Who Gets An Invitation? Sermon Transcript - Modern Worship

Welcome to worship at First United Methodist Church of Dallas.

My name is Anna Bundy Hagler, and I am one of the associate ministers here.

We are so grateful.

I mean, when tables are here, it always feels full, but like because all of you showed up, it feels like especially full.

And so we're so grateful that you chose to worship with us this morning.

I know you passed a lot of churches on your way in to this building, so it's not lost on us that you chose to spend an hour here.

 If you're unfamiliar with us, our mission is to magnify God's love for all people by creating space for belonging, purpose, justice, and joy.

And we hope that you feel that that is evident here.

And we pray that the Holy Spirit has already met you in this space.

We actually have a very exciting announcement.

That's why there are tables today.

He's going to talk about it later.

But I'd like to introduce Reverend Phil Dickey.

Phil, will you stand for us?

This is Phil.

It's his first Sunday on staff.

 If you're unfamiliar with him, Phil is a gift.

He's going to join our staff as the associate minister of mission, advocacy, and discipleship.

So, you know, we like a long title here at the church.

I'm communications and community.

He's beaten me now, mission, advocacy, and discipleship.

So he will also be the main pastoral presence in this space.

Reverend Mitchell Boone will still be the main pastor, but you'll get to see Phil kind of a lot.

 He will be a gift to y'all, so he'll talk about it later, but we're gonna invite y'all to an opportunity to lunch with him today after worship.

Thank you, Phil.

We are in week two of our worship series, Pull Up a Chair.

Wow, I really didn't think about any of this when I put in the facilities request to put in tables in here.

We literally have chairs to pull up, which is great.

 And if you've been in here several times when I've been preaching, I'm a quilter, so I love to talk about quilting and sewing and sewing machines.

And I tried really hard to work it into this sermon.

It didn't work.

So we're actually going to start by talking about Gordon Ramsay.

 I've been watching a lot of Gordon Ramsay lately, like, like a lot.

That's all that I'm watching.

I'm a bit obsessed.

I've tried avoiding the Gordon Ramsay franchise for a very long time, but it caught up with me and I get it now.

 I needed a change from my typical reality TV shows.

I'm a Bravo TV gal at heart.

I love to study the human psyche and what's wrong with all of us.

But my obsession here started with Hell's Kitchen, and I love Hell's Kitchen.

I eat it up.

I've watched enough episodes now that when Gordon Ramsay calls out an order, I find myself repeating it back to him, like I'm actually standing on the line.

I've got to remember it.

Like, what if he tests me one day?

You know, yes, chef.

 My husband doesn't think that one's as funny because he's not watching it with me.

Two Wellington, one salmon, one chicken.

We also, we never eat risotto, but we've started calling it Rizzo in our household because that's what he does.

And I have no business saying any of this, but I'm sitting on my couch thinking, I get this.

I understand the system.

I know that somebody's on garnish.

I know that somebody's on meat station.

 I know that somebody somehow has managed to serve raw scallops for the fourth time in one dinner service, and Gordon Ramsay is about to lose his mind.

I've watched about six seasons at this point.

I started, like, in the 2020 and beyond.

And eventually I told Kyler, my husband, with an entirely unreasonable amount of confidence, I can do that.

Which is ridiculous.

And he agreed with me, which is so kind but still ridiculous.

 I cannot do Hell's Kitchen.

I've never worked in a professional kitchen.

I'm not an executive chef.

My restaurant experience consists of about six months waiting tables at a breakfast-only diner.

 But because I have watched enough of it, I started to imagine myself belonging there.

And then some of my friends who are even more Gordon Ramsay obsessed, this is the problem, right?

It's like it's a franchise, so there's 18,000 TV shows to watch.

They suggested that I needed to watch MasterChef.

So now I'm watching that too.

And about three episodes in, because I'm a gal that has a lot of confidence, I thought, oh, this one was designed for me.

 Because Hell's Kitchen and MasterChef look similar.

Same Gordon Ramsay, same dramatic music, same food, same inexplicable number of people who apparently do not know that chicken should not be pink in the middle.

But the two shows were built around very different assumption about what belonging in the room looks like.

Hell's Kitchen begins with professional chefs, of which I am not.

 people who already know the language, who already have experience, who already understand how a restaurant operates.

MasterChef starts somewhere else.

It asks what happens if you take an ordinary person who loves cooking at home and gives them an opportunity to become something they never imagined themselves capable of becoming.

Because both shows are about cooking and both are hosted by the same person,

 they begin with a different question.

Who is this for?

 Who could walk in the door and reasonably imagine there might be a place for me here?

And the more I thought about that, the more I realized that this might be one of the most important questions that the church can ask.

Not simply who is invited, but who knows that the invitation is for them?

So I invite you to meditate on our scripture today, which is Matthew 9, verses 9 through 13.

Hear these words from the Gospel of Mark.

 As Jesus continued on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at a kiosk for collecting taxes.

He said to them, follow me.

And he got up and followed him.

As Jesus sat down to eat in Matthew's house, many tax collectors and sinners joined Jesus and his disciples at the table.

 But when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?

And when Jesus heard it, he said, healthy people don't need a doctor, but sick people do.

Go and learn what this means.

I want mercy and not sacrifice.

I didn't come to call righteous people, but sinners.

This is the word of God in scripture, the word of God among us, and the word of God within us.

Thanks be to God.

 Now there are stories in scripture where Jesus' call feels dramatic.

Nets are dropped, boats are abandoned, crowds gather around him, and then there's Matthew.

It's like almost too simplistic.

Elizabeth, who's preaching in the traditional service, and I wrestled with this a lot this week, like why this scripture?

Jesus is walking, Matthew is sitting at the tax booth, Jesus says to him and says, follow me, and then Matthew just like gets up,

 That's almost the whole call story.

There's no application process.

Jesus does not ask for references.

Matthew does not prove himself first.

Jesus simply sees him and says, follow me.

And it is tempting to preach this passage by saying, see, everyone's invited, sermon over, tacos, you know?

 And I do deeply believe that everyone is invited, especially because in the Wesleyan understanding of grace, God's grace reaches towards us before we even reach toward God or know how to.

We call that provenient grace, grace that goes before us.

Before we know how to ask for it or understand it, before we have the right words, or before we have gotten ourselves together, grace is there.

God is already there.

 But I think there's a deeper question in Matthew 9 because the story does not end when Jesus says, follow me.

The next scene is a table.

And suddenly the story turns from just Jesus and Matthew together to a whole table full of people.

It feels like they left out a smidge.

 Among Jesus, there are tax collectors, people regarded as sinners and disciples.

And there are enough of the wrong kinds of people around the table that the Pharisees take notice.

And that's where the story for them gets uncomfortable.

Because there's a difference between telling someone that Jesus loves them and actually eating dinner with them.

There's a difference between saying that the invitation is universal and allowing that invitation to rearrange our relationships.

 There's a difference between saying there is a chair for everyone and asking whether someone can actually find the chair you put out for them.

 Matthew was a tax collector.

Tax collectors worked within the taxation systems of Roman-controlled Palestine, and the profession had a reputation for exploiting their position.

John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, described them as infamous for unjust exactations.

Words are hard, even when you write them.

So Jesus does not call Matthew because Matthew had secretly been perfect all along.

Jesus calls Matthew because that's what grace does.

 Jesus sees a person whose life can become something more than just the place where they are currently sitting.

Jesus says, follow me.

Those words are a movement, right?

So Matthew gets up and something changes.

 Christian inclusion is not the claim that every human choice is good, right?

That's a different sermon for a different day.

It is a claim that no human is beyond the reach of grace, and Jesus holds both together.

Jesus sees Matthew exactly where Matthew is sitting, and Jesus invites him before Matthew has proven anything.

Jesus invites him somewhere.

Jesus says, follow me.

 Grace comes first.

Then grace begins changing us.

That is the gospel.

And look what happens next.

Jesus eats with Matthew and with people who are associated with him, also tax collectors.

John Wesley interpreted these guests as many of Matthew's former companions.

If Wesley is right, then the invitation has multiplied in this way.

Jesus sees Matthew.

 Matthew follows Jesus, and then people Matthew already knows find themselves sitting at a table with Jesus too.

That's kind of wild.

Which makes me wonder, who encounters Jesus because they know us?

That question is more challenging to me than have we told everybody that they are welcome?

Who has begun to imagine that following Jesus might actually be possible because of the way each of us have lived in front of them?

 Who ends up at the table because we were already sitting there first?

This is a much more embodied kind of evangelism.

I know that's kind of a scary word for the Methodist, but we're wrestling with it.

That's why we're doing it for three weeks.

And evangelism at his heart is simply, this is all it is.

It is simply sharing the good news of Jesus Christ.

 Matthew, this is kind of rich of me to say since I'm over communications here, but Matthew does not build a campaign.

He does not develop a communication strategy.

He follows Jesus.

And suddenly, his relationships become a bridge to the table at which he is seated.

There's something deeply United Methodist about that.

 The Methodist movement began within the Church of England as people organized their lives around practicing the grace that they proclaimed, right?

They wanted to make a difference.

They prayed, they studied scripture, they cared for the poor, they visited prisoners and held one another accountable.

 The point was not merely to believe certain things about grace.

The point of the Methodist movement was to become people whose lives bore the evidence of grace in their lives.

That is still our work as a congregation today.

And this is where the Pharisees enter the story.

They see the table, they see Jesus at the table, and they see who is at the table eating with Jesus.

And they ask, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?

 Notice what bothers them.

They are not simply asking why Jesus spoke to Matthew.

They are bothered by the meal.

Why does he eat with them?

Because meals create proximity.

You pass food, you speak, listen, you occupy the same space, and you become associated with the people beside you.

 And apparently Jesus is willing to be associated with those people.

That's the scandal.

The problem is not that the Pharisees have convictions.

Convictions are not the enemy of the story.

But the problem is when our convictions become a system for deciding who looks believable as a recipient of grace.

And Jesus says something fascinating to them.

Go and learn.

 These are religious people who already know scripture, and yet Jesus is saying to them, go and learn something.

Go from this place.

And then he quotes the prophet Hosea and he says, I desire mercy, not sacrifice.

Jesus is not dismissing religion.

He's asking what all of it is for, our worship, doctrine, scripture, traditions.

He's even asking about the church itself.

 Jesus gives us a way to test the answer.

Do all of these things lead us towards mercy?

Not vague niceness or pretending that differences do not exist.

Do these things actually lead us towards mercy?

The kind of mercy that crosses the room and risk association?

The kind of mercy that makes religious people wonder why you were eating with other people?

 And suddenly who gets an invitation becomes much more complicated because the question is not merely whether our theology allows everyone through the door.

The question now is what kind of people is our theology making us?

 I think about that often in my work because I do spend a lot of time thinking about communication, I would hope.

In communications, we talk about audience, right?

Who are we talking to?

What do they care about?

What assumptions might they bring?

What questions are they asking?

How will they find us?

Because if you ask who is the audience and I say everybody, I have given you a very wonderfully inclusive answer and a completely useless communication strategy.

 Everybody does not tell me how to communicate with anybody.

Real people are particular.

We all have our own histories and our own assumptions about the church.

We all have our reasons for thinking that we would never walk through these doors.

And paying attention to these things do not necessarily mean that we're excluding everyone else.

It simply means that we are paying attention.

 The gospel, let me be very clear, the gospel does not have a target demographic.

 But ministry does require us to notice actual people, God's people.

And I think that that distinction matters enormously for us here.

We live in Dallas.

As I said earlier, you do not have to look very hard to find a church.

If someone wants to attend Christian worship, there are plenty of options in our city.

If someone wants a United Methodist Church, we are certainly not the only one.

Churches are particular.

 This church is in fact particular.

We exist in a particular place at the corner of Ross and Harwood, finding ourselves not only downtown but in the city's arts district.

We have a particular history as we've celebrated 100 years in our sanctuary this year.

 We have particular theological convictions.

Our mission statement says that we exist to magnify God's love for all people by creating space for belonging, purpose, justice, and joy.

 Those words matter.

We chose them because we believe something about God and something about this church and what God is doing here.

It's okay for a church to know who they are.

It's okay to say this is what we believe.

This is how we read scripture.

This is what we understand justice to require.

This is the kind of community we want to become.

But here is where we need to keep it straight.

 The line describes what we are committed to.

It does not determine who is worthy of grace.

Those are different things.

The church does not own the invitation.

Jesus does.

Our mission statement should not function like a velvet rope deciding who gets access.

It should function like a promise.

If we say belonging, what might someone reasonably expect to experience among us?

 If we say justice, what does that commitment look like when it costs us something?

If we say God's love is for all people, what happens when someone we did not anticipate walks through the door?

Now this is where the difference between welcome and belonging becomes important.

 KJ Ramsey is a therapist and author whose work brings trauma recovery, theology, and embodied belonging into the conversation.

If you haven't read her work or followed her on Instagram, you should.

I give you full permission to pull out your phone just to do that if you're gonna forget.

But I will notice if you're still on it.

I deeply appreciate what she brings to our theological world.

It's so good.

Her work reminds us that Christian community can become a place of profound harm

 but it can also be a place where people experience safety, healing, and belonging, and that work matters.

Because sometimes we assume belonging is something we can simply announce.

You belong here.

Oh, I should have gotten like a confetti cannon when I said that, right?

But a person who has been hurt by a church may hear everyone is welcome very differently than someone who has always felt at home in one.

 Someone who has been told that questions are dangerous may walk into a Bible study already bracing themselves.

Someone who has spent years wondering whether God could love them may not believe us the first time we say it, and kind of rightfully so.

Belonging takes embodiment.

It takes consistency, people, and time.

The invitation is not the finish line.

It is the beginning of the relationship.

 Which brings us back to Matthew.

Jesus says, follow me.

And the story ends at a table.

That movement does matter.

Because following Jesus eventually brings us into contact with other people.

And because of the way humans work, people will be complicated.

Some people will know every hymn or song.

 Some will have no idea why everybody all of a sudden stood up.

Some will have been Methodist longer than I have been alive, just a few years longer.

Some will have searched church near me on Sunday morning and decided to take a chance on us.

 Some folks will arrive with deep faith and some will arrive unsure whether they believe anything that we're doing here.

And somehow the invitation of Jesus keeps turning strangers into people sitting at the same table.

 This does not mean that every congregation will be the right congregation for every person.

Churches are particular.

As I said earlier, Christ is not particular.

First United Methodist Church of Dallas is not Jesus.

Christ has always been bigger than any institution that bears his name and thank God for that.

 Also, though, thank God we cannot divorce Christ from Christian community altogether, because following Jesus is embodied work.

Eventually, faith becomes relationships, meals, forgiveness, conflict, worship, service, and communion together.

But if we call ourselves the church, people ought to encounter something of Jesus in the way that we receive them.

 So instead of asking who is invited, the question now becomes, can folks tell that we believe everyone is invited?

Can the person who has been hurt by the church tell?

Can the person who worries that they do not know enough tell?

Can they tell that when we say God's love is for all people, we are actually trying to make that love tangible?

Because it is possible to announce that everyone is welcome and never pull up a chair.

 It is possible to say that there is room while expecting someone else to cross every barrier alone.

And it is possible to preach grace while unintentionally creating a community that only insiders know how to navigate.

And maybe that's why Jesus says, go and learn what this means.

I don't hear Jesus like really like admonishing us or like trying to teach us a lesson in that.

I hear grace, go learn.

 which means we can learn.

Churches can learn.

Communities can change.

We can discover barriers we did not know we created.

We can listen to people whose experiences are different than ours.

We can realize that something felt welcoming to us did not feel welcoming to someone else.

We can practice mercy better tomorrow than we did yesterday.

That sounds very Methodist to me.

 John Wesley did not understand Christian perfection as knowing everything, never making mistakes or reaching some state of absolute human perfection.

 For Wesley, Christian perfection meant perfection in love, a life increasingly governed by the love of God and neighbor.

And because love can always deepen, there's always more love to practice.

There's more mercy to embody, more attention to give, more ways for grace to keep reshaping us.

And I wonder if that is the invitation hidden inside the invitation.

Jesus says to Matthew, follow me.

 But maybe Jesus is still saying it to the church.

Follow me toward that table, toward people you did not expect to find there.

Follow me until the grace you proclaim becomes visible in the life you share.

The question is not whether there's enough room at Christ's table.

I think that Jesus has settled that.

There is room.

There's lots of room.

The question for the church is whether we are willing to live like we believe it.

 Jesus has already told us what God desires, which is mercy.

Our work is to look around the table and ask, who still cannot imagine there could possibly be a seat for them?

Who have we failed to notice?

Who has never heard the voice of Jesus saying, follow me?

And when they come, will they find what we have promised?

Will they find that belonging is more than a word on our beautifully designed website?

 Will they encounter a community shaped by mercy?

Will they discover people actually trying to magnify God's love?

Will they encounter Jesus in this space?

 The table is not ours to protect from the people Jesus keeps bringing to it.

We are simply people who, somewhere along the way, did hear Christ say, follow me.

And by grace, we got up and we followed Christ.

And we discovered, sometimes to our own surprise, that there was a chair for us too.

So maybe our work now is simply this.

Live in such a way that the next person sees you pulling up a chair.

 In the name of our creator, redeemer, and sustainer.

Amen.

Now, as we talk about chairs and tables.

 it would be kind of rich of me to preach to you for the time that I did and not allow you space to reflect on it in your own way.

So here in Modern Worship at First United Methodist Church of Dallas, we've built that into our service.

So now I'm going to invite you to reflect on a couple of questions I've created.

They will be on the screen.

 And those questions are, who in your life might have a hard time believing that the invitation of Jesus is really for them?

And what might help them recognize it?

And where might God be asking you to go and learn a deeper practice of mercy so that someone else can more clearly see their place at the table?

 We're going to invite you to reflect on these questions for a minute or so, and then we will wrap up in prayer.

I invite you to meditate on what the Holy Spirit has for you this morning.