Sunday August 16th, 2026 Bulletin
Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
August 16th, 2026
Reason to Celebrate: God’s Guest List
Luke 14:12-24
The tables were old, heavy folding tables creaky with age. Despite the weight of them, though, they were quickly picked up and moved into place, followed by a cacophony of squeaks and creaks as folding chairs were dragged into place alongside. Suddenly, an abundance of food appeared, passed hand to hand from kitchen to table – first baskets of broken bread, then platters of sandwiches and bowls of chips, fruit and cookies. At the center of it all, was my friend Maggie. As the clatter of moving furniture quieted, she smiled and looked around and said, “this is the great feast of the people of God.”
We were not at a luncheon but instead at worship, at the church Maggie served at the time, Mercy Community Church. It’s a congregation made up mostly of people experiencing homelessness, in midtown Atlanta – at the time, they met in the ground level of a tall-steeple Presbyterian Church on Ponce de Leon Avenue. They act as a day shelter, drop-in center, and a roving lunch program. During the week, they offer music and art workshops, haircuts, food and clothing, depending on what’s available and needed. And Sunday worship always ends with communion, clattering chairs and tables and a quick rearrangement of their sanctuary into a banquet hall, with the communion table at the center. Bread is broken and blessed, as the gathered community shares a meal together – food often donated or gleaned from nearby grocery stores, where it would’ve been thrown out. And the faces around the room – were people who would not have been likely to show up in Sunday morning worship of the Presbyterian Church where Mercy meets.
I don’t know if they still end every service with communion lunch, but goodness. That experience has stayed with me. That table, that meal, felt pulled out of this parable.
In this passage, Jesus is eating at the home of a Pharisee, a leader of the religious establishment. It’s the third time in Luke Jesus eats with Pharisees, even though he tends to be critical of them. The text doesn’t tell us why Jesus was invited to this meal – we can guess that he was popular, a rising star, but it doesn’t seem like this was a friendly invitation – the text tells us, the Pharisees were watching him closely. The host must have been wealthy – with a home big enough to hold a crowd, and staff to prepare and serve the meal. Remember that ancient Rome was governed by a strict social hierarchy, and feasts were an opportunity to show off power and status. Picture the guests seated in an atrium with a long table, with couches set in concentric circles going out to the edges of the room, with diners reclining on them. The closer a guest is to the center table, the more important they are, the higher up on the social food chain. That’s the room where Jesus tells this story!
The story is actually part of a larger series of prickly parables Jesus tells while dining with the Pharisees. He critiques their jockeying for position and status, proclaiming that the last shall be first in the kingdom of God. And then he tells this parable of the feast.
John Buchanan, preaching on this passage, says: “Matthew tells the same story. In his version, the host tells his servants “invite everyone, the good and the bad.” What an amazing idea that is. The banquet table is open. It is not reserved for those who have the correct beliefs about the food. It is not restricted to those who uphold particular moral standards. It certainly is not restricted to those who espouse a particular ideology or political philosophy. This table, Jesus said, is radically open. All are welcome here.
… The point is not to exclude but to include everyone, until God’s house is full.”
Parables have multiple layers of meaning – we can interpret it in different ways. Some read it as a critique of those who refused to believe Christ’s preaching about the kingdom of God. Or, as an indication that Jesus was a provocative, difficult dinner guest. But, how I’m reading it today is that we aren’t just called to gather at this table. Today I read it as a call to community engagement: we’re to go out into the highways and bi-ways, onto Loch Raven and down the Alameda, into the apartments and alleyways, to students and their families, to Good Sam and Morgan State – to listen and build relationships, to partner and serve, and in so doing, to share the good news of God’s love and justice with those who may never feel comfortable crossing the threshold of our sanctuary. And you know where that outreach leads us? Seems like lately it’s led us right back to a table – like it did for our Longest Table meal in June, where we gathered with neighbors and friends to celebrate the teens who were part of our cooking program with Nexus-Woodbourne Family Healing. Some fifty people sat at one long table – that stretched the length of Hyde Hall – and shared chicken with green beans and potatoes, got to know each other, and learned about the impact 8 weeks in the kitchen could have on 5 teenaged boys. Those of you who came can testify – it
was a powerful evening. I can’t help but wonder – what would happen if we met like that more often?
Priya Parker is a social scientist who studies conflict resolution and community building. Her first book, The Art of Gathering, she describes how to gather with intention, to create lasting and meaningful community connections. She uplifts the practice of a weekly meal with friends and neighbors – like the weekly red beans and rice convened by a guy in New Orleans named Pableaux Johnson. Every Monday night for 20 years, Pableaux made red beans and rice for a small group of friends and neighbors. They would gather at his kitchen table- which was originally his grandmother’s – and share the simple meal, with cornbread and sweet tea, with whiskey for dessert. The invitation was open, people would bring friends, and there would always be enough – he says, “one of the south Louisiana rules is that if too many people show up for the food that you
have, you can always make more rice. The rule is: “Make more rice. Make family eat last.” In this isolated, Instagram age, we can make gatherings too complicated, too intimidating – and it means we never actually meet. Parker observes the wisdom of Johnson’s weekly meal – keep it simple, and just host the gathering you want to be invited to.
Mark Adams and Miriam Maldonado are PCUSA mission coworkers on the US- Mexico border who for decades have sought to build community and serve their neighbors in the borderlands. Mark tells the story of an evening years ago when he and Miriam planned a dinner party for their friends. They cooked a delicious meal, cleaned their home, and got ready. But when it came time for the party to begin, one by one, their friends called to cancel. Things had come up. So they looked at their kitchen table, laden with more food than they could possibly eat – and decided to take it out to share it with whomever they found. Turns out, the US Border Patrol had just dropped off a bus full of people – migrants who found themselves suddenly returned to Mexico in an unfamiliar city, at night, with nowhere to go. They shared the meal with the people they met, and out of that experience, the Migrant Resource Center was born. The Center offers food, clothing, and a phone to people who need it – often people recently deported from the US – and documents human rights abuses by both border patrol and the coyotes who traffic people across the border.
I don’t know if this origin story is just Mark Adams’ parable based on this story from Luke, but it has sure stuck with me.