Take, eat

A sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on August 31, 2025 by  Jolley Gosnold

Reading for address: Luke 14.1,7-14

I’d like you to imagine you’re walking through a door. There’s someone else coming up behind you. Naturally, you hold it open and they walk right on through. They do not say thank you.

If you’re anything like me, in that moment you are seething inside. Your blood begins to boil. “You’re welcome!” you say, calling after them, shocked that they may have the audacity to accept the gift you freely offered and give nothing back in return, not even a thank you.

Or you’re at the pub and you offer to buy a round. You start by asking your friend who earns the most, in the hopes that either you will be repaid in kind or even better still they will reject your offer, as the poor trainee priest that you are, and just cut straight to the buying you a drink part.

Maybe I’m not painting myself in the best light here, but I’m hoping you can relate. To the times when we give hoping to receive. To the places where we position ourselves for our own benefit.

Jesus, in today’s Gospel, while at dinner at a Pharisaic leader’s house, witnesses this behaviour and tells a parable, so thinly veiled, he shares a story about hosting and attending a banquet to a group of people hosting and attending a banquet. But it is still a parable. Jesus is not here offering some tips on social mobility and etiquette nor offering some divinely approved way of getting what we want. A parable paints a picture, gets beneath the skin, of who God is. And what it’s like to live in the fullness of God’s realm. His story then shatters our fixation on reciprocity where we are tempted to believe that if I do X, then in return I should get Y.

Looking round a room full of people focused on status, honour, prestige Jesus challenges the idea that when hosting we should invite our friends, our brothers or sisters, our relatives, our rich neighbours. Those people who are in with the in crowd Those people we know will happily offer us something to take in return for what we have given. Instead, he says invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind.

And while this language can be problematic today, those words have been chosen carefully for that time and place and that audience. If in first century Palestine you were physically disabled you would not be able to work and therefore would be poor, and if you were poor what would you be able to give in return? To be blind implied that either you or your family have sinned and were being punished accordingly. I thank God that we do not see the disabilities described here as deficits in the same way today. But they have been chosen because at that time they would not be allowed anywhere near the religious leadership. These men in this room did not associate with the poor, they had no use for people with disabilities, those who were sick were ritually unclean.

But Jesus’ guest list reveals the embracing nature of the Kingdom of God. A place where all are welcome and the poorest, those who lack the capacity, given their circumstances, to acquire the resources to be self-sustaining, those who have no material or social currency, have a seat at the table and are welcome at the feast. Jesus says invite those who cannot repay your generosity. Not despite their poverty. But precisely because of it. Offer them nourishment, offer them dignity. It’s not a story to encourage those present to get out into the streets and feed the poor, heal the sick, provide jobs and skills or homes. Jesus doesn’t call the host to fix or provide for the needs of the poor, he says invite them to dinner. He says enjoy their company. Watch how, by engaging with people not as problems to be solved or worse, avoided, you will yourself be blessed.

You only need to ask anyone who volunteers at our International Group here at St Martin’s to realise just how true this is. I remember so clearly last year when Lucy Littlewood from St Martin-in-the-Fields Trust, who also volunteers at the International Group, hosted a lavish banquet down in the crypt beneath us to mark World Homelessness Day. She went out of her way to invite guests from our group gave them places of honour. They sat with the millionaires, donors, people from the charity and business sectors, and we shared food together. Those who did not have the material or social resources to enrich those paying for the feast enriched the table with their presence, their stories, their kindness.

So far, so inspiring.

And if this were a parable about our ethics, we could leave here now and consider whose company we are enjoying, who we are inviting to our tables. It might reshape our mission work, inspire us to think about who we are welcoming into church. It might shift us away from the mindset of giving with one eye on what we will receive in return. And that would be no bad thing.

But that reading assumes that we are the hosts. And I would like to suggest that this parable is pointing to a better story, a bolder vision, a humbler faith where God is the host and we are all the guests.

And if God is the host in this story then we are being told that God does not think in terms of give-and-take. The give-and-take mentality configures people as a means to an end. The illustration of how we might relate to one another is a reflection of how God relates to humanity. God does not see us as a means to an end. God is with us for the sake of it. God is with us because God enjoys being with us. Precisely because we cannot repay the generosity of an invitation to his banquet. And that, I believe, is the beautiful, potentially life-changing heart of this story.

About 12 years ago, I spent a month living with a remote Karen tribe in the mountains of northern Thailand. The people there lived simply, working the land, providing for themselves living in genuine material poverty and abundant riches of joy and love. On my last day, I was worried because the man who had welcomed me into his home and treated me like his son was nowhere to be seen. I thought I would not get to say goodbye. But that evening, he arrived on the village moped with supplies, a carrier bag full of food and drink, having returned from the six-hour round trip down the mountain to the nearest town to spend what little money he had before returning back up again to the village. He gathered a group of us in his hut and sat us down for the most beautiful farewell banquet. Together we sat all night eating cheesy wotsits and fizzy pop, followed by homemade rice wine and hand-wrapped banana leaf cigars. That night, my new friend laid on a feast so simple, yet so abundant, so filled with love every mouthful was enjoyed with gratitude for the effort he had gone to, the sacrifice he had made. I could not repay that gift. And he did not want me to. The simple smile, laughter hugs and sharing told a story of love, of a gift freely given.

On the night when Jesus was saying goodbye, at supper with his disciples, a group of misfits who had let go of their worldly wealth to follow Jesus, he broke bread and gave it to them saying take, eat. This is my body, which is given for you.

Having travelled from table to table, meal to meal, throughout his ministry, he sat down now with those he had invited and gave them everything.

I wonder if you know what it’s like to be invited to sit and eat as those who cannot return the favour. If you know what it’s like to receive that gift. What it’s like to participate in breaking the cycle of transactional relationship. To live in the kingdom of God in precisely the way it was designed to be enjoyed.

Well, in about ten minutes time you will receive such an invitation. Sam, our Vicar, will stand at that table and in Christ’s name will invite us to a banquet. A banquet where we are invited into God’s realm to receive a gift freely given. In the Eucharist, Jesus transforms our give-and-take mindset by his words take and eat.

Jesus told stories about hosting because he is the host. And we are the humble poor. He invites us to a banquet we have not hosted, to a table we did not set, to eat a meal we did not prepare. Sitting in a place he has prepared for us. We approach this meal with humility and gratitude, open up our hands and reach out to God, who has invited us to enjoy being with him. We hear the words “The body of Christ” and we are reminded that he has offered this gift before, he is offering it now, and will offer it to humanity for all eternity.

We cannot repay this gift. And he doesn’t want us to. But the gift is so abundant, so life-giving, so overflowing, that the only thing we can possibly do with it is share it.

Just as freely as it has been shared with us.

Amen