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

Send us Fan MailText: Luke 14:15-24Preaching: Rev. Dr. Stephen M. FearingWhat 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.Follow us on Instagram @guilfordparkpresbyterianchurchFollow us on Facebook @guilfordparkpcFollow us on TikTok @guilfordparkpreschurchWebsite:  www.guilfordpark.org