To fulfill the Great Commission, we need to know who Jesus wants us to invite to our Thanksgiving dinner.
John Piper spoke these words in 1980 when the fourth Thursday in November was just around the corner. As a new pastor who wanted to lead his people to obey all of Jesus’ commands, he opened up to Luke 14:12-14.
“He also said to the man who had invited him: “When you give a meal or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or your rich neighbors, lest they also invite you and pay you. . . But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot pay you. For you will be rewarded at the resurrection of the just.”
At this point — as you read this — an old sermon that is rooted in an even older text comes into our present and beckons us down. We should listen. Jesus’ words in Luke 14, after all, are to his church with transhistorical power. Right now in 2012, with a week to go until the fourth Thursday in November, Piper’s 32-year-old exhibit offers two points to consider when inviting people to gather for Thanksgiving dinner next week.
First, beware of the law of reciprocity.
Piper explains,
There is in every human heart a terrible and powerful tendency to live according to the law of reciprocity. earthly payment, the law of reciprocity. There is a subtle and relentless inclination in our flesh to do what makes life as comfortable as possible and to avoid what makes us uncomfortable or shakes up our placid routine or adds the least bit of tension to our Thanksgiving dinner. The most sanctified among us must fight every day not to be enslaved by the universal tendency to always act for the greatest earthly reward.
People who dismiss lightly as a rhetorical exaggeration are probably blind to the impossibility of exaggerating the corruption of the human heart and its deceptive power to make us think that all is well when we are enslaved to the law of reciprocity, the law that says: do always what it will be worth in convenience, quiet pleasures, domestic comfort, and social tranquility. Jesus’ words are radical because our sin is radical. He waves a red flag because destruction is coming for people governed by the law of reciprocity.
Second, Thanksgiving dinner helps reveal our treasure.
Why does it make such an eternal difference who you invite to Thanksgiving dinner? It is not so much that this afternoon is decisive. The reason it makes an eternal difference is that, along with many other occasions, it reveals where our treasure is. Is Jesus, with his commands and promises, more valuable to us than tradition and convenience and earthly comfort? Is he our treasure or is he the world?
That question is not decided during a church invitation. It is decided at Thanksgiving dinner, and hour after hour every day, whether we are willing to bother with those who cannot pay, or whether we avoid them and thus preserve our placid routine.
It matters who you invite to Thanksgiving dinner because it matters where your treasure is.
Excerpts from “Who Should We Invite? Thanksgiving Dinner? (1980)