november’s path project :: expand the table
this month we are exploring Jesus’ teaching to invite and welcome people. the path project this month is called ” expand the table” based on the words of Jesus: “The next time you put on a dinner, don’t just invite your friends and family and rich neighbors, the kind of people who will return the favor. Invite some people who never get invited out”
here’s the task:
1. always be inviting, everywhere and everyone for the month. see someone sitting alone in the lunch room? invite them to sit with you ro take some friends and go sit with them. know someone who doesn’t get invited out to the movies with friends or to the party? invite them. someone on your soccer/baseball/swim team who has a hard time finding a practice partner? ask them to do drills with you.
2. work your way up to this one. talk with your family about how your Thanksgiving could be different this year by being more inviting. you could invite someone new to have thanksgiving dinner with your family (a senior adult without family nearby; a neighbor you have not gotten to know well; someone who would be spending thanksgiving in a shelter, assisted living facility, group home, etc; a family member who has become estranged from the family). You could also invite your family to move their Thanksgiving dinner someplace new this year. You could choose to serve and share a meal at a homeless shelter, assisted living facility, children’s home, under the bridge, on the street corner.
How will you expand the table this month? tell us your experience on the message boards!
Some resources:
Making Room: Recovering Hospitality As a Christian Tradition by Christine D. Pohl
www.waytolive.org click on “the practices and then click on “welcome”.
what Jesus said/did regarding welcome and invitation:
Later when Jesus was eating supper at Matthew’s house with his close followers, a lot of disreputable characters came and joined them. When the Pharisees saw him keeping this kind of company, they had a fit, and lit into Jesus’ followers. “What kind of example is this from your Teacher, acting cozy with crooks and riffraff?”
Jesus, overhearing, shot back, “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? Go figure out what this Scripture means: ‘I’m after mercy, not religion.’ I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders.” Matthew 9
12 He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid.
13 But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind,
14 and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” Luke 14:7-14
Then Jesus entered and walked through Jericho. There was a man there, his name Zacchaeus, the head tax man and quite rich. He wanted desperately to see Jesus, but the crowd was in his way—he was a short man and couldn’t see over the crowd. So he ran on ahead and climbed up in a sycamore tree so he could see Jesus when he came by. When Jesus got to the tree, he looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, hurry down. Today is my day to be a guest in your home.” Zacchaeus scrambled out of the tree, hardly believing his good luck, delighted to take Jesus home with him. Everyone who saw the incident was indignant and grumped, “What business does he have getting cozy with this crook?” Zacchaeus just stood there, a little stunned. He stammered apologetically, “Master, I give away half my income to the poor—and if I’m caught cheating, I pay four times the damages.” Jesus said, “Today is salvation day in this home! Here he is: Zacchaeus, son of Abraham! For the Son of Man came to find and restore the lost.”
Luke 19
36He took a little child and had him stand among them. Taking him in his arms, he said to them, 37“Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.” Mark 9