374 Who God Invites

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Who God Invites”, originally shared on August 27, 2025. It was the 374^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   If you had something to celebrate, who would you invite to the celebration with you? What qualifications would they need to get in? Today, we’re going to find out how that works with God.

   I’d like to start by giving thanks for the life of Willis Carrier, who in 1906 invented electric air-conditioning. 😊  Yes there are some health concerns but, overall, think of the lives that have been improved, even made possible, by his invention!

   Think about the difference that air-conditioning has made in our lives in just the past week! But not everyone agrees.

   When I first came to the church I served in San Dimas, there was no air-conditioning in the old worship space.

   My hero in church development, Lyle Schaller, said that if a church has no air-conditioning, its members should be polled to see how many of them have air-conditioning in their homes. If the answer is 60% or more, air-conditioning isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessity.

   So, we raised the money and installed air-conditioning, and the next Saturday we had a huge wedding.

   It had been over 90 degrees most of the week, and the day of the wedding it was over 100. The church was packed, and I went out to talk with the congregation before the service started. I said that we had just installed air-conditioning, and weren’t they glad that they were there that Saturday instead of the Saturday before?

   After the service was over, I stood at the door of the church, shaking hands with people as they left.

   One guest shook my hand and said (I think a least half seriously), “I don’t think that churches should have air-conditioning.”

   “Why not?” I asked.

   “Because I think that people should have to sit there and contemplate the alternative,” he answered. 😊

   Jesus invites us to contemplate that statement in the Gospel reading that will be shared in the vast majority of churches all over the world this coming Sunday, Luke 14:1,7-14.

   Martin Luther, the 16^th century Church reformer, once described the effects of Sin on people as making us curved in on ourselves, so that, “it so wickedly, curvedly, and viciously seeks all things, even God, for its own sake."

   That is the human condition.

   We confess this Sin, with a big “S”, the Sin that naturally separates all human beings from God since the beginning of human rebellion, and the sin, with a small “s”, that it produces, that Paul refers to in Romans 3:23,

 "since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God;"

   and that the psalmist refers to in Psalm 51:5,

"Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me". 

   and who Isaiah speaks of in Isaiah 64:6, describing all people as "unclean," with our righteous acts appearing as "a filthy cloth". 

   We confess this Sin in the Order for Confession and Forgiveness that has begun Lutheran worship services for decades, “Most merciful God, we confess that we are by nature sinful and unclean.”, what some modern alternatives express by saying, “…we confess that we are captive to sin and cannot free ourselves.” 

   Those words begin our worship services because they state our predicament: we sin, we are separated from God by our Sin, and we cannot free ourselves.

   But the Gospel that frames the rest of our worship services is the good news that we are set free from Sin’s consequences by Jesus on the cross. It’s a gift to all who will receive it.

   We can see the meaning of this week’s Gospel reading a few chapters earlier.

   Jesus calls Levi (aka Matthew, the tax collector) to come and follow him, then this happens in Luke 5:29-32,

²⁹ Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house; and there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others sitting at the table with them. ³⁰ The Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” ³¹ Jesus answered, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; ³² I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.”

   Jesus describes and challenges the outcome of our human curved-in-ness, our self-righteousness, and God’s answer to it beginning in today’s reading, starting with Luke 14:1,

¹On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely. 

   The religious authorities were watching Jesus to see what he was going do next. He had already healed on the sabbath, described in the reading we shared last week, in Luke 13:10-17, something the authorities thought looked like work on the sabbath. And then, he does it again, in the part missing from today’s reading, in Luke 14:2-6! He heals a man with dropsy (water retention), on the sabbath, with a very similar outcome as last week’s sabbath healing.

   Then Jesus challenges the religious authorities to tell him why he shouldn’t, and they can’t. Again. But instead of backing off, he continues by challenging their desire to get ahead in the eyes of the world, those without Christ, in Luke 14:7-10.

⁷When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. ⁸“When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; ⁹and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. ¹⁰But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you.

   So, what is this? Is Jesus just being a 1^st Century Miss Manners, or promoting rich people culture 101, or teaching social skills for the upwardly mobile? Or is it an affirmation of the weird Lutheran tradition of sitting toward the back of the worship space, on purpose? (I once saw a church’s promotional brochure that said, “Come early and get a bad seat.” 😊)

   No. None of these things.

   Jesus closes in on the message in Luke 14:11,

¹¹ For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

   We live in the already here but not yet perfected Kingdom of God. Who gets invited to sit in the room where it happens, at the head of the table, in the reign of God? The answer is still outrageous today. Spoiler alert: it isn’t those who think that they deserve to be there.   

   David Geffen is the one of the founders of Asylum Records, the founder of Geffen Records, and one the three founders, with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, of DreamWorks SKG. He is a ka-billionaire and a prominent LA philanthropist.

   One of my cousins, Pat Metheny, played a concert at the Greek Theatre in L.A. years ago when he recorded for Geffen Records. There was an after party in a backstage adjacent space and people were crowded in, waiting for Pat and the band to come out and join them.

   The line into the women’s restroom had stretched out into the party area, while the men’s restroom had no line.

   I saw David Geffen go into the men’s restroom and shoo everyone out. Then he went to the middle of the line for the women’s restroom and directed that half of the line to use the men’s restroom until there were no lines.

   He didn’t have to do that. He could have had one of his people do that. But he did not mind taking the role of washroom attendant to make his guests feel comfortable.

   This is what I think is David Geffen’s hospitality greatness. Not his fortune or his success, but his humility.

   On one level, Jesus is teaching us about the value of humility as an expression of the reign of God in people’s lives, not of self-centeredness.

   So far, Jesus is being critical of the behavior of the self-centered guests without directly being critical of them. But then he gets personal. He turns to the one who had invited him, and there’s only one of those in the room.

   This is where Jesus did what, as one of the members in my first parish said occasionally, “Pastor, today you left off preaching and went to meddling.” 😊

   Jesus says, in Luke 14:12-14,

¹²He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. ¹³But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. ¹⁴And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

   Well, isn’t the reason to have banquets to impress people with a display of wealth, and importance, and social standing? To look good on our social media and impress the influencers on everything from what we buy to what we believe about ourselves? Think about the average, the average, cost of a wedding in Southern California today. $48,000! That’s the average, so it’s higher because of the crazy-expensive ones. The median cost (half more expensive and half less expensive) is $25,000. But still!

   Why do people spend lavishly on wedding banquets or corporate events or other major celebrations? Some do it to impress others, or themselves, with their success, or to indulge in a fantasy, or to provide an atmosphere for networking, and to invite people who will invite you back.

   Yogi Berra once said, “If you don’t go to your friends’ funerals, they won’t go to yours. 😊 Which may have something to do with today’s Gospel reading.

   Things are different in this world where God reigns.

   Who do we look up to, and who do we curry favor with? Who do we hope will come to our big events? Our bosses, our government officials, entertainment figures, sports stars? Whose rhymes do we know? Whose songs do we sing? Whose lifestyles do we imitate? And, most importantly, why?

   It was once pointed out to me that we can see the change in human values over time in the construction of our leading cities and their skylines. Urban communities were once known for their military security, then for their great temples and Cathedrals, then for their great art and architecture, then for their large commercial buildings, and today for their massive entertainment and sports complexes.

   What does that say about our values? About where everybody is on Sunday mornings, when we offer the greatest banquet of all time right there?

   We share what we call a meal, even sometimes a banquet. If that’s actually the case, the world would be saying something to us about how we should increase our budget, or make a make a Costco run, or find a new caterer, or something.  😊 Instead, we offer about as humble a “meal” as you can find.

   And yet it is a foretaste of the most magnificent banquet in all eternity.

   And who do we invite to share this meal? Most churches want the unicorn, the young family with children, people who will help us build the church, pay the bills, and fill our Sunday School, so that we can be the kind of church we once were, or that the neighborhood will respect.

   But that’s not how God sees things at all. Who should we invite to this banquet? Jesus says, “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” Invite those who God values, but who the world can’t see. Invite those who will come. Those who know that they need God, and that they cannot give anything in return. Those who know that we are inviting them only because we love Jesus.

   I’m retired, so I can preach in churches where the pastor is sick, or on vacation, or where they are between pastors.

   One Sunday, I preached at a Lutheran church where many of the members were Chinese.

   I spoke with a man at the fellowship time after worship whose family was from China. I had mentioned that my family, on both sides, had immigrated to the U.S. from Norway.

   He said that he was from a seaport town in China that was surrounded by mountains, so not many foreign influences had come there. But his great grandfather had become a Christian because of the work of Norwegian Lutheran missionaries.

   He said that many missionaries had come to China as part of a colonial campaign, whether intentionally or not. But that Norwegian missionaries had not come to establish trade, or to help extend their country’s power, or to conquer and rule. He said that they had come just because they loved Jesus. He said that he wanted to go to Norway someday to thank them.

   That’s a beautiful thing to say, but it’s not easy to announce God’s kingdom. It never was. Mostly today, people don’t think they need God, unless it is a god that serves their needs.

   But you and I are Christians today because someone, at some time, did something hard, and the transformative Word of God was passed from generation to generation.

   I once read about a mother of many children who was asked if she had a favorite. “Yes,” she said. “The one who needs me the most.” That is how God loves.

   God has nothing against rich and important people. The problem with wealth and status is that we come to believe that we don’t need anything else. We turn away from God and into ourselves.

   God invites all people to the wedding feast that will have no end.

   The ones who will actually be there are the unentitled, the ones who gratefully accept the invitation. The ones who know that they can’t make it to eternity on their own. The ones who know that they need a Savior.

   Humility is not about making less of ourselves, but of living with gratitude for the gifts we have received from God that we can never repay.

   So, who do we invite to come and meet Jesus, receive faith, believe and be baptized, to participate in the worship of the one true living God, in the beginning of the heavenly banquet that has no end, with us in our churches?

   Our invitation list starts with Jesus. And everything else flows from there.