Luke 14:1, 7-14
August 28, 2022
I am very fortunate to have good relationships, good friendships really,
with my older sister and brother. And I’m not just saying that because one or both
could be watching this right now. I’m saying that because they were both older
than I was, we didn’t experience the sibling rivalry and arguing that other
siblings do. My kids, who are much closer in age, fought like the proverbial
cats and dogs when they were younger. But that wasn’t true in my case. There
was older sibling to younger sibling teasing, some taking of my hands and
playing the “Stop Hitting Yourself” game, which was always my favorite. But we
really didn’t argue. Until …
When I was about 15, Jill came back home for about six
months to work and save money before she and my brother-in-law got married. She
would have been around 26, and as I mentioned I was 15 and a very 15 15-year-old, and I was not about to be bossed
around by my big sister. So, even though we’d never squabbled or argued before,
now we were.
One argument that I remember centered around the family
table. Mom made dinner. We were sitting down to eat, and I went to sit in the
spot that I had been sitting in for a long time. Jill came in to sit down, and
said, “That’s my seat.”
And I said, “No, it’s mine.”
And she said something to the effect of, “Amy, that’s my
seat. It’s always been my seat.”
And I responded with something like, “No, Jill. It’s my
seat. It’s been my seat for a long time now.”
And then she said, well you can imagine the rest. I don’t
remember how the argument ended. I don’t know if I gave in and sat in another
chair or if she did, or if one of our parents took that spot and made everybody
move. It doesn’t really matter. It was a silly argument as you can tell. But I
suspect there was a lot more going on underneath the silliness. Jill was home
again, and this was how home was supposed to be, plus who was this teenager who
had taken the place of her little sister? And to my thinking, Jill had been
away from home a long time, and things change, like that was now my seat.
I’ve often tried to imagine the scene Jesus would have
been watching in this story Luke tells. All we read from our text is that Jesus
was watching how the guests chose the places of honor at the table. Does that
mean they were jostling and pushing and elbowing each other out of the way? Or
does it mean something more like one guest saying to another guest,
“Oh, would you look at the strange bird over there?”
And when the other guest looks, they jump into the
desired seat and say,
“My seat now, Chuckles. You snooze, you lose.”
This was a meal at the home of a religious leader, which
would mean that person had significant status in that society, so it’s hard for
me to imagine that etiquette would have allowed guests to push each other out
of chairs. But because this was a meal in the home of someone with societal
status, to have a seat of honor was a big deal, so maybe they did push each
other around to get to the best seats.
Clearly,
there was a hierarchy to the seating arrangement. There were seats of honor and
there were seats of, if not shame, then much less honor. It seems as if the
lunchroom rules that dictated my Junior High experience – in which some kids
had the status to sit at the cool table and some, most, kids didn’t – did not
begin with my Junior High. They have been in place for a long, long time. And
it was this hierarchy, these rules that Jesus observed at this meal.
“When
Jesus noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable.
When you are invited to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of
honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your
host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this
person your place, and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest
place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that
when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you
will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you.”
This doesn’t read like other parables
we’ve heard, does it? But something in the guests behavior must have compelled
Jesus to speak about what he witnessed at this dinner in a way that would make
the guests both recognize themselves in it, but not stop listening because of
that recognition. Therefore, Jesus tells a parable that at first glance may
seem as though he is promoting a kind of lunchroom mentality and table
hierarchy. There are places of honor, there are special seats, and there is
indeed a cool table, but don’t expect that you belong there. In that context, where
you sat at a banquet signified not just how cozy you were with the host, but
your status in society. It was, indeed, a hierarchy. There were some on top,
some in the middle and many at the bottom. As I said before, at first Jesus seems
to be supporting this hierarchy by encouraging people to take a lesser seat. Or
was he pointing out to them that at another table, the true table, the
table within God’s kin-dom, those who sought to put themselves at the top of
the food chain or at the top rung of the social ladder, were the ones who would
be humbled. Their social hierarchies won’t work at God’s table.
“For all who exalt themselves will be
humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Let’s also remember, that the very
first verse of this chapter tells us that Jesus was being watched by the
Pharisees. I do not want to paint the Pharisees with such a broad stroke that we
assume they were all watching Jesus with malicious intent. Some of them might
have been, true, but others may have been watching him just to see what he
would do next, what he would say next. After all, everything this man did and
said was counter to their culture, radical to their way of thinking. He healed
on the Sabbath. He forgave people of
their sins. He spoke and taught with an authority no one had ever witnessed before.
What would he do next? So, they watched
him intently. Jesus knew he was being watched, so perhaps he thought this was a
valuable teaching moment. He could make a point about the hierarchy surrounding
the table fellowship and those who were invited and those who were not. And he
could make another razor-sharp point as well.
There was one more aspect of this
honor/shame culture. There was an agenda behind every invitation. You didn’t
invite people to a dinner for the heck of it. You invited someone who could do
something for you, just as you might be invited for the same reason. You
invited someone who just by being in your home raised your place in the social realm.
It was about give and take. I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine. There
was an agenda. I imagine that agenda was so ingrained in people that no one
thought much about it. But Jesus made them think about it.
“When you give a luncheon or a
dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich
neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor,
the crippled, the lame, and the blind.”
Don’t invite someone who will repay
you. Invite those who can do nothing for you. Invite those that would be
despised at any other banquet in town. Invite those who have no way to return
the favor and when you do you will be blessed. You may not be repaid now, but
you will be in time. You will be repaid at “the resurrection of the
righteous.”
A place of honor here doesn’t count
in the kin-dom of God, and it is God’s kin-dom, God’s great table that Jesus is
trying to make them see and understand. And I don’t believe that Jesus is just
pointing to some kin-dom far, far away, in that sweet by and by. Jesus is
talking about the kin-dom that is in their midst in the here and in the now. Don’t
you get it, he seems to be saying. It’s not about status. It’s not about the seat
of honor you may think you deserve or earned. It’s about how you treat other
people. It’s about seeing other people not through the lens of status, position,
class or social rank, but as children of God. It seems to me that when Jesus
warns the guests about assuming the seats of honor at the table, the
distinguished guests he was referring to were not the people in power at the
time, but the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind.
Today marks the 59th anniversary
of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King, Jr’s “I Have a Dream”
speech. I’ve watched that speech and listened to that speech and read that
speech countless times. But each time I hear it I am struck anew at the depth
of his message. It was a speech about Civil Rights, but it was more than that.
It was a speech about the injustice of segregation and the mockery it made of
the so-called American Dream, but it was also more than that. It was about a
vision of the beloved community. It was a dream of every single person,
regardless of color, class or creed being welcomed at a table where we all
belong, a table that was not made for some and not others, a table that was not
made by one group who then grudgingly had to allow room for other groups to
find a seat. Dr. King’s vision of a beloved community, of a community where
everyone had a place at the table held up a mirror for the country. Gazing into
it we saw how far away we were from that beloved community, that banquet table
of grace. Dr. King reminded us that when some of us aren’t free to come to the
table, none of us are truly free.
The parables Jesus told are a mirror.
They were a mirror for those he spoke to directly. They are a mirror for us as well. I don’t see
it as mirror in which those of us on top are necessarily shamed or scorned, but
we see in the reflection that often the things we think are important – places
of honor, status, etc. – don’t matter in the kin-dom of God. They don’t matter
at God’s table. When we can see that, really see that, when we can recognize that
the superficial and external don’t matter, we come one step closer to that
beloved community. We see that the table we all long to have a place at, is not
our table but God’s. It is the table where finally, all of us, all of God’s
children, have a place.
Let all God’s children say,
“Alleluia!”
Amen.
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