In the Christian Bible, Luke’s Gospel tells us:
On one occasion Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the Sabbath, and they were watching him closely. When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable.

“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; and the host who invited both of you may come and say, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place.

But 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. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled and all who humble themselves will be exalted.’

He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or 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. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind.”

We work pretty hard to follow social etiquette, to behave properly in public. But I wonder? Do we put forth the same effort to ensure that we follow Kingdom etiquette? To live and move properly within God’s world?

We pay attention to social norms. But do we give the same attention to God’s norms? We seek to be gracious hosts and grateful guests. But do we know how to be a guest and a host within God’s Kingdom? To extend an invitation with hospitality and receive an invitation with humility?

On a particular Sabbath, one of the Pharisees invites Jesus into his home to share a meal with a group of religious leaders. Those gathered quickly find that their positions of power and authority do not fit so well around the dinner table. Jesus’ great storytelling ability makes everyone in the room uncomfortable. His wedding parable and instructions about table fellowship are not well received.

He tries to explain to his dinner companions: when they show hospitality to one another, friend and stranger alike, they will find themselves in the midst of the Kingdom. These religious leaders are okay with the notion of dining with friends; it is the stranger who presents the problem. It is comfortable to be the host, to be in charge. Not always so to be the guest or to dine with “open seating.”

Jesus’ ideas are rather strange and radical for conventional standards. These leaders do not share Jesus’ same assumptions and practices. After all, Jesus has a reputation of eating with sinners and the like. There is no room at the table for such. All those folks wounded by life or broken by the journey. They better watch this fellow closely lest he turn things upside down.
Have you ever had your conventional standards, your notions of proper etiquette (the manners your mother taught you) turned upside down? It can really throw one off balance and render one totally vulnerable and helpless.

It happened unexpectedly and without any warning. It came at the end of a three-week stay in South Africa as my daughter and I were preparing to return home. Our host, a priest in a township outside of Johannesburg, says, “Before we go to the airport this afternoon I must officiate at a wedding and you two are invited.”

“Oh no, we will just wait for you. We do not even know these folks.”

“I don’t think you understand. When we have a wedding it is our custom that everyone is invited to celebrate. Any one passing by on the street, friend or stranger, is welcome to come in.”

“Okay, but we will just sit in the back.”

I look at my daughter, both of us dressed for an 18-hour flight, and I think, we don’t have on the right clothes for a wedding. Just as we get ready to slip into the church, hoping to go unnoticed, the priest says, “After the service we will all go around the corner to the bride’s home for dinner. You two will be honored guests.”

Again, in my discomfort I protest: “We were not even on the guest list. We will just stay behind and wait for you.”

We find our seats on the back pew and watch as the marriage sacrament unfolds with all of its beauty and grace. At the conclusion of the service everyone files out the door, behind the bride and groom. Before we know it, my daughter and I are in the midst of the celebration, surrounded on all sides by strangers. We are swept up in the crowd as the guests dance down the road, joyfully singing and praising God.

When we arrive at the bride’s home, there is one large table neatly set in the living room, taking up most of the space. Extra chairs fill every corner. Folks stand in the hallway; spill out onto the front porch and into the yard. The house is filled with the aroma of slow and well-cooked food, filled with the sounds of laughter and celebration. Preparations have been carefully made and all of the guests have been expected.

A gentleman approaches me, introduces himself as the bride’s father and invites the two of us to sit at the table with the family. Oh no, what am I to say now? Social etiquette and kingdom etiquette collide as my conventional standards are not only turned upside down but this radical hospitality renders me speechless.

Who is this stranger before me? Who is this host who opened his home to all for the celebration?

I wish I could say it was humility that kept me from being a grateful guest that day. But that was not the case. It was human pride and that haunting desire to be in control.
Sometimes when we are held in the astonishing, inclusive grace of God we are thrown off balance. Sometimes when we come face to face with God through the stranger we fail to recognize the Holy One.

Table fellowship and hospitality are of utmost importance in God’s Kingdom. They provide all of us a foretaste of the heavenly banquet where all of God’s children will gather together. Who we invite in and how we treat the stranger really does matter.

There is something else of grave importance that runs through this Gospel text from Luke. You see, the reality, here in God’s Kingdom is that we are all guests at the table. We are the blind, the lame, the poor to whom God beckons. And I wonder, can we really follow God’s command, really live into the fullness of the Kingdom before we acknowledge and accept our humble place at God’s table?

Our place is the one marked “guest.” That is the spot prepared for each of us. Jesus reminds us that we are offered the abundance of God’s hospitality. We can accept it or let our pride and need for control get in the way.

God is the host, yesterday, today and tomorrow. That will never change. God breaks bread with sinners and outcasts just like you and me, yesterday, today and tomorrow. That will never change. God invites us all, friend and stranger alike, to be guests at the table, the one that is filled with abundant life and overflowing with grace. When we follow Kingdom etiquette we realize God is in our midst.

Conversation with Gene Manning

Daniel Pawlus:  Gene, thank you so much for joining us today. That was a wonderful message you shared. I’d love to begin by kind of unpacking this theme of radical hospitality a little bit. It seems so important in any faith community, but how have you seen this in the communities that you’ve served? I’d love Sherre to share her experience with this as well.

Gene Manning: Certainly. It all began, I think, for me in terms of realizing that that’s a message that God calls all of us to proclaim in that as we welcome the stranger into our midst, we are welcoming God, in a sense, into our midst. And everyone’s story is part of God’s ongoing story. The Bible, the canons of the Scripture, ended with the Book of Revelation in my tradition, but God’s revelation to us through other people continues on. So when we invite the stranger in, I believe we’re inviting God into our midst.

Sherre Hirsch: That’s a very Jewish notion because we were once strangers in the land and thus we should treat everyone as if they’re us. Right?

Manning: Correct.

Hirsch: Because we’re strangers. I loved your story, especially because in the Jewish tradition, for seven days following a wedding there are parties. Literally, seven days of parties! You would not believe it. It’s like we just can’t stop celebrating! And you are supposed to—you’re actually obligated—to invite strangers to the parties. Every time I invite non-Jews or friends that don’t know the host, they’re like, “Sherre, that’s not social etiquette. I can’t do that!” But it’s such a powerful message because really we are dwelling in God’s home and when we do that we’re opening ourselves up to so much. Tell us more about that trip.

Manning: It was an amazing experience. And for one who tends to like to follow proper etiquette, I was totally turned upside down, as I mentioned in my message. The radical hospitality of the folks there, the way they greeted us and invited us in made us honored guests, which, as I say, was not a matter of humility that kept me from wanting to do that. It was simply pride of I’m not supposed to be here. I must say, the first time I came back to the States and performed a wedding, I thought to myself, “Well, shall we go outside and invite everybody in?” and realized that’s not our custom in our tradition but it should be because that is the Gospel message that all people are to come. So that trip to South Africa opened my eyes to a broader sense of God’s abundance and hospitality.

Hirsch: And I loved the idea—and I wonder if you think this, Daniel—that also you were thinking, “What am I wearing?”

Manning: Absolutely.

Pawlus: You know, what resonates for me is just the intentionality of hospitality in faith communities. I’ve been so blessed to be a part of Catholic communities who have recognized that this is crucial to the vitality of the experience for people. It’s not just having good music or a good sermon or homily, or what have you, but it’s really embedded in the people in the church and the leadership and in the values and how everyone interacts with each other, but also welcomes people that are brand new.

Manning: Absolutely. In my particular congregation we try to bring that message each Sunday morning to please come and be part of this community of faith. I hope that our actions and our words match. I think that’s what struck me on this trip to South Africa. The words and the actions were perfectly together.

Hirsch: What have you learned most from a stranger in your midst, whether at the grocery store or your pulpit? Anyone in particular?

Manning: You when you say that I think of a lady who walks the streets back home in Nashville. I got to know her through a series of situations and realized that there is no difference in the human being. We’re all created in the image of God and our stories play out differently for each of us. But yet at the same time we’re all God’s children and, hence, the reason for radical hospitality.

Hirsch: That would be a great billboard. “We’re all God’s children. We’re all the same, just a different journey.”

Manning: That’s right. And some journeys are painful and sorrowful. We all have pain and sorrow, but some are more painful and sorrowful. Some have more joy. But we meet where we’re all made in God’s image.

Pawlus: It reminds me a little bit of kind of a controversial issue that’s playing out in the country right now and that’s around immigration. But this welcoming the stranger is really central to this. I wonder for you, Gene, in the South and for you, Sherre, in California, in Los Angeles, having lived there…

Hirsch: A lot of issues with immigration.

Pawlus: How do you feel this connects to both of your faith traditions to speak to this particular issue?

Manning: We say in my tradition that the Gospel is radical and if we lived into the radical nature of the Gospel things would look very different. The Kingdom would be here and we would recognize it. We are told through scripture to welcome the alien, the stranger, the widow. A side of what may be happening in the political world. Our call, I believe, for the people of faith is to honor and respect every human being and how we do that is to honor them and welcome them.

Hirsch: But why is that so hard for people, Gene? I mean, it seems like a simple message. Let’s just do it, right? Why is that so challenging? Why do we look at the other and say you’re different from me?

Manning: Exactly. It’s got to have something to do with our sense of protection and I think when we open ourselves to others we become vulnerable. Certainly in my experience of walking into that wedding into that home, I was uncomfortable and vulnerable because I didn’t feel…I was off balance. But yet at the same time I was being God’s grace and abundance. Why that threw me off I is a question we will be asking, I guess, until the end of time. Fear, that’s a whole other topic. But I think sometimes we’re afraid of those we don’t know and we don’t know their story.

Pawlus: Sherre, don’t you think part of it is just everyday experience, too. Living in Los Angeles there is a huge Latino population in that city. I don’t know if people that don’t live there understand that 60% of the school district is made up of Latino children. It’s just a different day-to-day experience with an immigrant population that you may not have in other places.

Hirsch: Life has very much changed. I mean safety issues and safety concerns. There is always this apprehension, first and foremost. But it reminded me. There is a holiday in October in Jewish tradition called Sukkoth and you put up these huts, literally these makeshift huts, and you invite strangers into your home. This year we did it, as we do every year, and my kids are like, “Do you know anything about him? Do you know anything?” It was like we were crazy people. Every visitor that we did know was questioning us because there is that apprehension and that it could be dangerous, as opposed to this person could change my perspective and change how I think and how I see things.

Pawlus: Gene, Sherre and I both noticed that you’ve just got your doctorate in 2010, so we’d love to hear a little bit about your personal faith journey—we’ve got about a minute left—and how you arrived at wanting to pursue that and how you’re serving now?

Manning: It actually started in South Africa, with another woman that I met who turned my world upside down because her husband had been imprisoned with Nelson Mandela, only because of the color of his skin. She spoke of love and grace and there wasn’t an element of anger in her. Suddenly, when I heard her story, I said, preaching has got to be about sharing that love and that grace by listening to other people’s stories and realizing they are part of God’s ongoing story. I came back and said I need to do some more work so that I can proclaim that message in a more fruitful way.

Pawlus: That is a fantastic story. We’re so grateful that you shared it with us and we’re so grateful that you’ve joined us on the show today.

Manning: Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

Hirsch: Thank you.