Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

Some of you, in reading the title of today’s sermon, know the reference I am making in posting the question, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” It’s a reference to one of my all-time favorite films, and one that appears on many lists of the greatest films of all time. Among it’s cast are some of the most iconic names in film – Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poitier. In fact, Spencer Tracy was ill through much of the filming and the last scene was shot just 17 days before his death.

It's a film about what we do when confronted with the unexpected. Tracy and Hepburn play a progressive couple living in San Franciso, when their 23 year-old daughter flies home from a vacation in Hawaii early to introduce them to the man she fell in love with there and intends to soon marry – a 37 year-old physician, who also happens to be Black. The film was released in 1967, just six months after the Supreme Court decision on Loving vs. Virginia. It’s powerful to consider that filming took place while interracial marriage was still illegal in 17 states in this country.

The film is about inclusion, and what a family that considers itself inclusive does when their pronouncements about inclusivity bump up against a real world situation they didn’t expect and perhaps had never imagined. The film asks the question of how we will ultimately respond when our own stated values collide with a personal experience that challenges them. The story told asks how will we respond when we are called to prove our inclusiveness in a way that makes us personally uncomfortable.

Some of the best acting moments in this film are moments of complete silence. Moments where the characters are stunned at the realization of what is happening, or find themselves at a loss for words and afraid of saying the wrong thing. These moments capture such a human experience that all of us are likely to have at some point, a moment when we are asked to “put our money where our mouth is” in an unexpected way. If you haven’t seen it yet, which I learned at staff meeting this week that two of my colleagues have not, I highly encourage you to take 90 minutes and check out this film. (It’s currently streaming for free on Tubi.)

While many times it goes unseen and unsaid, our Gospel lesson today connects to the subject matter of the film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? Contained in this text is arguably the most well-known Bible verse of all time – John 3:16. This is the nutshell version of the Gospel that we see so many places, from gift shops to graffiti, to signs at sporting events, to tattoos, to the bottom of the cups at fast food chain In-N-Out. John 3:16 is arguably the most quoted and referenced piece of scripture by Christians, particularly American Christians.

Despite the frequency with which it is quoted and referenced, most religious scholars note that John 3:16 as a text, is one of the prime examples of how a text can be separated from it’s surrounding verses – stripping it of its context and larger meaning. John 3:16 is often a victim of scriptural cherry picking or taking a cafeteria approach to the Bible, where we take the line we want and leave the rest behind.

So let’s look at that larger context together. In this third chapter of John, we find Jesus talking to a man named Nicodemus, and he is telling him about the Kingdom of God. Jesus uses metaphors and Nicodemus is trying to understand him in literal terms so it’s a little like they are talking past one another. Jesus is talking about being born again and Nicodemus is thinking about where babies come from and trying to figure out the logistics of second birth! Jesus is describing that being born again requires a spiritual birth into a new family. It’s a life altering event and one that brings you deeper into relationship with the family of God.

When Jesus talks about the Kingdom and about eternal life, he’s not talking about life after death here. He’s not talking about stamping your ticket to for boarding the train when you breathe your last that will take you to the pearly gates and streets of gold. He’s talking about a rebirth that transforms your life so that by relationship to God and to the other children of God, you now live a life more abundant and more full. This is the life that Jesus models for us. This is the life we are to seek as followers of him.

And Jesus is how that life is made available to the world. Jesus is the model for this abundant and fuller life. One of the themes that is unique to the Gospel of John is that this gospel is so very focused on the readers or hearers understanding just what it is that Jesus reveals to us about the nature of God. Another characteristic is how very focused this Gospel is on the notion of “belief.” Some variation of the verb “believe” appears 84 times in the Gospel of John. Compare that with just 31 times in the other three Gospels combined.

This week through study I learned that the original meaning of the Greek word translated as “belief” or “believe”, “Pisteo” is a verb that is fully grounded in relationship. This kind of belief is not merely some mental exercise, but an all-embracing attitude and all-encompassing trust in the relationship with God. This kind of belief is transformative in the ways that only relationship with and trust in God can transform. John 3:16 isn’t about quoting a verse or some magic formula of words that then makes us “saved.” Rather, it is about how giving ourselves over to God through following the example of Christ opens us up to a life we never even imagined. It grants us entry into the Kingdom of God.

Isn’t that beautiful? But, that’s not how we often use John 3:16. More often, it’s use as an identity marker, and a way of noting who is in and who is out of the club. And that misunderstanding is what I want us to dwell on a little longer today.

It’s been an awful week. We’ve seen another high-profile act of violence as a prominent political voice was killed in front of a large crowd. Minutes later, the news channels cut away to another shooting at a high school in Colorado. It’s been another hard week in the United States of America.

As we celebrated the anniversary of 9/11 one day after these two awful events, I couldn’t help but think about how recalling the events of that day, is often a retelling of stories of connection. Of bonds formed between strangers. Of phone calls to loved ones. Of Americans of all persuasions emerging from the horror of that day with a resolve to stand together – putting differences aside and claiming the shared identity of American first and foremost.

That didn’t happen this week. We saw more horrific violence and we didn’t come together and center a shared identity. I saw the opposite. I saw blame. I saw mistrust. I saw name-calling and boasting about blocking people on cell phones and social media. I have felt a weight in my chest at how divided we are at baseline, and how horrific acts of violence do not seem to bring us together right now – they seem to drive us farther apart.

John 3:16 is a well-known text that lays out a simple formula for how God intends to transform us and give us life that will not end. But what is so often missed in this text, and in the verse that comes right behind it is that God did this out of love for the world. Not for a certain race, or people from a certain place, or for people who already have a faith, or for people who are most agreeable.

For God so loved the WORLD – that’s the “why” of the whole thing. The text could have easily said, “For God so loved Israel,” or “For God so loved his people.” But it doesn’t. The most quoted text in our Christian tradition is a text of radical inclusion. God sent Jesus to the world not to condemn it, but so the WORLD might be saved through him. Through his example. This text we so often hear used as if it were a password in a membership-only club is a text of open membership. It is a text that tells us that God’s starting place for the whole Jesus event is a place of immense inclusion.

So what does that mean? If God so loved the WORLD, what does that mean for us? Well, it means guess who’s coming to dinner? It means that when we are transformed through the example of Christ and spiritually born into a new life and a new family, there’s gonna be some people there in the Kingdom that you didn’t think were going to be there. Maybe even that you were hoping weren’t going to be there.

It means that any and all of our pronouncements about God’s people and God’s family are going to include that uncle you wanted to forget about, or the cousin that you don’t want to sit next to at the reunion. And it’s probably going to include some of those people who you presently believe to be diametrically opposed to you! The ones you are apt to blame for America’s downfall. The ones whose opinions you find abhorrent. The ones you call names. Those folks are likely going to be right alongside you getting a seat at the table at that joyous feast in the Kingdom. For God so loved the WORLD means that the person you despise is almost certainly someone who God loves.

Guess who’s coming to dinner? This is the challenge posed to us in this text that we normally read when we to hear something familiar that makes us feel good. The text we love to put on our dish towels and paperweights is also a text that challenges us to always remember that God’s starting place is the WORLD, and worshipping a God of abundant welcome, means that God’s welcome will inevitably put you at the same dinner table with someone you didn’t expect, and someone that makes you uncomfortable. Guess who’s coming to dinner – to the joyous feast in the Kingdom of God?

So as you read, recite and reflect on this text today in the Gospel of John, may you hear it as a text that is personal to you – an invitation from God to you to be born again into a new, larger family of God. And may you also hear it as that same invitation from God into that same family of God being extended to someone you don’t expect, and maybe would rather not have to consider your sibling.

For God so loved the WORLD is our gift and our perpetual challenge to move outside of ourselves, to think beyond our circles of comfort, and to see a beloved child of God in the eyes of even the most challenging of people.

Guess who’s coming to dinner? Let’s not be caught off guard by it.

And all of God’s people who could said, Amen.