The Ancestral Dinner Party

Jeremiah 2:4-13
Luke 14:1, 7-14

Imagine, if you would, that you’re at a dinner party. You can imagine a dinner party like the ones that you might be used to, whether they be potlucks at church or with your loved ones. You could imagine a black or white tie affair, if that’s what you’re more comfortable with. You could even imagine yourself reclining on cushions on the floor around a low table, as would have been customary in Jesus’ context. If you’d like, you could also picture the food that you’d have at this imaginary dinner party, although that’s not quite as important to me. Maybe it’s some iteration of the biblical Mediterranean diet that would blend in with a contemporary potluck or a restaurant that has a dress code. What is important to me is the guest list. Before you let your imaginations run too wild, I should tell you—this isn’t some fantasy dinner party where you get to choose which figures from history or which modern celebrities you’d like to have dinner with. You can hang onto those lists for another time. 

No, this dinner party will be attended by our ancestors, by the people who came before us and that we don’t really get to choose. Maybe you don’t know your biological ancestors. That’s fine. Ancestors in this context will also mean our ancestors of faith, those who came before us in this church or in the church universal. You’ve all heard me mention John Wesley. He’s there. So are his mother, Susannah, and his brother, Charles. Francis Asbury, the bishop who organized Methodists in America is there. So are Freeborn Garrettson, Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, Richard Allen, Barabra Heck, Philip Embury, and countless others. If you’re the kind of person who gets stressed out around large groups, or if you’re thinking about how much work it would be to host all of these people, I’m right there with you, don’t worry. It’s a big dinner party: and those are just the folks from the Methodist branch of the family from a couple generations. The guest list gets much, much longer. It stretches on and on, all the way back to the earliest of ancestors, however we determine that.

What would that conversation look like? What would you talk about with all those people? Perhaps there are family mysteries or secrets you’d like clearer answers on, or any answers at all. Would conversation flow easily? Or would we have a hard time getting along with the folks who set up a legacy that got us to where we are now? Would we fall into the tendency to mythologize, as we often do, looking only at the good parts and deleting, erasing, covering up any of the misdeeds? Would we be tempted to? 

As much as I love to lift up the really cool parts of our history as Methodists, it’s also important to recognize that our legacy includes a lot of harm. While it’s worth celebrating the fact that John Wesley and Francis Asbury licensed women and People of Color to preach, we can’t pretend that that means we Methodists don’t carry a legacy of white supremacy and misogyny. It’s important to know the stories of those like Richard Allen, the founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, who had to split off from the white Methodists because of the horrible segregation inflicted on Black Methodists. Because while we may gladly welcome Richard Allen at our dinner party, we have to reckon with the fact that the white pastor in Philadelphia, who made Allen and the other Black congregants sit in the balcony, is also a part of this gathering. William Apess, the first indigenous North American licensed to preach by the Methodists, would be there. But so would Colonel John Milton Chivington, the Methodist preacher who led the Massacre at Sand Creek in which 300 Cheyenne and Arapaho innocents were slaughtered. We have to reckon with the fact that, while we would welcome both Sarah Mallet and Sojourner Truth, two early Methodist preachers, we would also be sharing a table with the men who restricted women only to teaching Sunday School.

This list could go on and on, from the ancestors who fought for LGBTQ inclusion and the ancestors who opposed them, to those who used Methodism to colonize parts of Africa and the indigenous African Methodists who fought for sovereignty and independence. The table is wide. It’s varied. It’s uncomfortable how much tension and history exists among the guests. But these are all people who have a place in our past, who have contributed to where we are, and who we are, today. We are tasked, burdened even, with holding these ancestors in tension— whether we see them as pioneers or as pure evil. Either way, they are a part of our story. The decisions that they made in their time, decisions that placed them in seats of honor and pushed others to the margins, continue to impact how we live our lives today and how we strive to be the church. This inherited thirst for power tells us that we are to have the most of scarce resources. It tells us that we ought to have the biggest church, the most activities, the newest everything. It tells us as individuals that we ought to amass the greatest wealth, get close with the highest level of society we can, and do everything in our power to preserve and grow our own standing.

While we may want to leave the power-hungry, conformist parts of our story in the past, we can’t. One of my key takeaways from this exchange between Jeremiah and God that we read this morning is that we need to recognize the ways in which our ancestors have strayed, and we need to confront those ways head on. Even when it’s embarrassing, even when we might fear a loss of credibility, even when hiding certain parts of our story seems far more convenient and far more comfortable. We can’t pretend that they didn’t happen—and we can’t pretend like they don’t still have an impact on us today. Whether their example is one we choose to emulate or one we choose to intentionally counteract, our actions can trace their origins back to those who came before us. How much of our energy is spent just trying to clean up messes from the past? Messes of climate change and ecological degradation, messes of colonialism and war, messes of inaccessible spaces, white supremacy, misogyny, and all sorts of oppression. Messes of sexual abuse, which remains pervasive in many of our institutions. 

All of this isn’t to say that we can pass all of the blame for what’s wrong with the world off on half of our guests seated around the table. But we can’t let them off the hook either. Their story is part of our own, and to tell our story without mentioning them is a good way to not actually make any meaningful change. They still exist—we encounter them each time we gather at the communion table, an open table from which none are turned away. Some of you may be sitting there with the adage “those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it” going through your heads. As much as I love to roll my eyes at that cliche, there is some truth to it. But what I’m talking about goes far beyond just knowing our history. We need to talk about it, to wrestle with it, to confront it head on—and seek reconciliation. Those ancestors who came before us, the ones we’re ashamed of, are a part of our story and they are a part of the story of God’s saving love. The love that stays with us, no matter what. The love that touched even those whom we would not believe. The same love that calls each of us and all of us to take our seat at that table and look each person present right in the face, knowing that they are a part of us, and we are a part of them.

We are called to break the old habits that hold us back from revealing the Kingdom of God in our midst. We are called to look at our ancestors, in all their brokenness and beauty, and find hope for tomorrow. We are called to face the past with honesty so that we—as individuals, as a church, as the Body of Christ—might seek true, transformative reconciliation. May we do this work not for ourselves alone, but for those who will come after us. Amen.