 1:14
Luke 5:27-32, the story of Levi (Matthew) being called to follow Jesus, see also Matthew 9:9-13
Matthew 9:9-13, Mark 2:13-17, Luke 5:27-32 and 19:1-10
Matthew 26:6, Mark 14:3
John 12:1-3
Luke 11:37-53
Luke 7:36-50
Matthew 14:13-21, Mark 6:30-44, Luke 9:10-17, John 6:1-15
Matthew 15:32-39, Mark 8:1-10
Matthew 18:1-7 and 19:13-15, Mark 9:35-37 and 10:13-16, Luke 9:46-48 and 18:15-17
Luke 10:38-42
John 4:1-45 and 8:2-11
Luke 14:7-11 and 12-24
Matthew 26:17-29, Mark 14:12-25, Luke 22:7-23
John 13:1-20
Matthew 26:14-16 and 47-50, Mark 14:10-11 and 43-46, Luke 22:3-6 and 47-48, John 13:21-30 and 18:1-9
Matthew 26:30-35, 69-75; Mark 14:26-31, 66-72; Luke 22:31-34, 54-62; John 13:36-38, 18:15-18, 25-26
Mark 14:50
Luke 24:13-35
John 21:4-13, alongside 6 other disciples with Peter