Published in 2019, Crazy Talk: Stories Jesus Told is Crackers & Grape Juice’s attempt to preach on the parables of Jesus. We offer these sermons to preachers and teachers to aid them in preaching and teaching this week’s gospel reading in the Revised Common Lectionary.
When he was invited to the dinner party, he knew it was a mistake. To begin with, he had never been to a dinner party before and this one was being hosted by all the religious bigwigs in the area.
But the invitation had come nonetheless, and the host wanted him to be there.
He mulled over the possibility of going for a few days, weighing out the pros and cons. From what he could tell, it would be a boring evening. These weren’t really the type of people known for being fun. But they were the people with power, and he apparently had a place at the table. So, he decided to go.
When he got to the house he was immediately overwhelmed with the opulence. It was as if it had been taken right out of a Better Homes & Gardens magazine, and he was worried about touching anything and everything.
He had spent hours fretting over what to wear, and even though he settled on jeans and a button-up shirt, he was clearly underdressed. The men were in suits and the women were in long flowing dresses.
Nevertheless, he politely tiptoed through room after room, with the occasional nod toward one of the other guests until he heard a simple bell ringing from the other side of the house and assumed the time had come for the dinner party to begin.
He entered the dining room and was bombarded by the bartender who wanted to know his order.
“Got any wine?” He asked.
“Why sir, we have the cave filled to the brim with a great variety of years and regions! Shall I make a recommendation?”
“How about you bring me a glass of the stuff that you can’t get rid of, that’ll be fine.”
And with that the bartender started off in a fit of rage.
The man then turned toward the dining room table and took in its perfection. The settings were beautiful, and the napkins looked as if a professional origami artist had spent hours creating unique folds for each plate. He felt all of the eyes in the room on him as he made his way over to the table, but before he could pull out a chair, the man next to him winced and reached for his lower back.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
The man was doubled over now and said, “I threw my back out this morning and I thought I had worked it out but now I feel like I can’t move.”
So, he took the man by the hand, led him over to the table, pushed some of the plates and cups and cutlery out of the way, and laid the man down. He fussed around for a few minutes poking here and there while muttering a few things under his breath and immediately everyone gathered around in a tight circle with their jaws on the floor.
“Has he no decency? “Where are his manners?”
And finally, the host entered only to exclaim, “What in the world do you think you’re doing?”
The man looked up from his makeshift examining table and simply shrugged his shoulders and said, “If it was your kid, or your spouse, who was hurting, wouldn’t you drop everything to do something about it?”
And no one said a word.
The man with the back problem promptly got off the table, now fit as a fiddle, and the hired help rushed in to put everything back in its proper place.
With a wave of the hand the host encouraged everyone to find their seats so the feast could begin.
And yet the man, who had already offended everyone in the room, noticed that all the guests rushed to get to the seats as close to the host as possible.
He stood there in silence, observing the frantic frenzy of power dynamics, and contended himself to remain silent until they noticed that he had not taken the remaining seat.
And so it was in the midst of a profoundly uncomfortable silence that all the eyes fell upon him once again.
“Hey, the next time any of you go to a party, don’t sit in the best places. Someone more important than you might’ve been invited, and then you’re going to have to give up your seat to go sit in the last place. So, don’t you think it would be better to start off at the end, and that way the host can come and raise you up to a better place?”
Again, no one said a word.
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