Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, and St Luke's, Creemore, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, on Sunday, August 31, 2025, the Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost. Readings for this Sunday: Jeremiah 2:4-13, Psalm 81:1,10-16; Hebrews 13:1-8, Luke 14:1,7-14.
When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable (Lk 14.7)
Among all the dire headlines, one of the big news stories of this summer has been the engagement of pop diva Taylor Swift to NFL player Travis Kelce.
People are already obsessing about it. The New Zealand tourism board has announced its “official petition for Pop’s next Royal Wedding to be hosted right here in Aotearoa New Zealand”. There’s already speculation about the guest list. US Vice President JD Vance is worried that Kelce’s team, the Kansas City Chiefs, will get invited because somehow the Super Bowl will be rigged so it can be the backdrop for the wedding.
Wherever the wedding happens, we can be sure that it will a lavish affair, with lots of celebrity A-listers as the guests of honour. It will certainly cost a lot of money, though I think many of us will give Swift a pass on account of her philanthropy, but still, the famous superrich person wedding (see the Bezos-Sanchez wedding this June) seems to be a sign of our times.
‘A Listers” are celebrities whose name is everywhere and who get big paycheques for acting. Jesus wouldn’t have known the term “A Lister”, but he would certainly have understood the concept. In today’s gospel reading we find him at a social gathering, a fancy meal at the house of a Pharisee, where, as usual, he is a keen student of human nature.
We shouldn’t be surprised to find Jesus at a Pharisee’ dinner party. We know from the gospels that Jesus liked a good time, and we know that the Pharisees shared Jesus’ concern with the law and with living a holy life, though they differed on interpretation. Pharisees were highly religious but they weren’t immune to the human desire to be someone important!
So just as we have our own concepts of how to seat the head table and the guests of honour, so it was in Jesus’ day. A dinner or banquet would be arranged in a U-shape, and those with the highest social status, the A-listers, would be closest to the top of the U. In this case, we are told that the party is hosted by a leader of the Pharisees, so we can imagine that the guests are fairly important people in the religious community. If you’ve ever been to a big Diocesan dinner like the Bishop’s Company, you can imagine the type of crowd. We can also assume that there was some competition to get one of the better seats.
I think the parable that follows is one of the easier ones to interpret. Clearly, I think, Jesus is not saying “sit in the humblest spot so you can get invited to sit with the A Listers”. Jesus’ isn’t offering advice about how to get ahead in society. Rather, Jesus is saying that there shouldn't be any A, B, or C listers. There should just be guests.
After the parable, Jesus speaks directly to his host, and it’s a rather breathtaking piece of chutzpah because he is critiquing the motives of everyone present, about how they invite one another in order to get favours and prestige in return. Jesus wants nothing to do with that system. Instead, he says, “when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind” and that way you will be blessed and gain God’s favour for your care to those who cannot repay you.
This teaching is totally consistent with Jesus’ message throughout the gospels, and it goes right back to his mother’s words before he was born, that
“he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and exalted those of humble estate;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.”
(Luke 1:52-53)
As our second reading suggests, the first Christians picked up on this message. The letter to the Hebrews tells the first churches, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it" (Heb 13.2). That’s a reference to the story in Genesis of how Abraham and Sarah were visited by three strangers who promised the elderly couple that they would have a child, thus fulfilling God’s promise (Gen 18-19).
Again, this is not a message about giving to get ahead. It’s not about being kind to strangers just in case they can reward you, rather, as Hebrews says, hospitality is rooted in the idea that we are bound together in “mutual affection”. “Mutual affection” or “love” comes from the Greek word philadelphia, meaning love among siblings.
As Christians, we believe that all people are created by God, all people are loved by God, and all people carry the image of God, If we accept that we are bound together in mutual affection, then we, we accept that all people are our siblings and all people are entitled to whatever hospitality, care, and attention we can offer.
Jesus taught us that the Kingdom of God makes no distinction between A listers and losers, it does not prefer the native born to the immigrant. The Kingdom of God welcomes the stranger and the refugee. The Kingdom of God does not guard its borders, but rather throws its doors open, because Jesus loves a banquet and he loves a wedding (with good wine, of course), and Jesus doesn’t believe in guest lists.
I hope that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce have a lovely wedding and years of happiness. I wish the same for a young couple that come to our Friendship Dinners. They’d like to be married, if they can ever find the money for a license. I see them sometimes, with a few bags of Giant Tiger groceries, waiting for the bus on Ontario Street, and pray that they do get their wedding. If it does happen, it will go unremarked in the press, and there will be no A listers there, but Jesus will be a wedding guest, because he wants the same flourishing and happiness for them as he wants for all of us, because, I the Kingdom of God, we are all A listers.
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