"The Good News Is...All Are Invited" (February 18, 2026 Sermon)

Text: Luke 14:15-24

Preaching: Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing

What if Lent felt like an RSVP instead of a diet for the soul? We open the season by stepping into Jesus’s parable of the Great Banquet in Luke 14, where the first invitees bow out with thin excuses and the feast overflows with guests from the streets and the margins. That story doesn’t just tweak etiquette; it overturns the pecking order and asks us whether we can bear a grace that can’t be bought. We share why we’re choosing a Lent of invitation and good news in a year already heavy with fear and fatigue, and how the table image helps us swap scarcity for trust.

Around the Pharisee’s table, Jesus challenges the scramble for honor and teaches a new social logic: take the low seat and let the host do the lifting. From there we trace the shock of a guest list that widens instead of narrows, then connect it with C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, where heaven and hell are directions shaped by our willingness to accept “the bleeding charity.” It’s a bracing question: are we clinging to a moral résumé that makes joy unbearable? Ash Wednesday’s ashes meet that question head-on. You are dust can sound like doom, but we hear it as release from proving ourselves and permission to belong.

We bring the vision down to the sidewalk: the worker juggling two jobs, the neighbor with the yard sign that spikes your pulse, the refugee, the anxious, the disabled, the friend sleeping rough. If God keeps making room, then our practices should, too. We talk about resting first in unearned welcome, then taking one simple step to widen the table: set an extra plate, move down a seat, forgive a debt, learn a name. Along the way, we echo Jesse Jackson’s “I am somebody” liturgy as a benediction over every listener—loved, respected, never rejected. If your heart needs a lighter, truer Lent, pull up a chair. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs good news, and leave a review to tell us how you’re making room this week.

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Transcript

Prayer For Illumination

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The prayer for illumination. Table setting, God. This Lent we do not want to miss your invitation. We do not want to be so caught up in our own business that we miss the holiness right in front of us. So settle our hearts and open our spirits to hear your word anew. Help us hear your good news today. With hope we pray. Amen. The scripture lesson is from Luke chapter 14, verses 15 through 24. One of the dinner guests, on hearing this, said to him, Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God. Then Jesus said to him, Someone gave a great dinner and invited many. At the time for the dinner, he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, Come, for everything is ready now. But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said, I've bought a piece of land and I must go out and see it. Please accept my regrets. Another said, Well, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I'm gonna go try them out. Please accept my regrets. Another said, I have just been married, and therefore I cannot come. So the slave returned and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and said to his slave, Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame. And the slave said, Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room. Then the master said to the slave, Go out into the roads and lanes and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those who were invited will taste my dinner. Holy wisdom, holy word.

Rethinking Lent As Good News

Setting The Scene At The Pharisee’s Table

Excuses And The Upside-Down Guest List

The Table Fills From The Margins

C.S. Lewis And Choosing Joy

Grace Is Not A Solo Act

Dust, Humility, And Wider Welcome

Jesse Jackson’s “Somebody” Liturgy

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Friends, let us pray. O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our Redeemer. Amen. So, as I'm sure most of you all know, Ash Wednesday has long signaled the start of a solemn season. Lent has traditionally been a time of quiet self-reflection, penitence, and the somber study of Scripture. We mark ourselves with ashes to remind us of our mortality. Some of us give up something, maybe to practice restraint and create more space for communion with God and with spiritual growth. Psalm 51 has often been the Psalm chosen for Ash Wednesday, famously attributed to David admitting that he screwed up pretty big. And so, again, typically has been the beginning of a solemn season, indeed. But we're we're doing things a little bit differently here at Guilford Park this year. This doesn't mean that there's no spiritual value in solemn introspection or fasting from certain vices or even contemplating our mortality and our consequent total reliance on God's mercy and Jesus' resurrection. But as you might have seen from the title of our Lenten sermon series, we're viewing Lent this year as an invitation, an invitation to good news. Who wants a little bit more good news in their life? Yep. Good news that keeps you and me grounded when so much in the world around us feels so broken, scary, violent, irredeemable. Together, we're gonna listen to the Spirit and let her tell us something good. This will be our focus this Lent because honestly, there's enough heavy in the world right now without Lent adding to the load. Can I get an amen? And so we begin this season of Lent with an invitation that is quite fitting because it's fitting because the season of Lent was originally a call, an invitation, for new converts to learn the basics of Christianity to prepare for their baptisms that traditionally happen on Easter Sunday. And so let's go together to our mailbox and see what RSVP might be waiting for us. Our RSVP takes the form of a parable of Jesus. A parable for the record, that even though it's not explicit in the boundaries of this text, if you go back a little bit, it tells you about the context. He's sharing this parable while sitting at the dinner table of the home of a local Pharisee. And the context of what happens right before, on the way to this Pharisee's house, Jesus healed a man with a skin condition, and he did this on the Sabbath, challenging everyone's obsession with strictly following the letter of the law instead of its spirit. And then when they arrive at this Pharisee's house, Jesus notices how everyone is fighting, vying for the seat of honor next to the host. And Jesus reminds them that the king of heaven operates according to an opposite social logic. No, he tells them, when you're trying to figure out where you're going to sit at a party, actually sit at the lower place, so that maybe the host will come and invite you up, so to speak. Because Jesus reminds them, those that will humble themselves will be what? Exalted. And those that will exalt themselves will be what? Humbled. And then, after all that, we have the parable that Donna read for us today. A host is preparing a party, and he sends out the VIP invitations first, as one does. However, the three invitations don't exactly get positive responses from the A-list celebrities his slave hunts down on his behalf. Each of them has an excuse that at best is half-hearted and at worst is downright pathetic. The first has bought a piece of land and has to go see it, as if he didn't already see it while buying it. The second has bought five oxen and has to go see them. Again, as if one wouldn't have already done this before the purchase. Yes, your pastor is a millennial, this is what you get. Did you know that Friends debuted more than 30 years ago? How does that make us feel? So, in the very first episode of the very first season of Friends, Phoebe is invited by Joey, Ross, and Chandler to help assemble furniture in Ross's new apartment. And Phoebe, without missing a beat, simply replies, Oh, I'm sorry, I wish I could, but I don't want to. This is the response that the host gets from the three original invitees to the host's party, at least according to this millennial's friends-inspired paraphrase of Luke chapter 14. Thanks, they each say, Wish we could, but we really don't want to. The host, humiliated by rejection, realizes that the usual social expectations aren't working for him. You know, usually someone hosts a party in the hopes that people high up the social ladder will attend, and if those at the top come first, then those at the bottom will often find their place in the end, if at all, who really cares? But this host makes a strange and countercultural pivot. He begins to focus on the bottom up, at least in the eyes of those who initially rejected his invitation. Go, he tells his slave. Get the poor, get the disabled, get the blind, get the lame. Go grab Phil, who panhandles across the street between Panera Bread and City Barbecue. Go to Denise, who camps out under the canopy of that closed store next to Scupperdong books downtown. Go find Don, the Harris Teeter worker who moonlights as a lift driver to feed his family because his snap benefits are almost certainly about to run out. Go out and get them all and bring them here. The slave goes and does what he is told, and the masses come, but there's a problem. There's still more room. So the host sends the slave out again, saying, Grab literally anyone you can and bring them here because there's still more room, and there will be no stranger at my table. And thus the feast begins. Phil is no longer seen as an eyesore by those who just want to get home with their groceries. Denise can now feel her fingers and her toes again. Don gets a much-needed break from the rat race that consumes his life just to keep his family from starving. Choice wine is poured. Fresh bread. Can you smell it? Is broken. Grapes are rolling on the floor because there's no more room on the table to contain all the food that has been prepared. Laughter flows as freely as the drinks, and for a moment the social order is reversed, and the kingdom of heaven has disturbed the status quo just enough to remind everyone present that the way things are isn't the way things have to be. And they are indeed not the way God has promised them to be. That is how we begin Lent this year. With an open invitation that is ours, all of us, to receive. Who wouldn't want to say yes to a party like that? Well, as it turns out, there will always be some who will find such a gathering an abomination. A few months ago, our Theology on Tap group read C.S. Lewis's novel, The Great Divorce. The Great Divorce is a novel by Lewis that doesn't, uh it's a in the macro, it's a novel, an analogy, a metaphor of heaven and hell. But Lewis doesn't paint heaven and hell as two static dimensions where people are permanently assigned. Instead, he imagines heaven and hell as two opposite ends of a spectrum, and the real drama is the direction a person chooses to move towards one or to the other. Again and again, the book suggests that the boundary between heaven and hell is traced less by God's refusal than by our resistance. God keeps offering the invitation, but we cling to the resentments, the fears, and the self-protective illusions that make joy unbearable, grace unbearable. And Lewis is telling them the question of heaven and hell isn't finally about God sorting people out into categories. It's about whether we accept the offered invitation and step towards the light or insist on turning away. And he would also offer that there are plenty of people who, given the choice between heaven or hell, choose the bad place. In one of my favorite chapters, probably one of the most satirical chapters in the book, a very self-righteous man is well on his way to the good place. We don't know his name, but he prides himself on all the good he has done in his life. He did the right things. He checked off the appropriate boxes on his moral inventory. But as he heads towards heaven, he is introduced to a man named Lin, who murdered an innocent man back on earth. What are you doing here? The self-righteous man asks. I've gone straight all my life. I don't say I was a religious man, and I don't say I had no faults, far from it, but I've done my best in life. See, I've done my best by everyone. That's the kind of chap I was. I never asked for anything that wasn't mine. If I wanted a drink, I paid for it. If I took my wages, I'd done my job. See, that's the kind of guy I was, and I don't care who knows it. I'm not asking for anyone's bleeding charity. To this, Lynn, who has been forgiven, by the way, by the person who he killed, responds to the self-righteous man, ask for the bleeding charity. Everything is here for the asking, and nothing can be bought. To this, the righteous man indignantly responds, I'd rather be damned than go along with you. And he turns around and heads towards hell. Because at least there it makes sense to him. I wish I could stand before you today and honestly say there's nothing in God's invitation to the kingdom of heaven that doesn't rub me the wrong way, but it does. Because I've been taught, like so many of you, that righteousness is a solo act. It's something I do for myself, my goodness. It's something that I have earned. But that's not how God's math works. It's not about me. It's not about you. It's about us. The invitation we receive this evening as we mark our foreheads with ashes and remind ourselves that none of us is a solo act. Well, we remind ourselves that in everything we do and everything we are, we depend on God's grace and God's invitation. You and I aren't called to reinvent grace as if it were ever a creation of our own. We're simply meant to rest, to rest in the truth. That we are invited to the table not because we've earned it, but because God has made space. And after we've rested in that truth, then comes the time to share it because after all, that's all this party has ever really been about. And some people never accept that. There will always be some who say there's no room for the immigrant. There will always be those who say there's no room for the refugee or the incarcerated or the homeless or the hungry or the anxious or the disabled or the neighbor whose political yard sign makes your blood pressure rise. There will always be those voices, but you and I are not called to listen to those voices tonight. On Ash Wednesday, we'll hear a voice saying, You are dust, and to dust you shall return. We can see that promise as a warning or as an invitation to humility, grace, and a different perspective, away from the voices that claim that might is right and that influence is the only currency worth pursuing. Instead, I hope we all hear that voice declaring our dustiness as a voice that will forever be God's. A voice with an unending invitation for you. Yes, you all of you. An invitation that's freely available to you right here and right now. And if you can't accept it now, that's okay. We all have those days, but it's not going anywhere. That invitation will always be there. Because you are somebody in God's eyes. Which brings me to the close, uh, to the closing. Um The Reverend Jesse Jackson died. Was it yesterday? Yeah, just yesterday, at the age of 84, I think it was. Well, I saw a video the other day of him back in 1972. You know how old he was in 1972? He was 31 years old. So 31-year-old civil rights activist, and he visited one of my favorite places in the world, one of my favorite addresses in New York City, 123 Sesame Street. And there he met with a diverse group of children and led them in a liturgy for which he became well known. It's a call and response. It really is a liturgy, if you will. I'm going to play the video up here, but first I would like to involve all the children if they want. I think you all deserve a front row seat for this. What do you think? So I'm going to invite all the children by themselves or with the parents to come up to this first uh front row right here so that you can see the TV screen extra good. Okay? Because this is a message that's especially for you. Okay? So if you want to go up in that first pew in front of uh Lynn and Ken. Because I want to make sure. Oh, it's kind of hard to get in there, isn't it? I'm giving you permission to stand on the pew. I know, property committee folks, I'm sorry. But if it you can stand on the pew if it's easier to see, okay? Can you see alright? You see the screen? Okay, I wanted to make sure. All right.

SPEAKER_03 18:00

Okay. Here we go. Zumbo. I'm going to be bullshit. How many people yellow? How many of the bad? What a man. I'm going to be small. Some bodies. I may make you mistake. What a man. Some bodies. My face is difficult. My heart is difficult. But I'm a man. Some bodies. I am black.

unknown 18:53

I am black.

Affirmation And Closing Amen

SPEAKER_03 18:54

Brown. White. I speak a different language. But I must be respected. Protected. Never rejected. I am. God's child. Give yourself a big name.

SPEAKER_01 19:20

So friends, say it with me. I'm an in them. Somebody. I'm in them. God's child. There's room for me. There's room for me at God's table. There's room for my neighbor. There's room for my neighbor at God's table. And no one and nothing can change that. And no one and nothing can change that. And may all of us, God's beloved, say. Amen. Friends, please rise in body or in spirit for the singing of our next hymn for everyone born. Please note that we will only be singing verses one, three, and five.