All are welcome

He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers and sisters 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. And you will be blessed because they cannot repay you.”
~Luke 14:12-14 

When Jesus told His hosts to expand their table to include not just their friends and relatives but also the ostracized in their community, He was helping them to stretch themselves towards contributing to a community of wholeness and belonging for all people, which would ultimately enact positive change in their wider community. In Jesus’ time, the ostracized were regularly excluded from aspects of societal engagement and sometimes worship if they were deemed to be unclean due to their affliction. 

Unfortunately, in today’s church, we are not doing much better. There is still a tendency to bar individuals from our worship spaces. Perhaps because they are homeless and dirty, unpredictable and not quite fitting our social scripts. Perhaps because they have a past we fear, a history of felony charges or gang involvement. Perhaps it is their gender identity or sexual orientation and a (I would deem misguided) theology that precludes them. However, in barring individuals from spaces that are meant to be sacred sanctuary and refuge, we are wrongfully gatekeeping when Jesus explicitly called us to do the opposite. Our Christian identity should be the primary binding agent in our Church communities so we do not fall into patterns of discrimination based on other identity markers. 

As Paul writes, “So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28-29). As part of adding seats to our table, we have to redefine our own and others’ identities to be primarily in Christ with other aspects of identity as unimportant to their right to belong and of the utmost importance to the gifts each uniquely share with one another in community. In welcoming all to the table, we are reversing the social injury of ostracism in individuals who are outcasts, and we are enriching our shared communities with diversity.

We are made more whole, our churches are made more whole, and our wider communities are made more whole when we honor all people as children of God, inviting their peculiarities and their uniqueness. We are blessed, not because of what these individuals are able to repay in our worldly sense, but rather what these individuals are able to gift us in a Godly sense – the wholeness that comes from embracing the rich tapestry of diversity.