August 31: The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
I wonder how many times Jesus got invited over for dinner a second time. There are numerous stories throughout the Gospels that show Jesus over for a meal, and rarely does it work out well for the host. These dinners typically get interrupted by him healing some sick people, his friends coming over to eat with dirty hands, some woman comes in and washes his feet with her hair. Many of these dinners include Jesus saying something rather provocative, even insulting to the host or the other guests in the room.
In no dinner described in the Gospels does Jesus sit quietly, politely receiving the hospitality of the host, thanking them for their kind generosity. “That was wonderful, Mike and Debbie, what a beautifully cooked brisket. I must get that recipe.” Dinner parties with Jesus rarely end without some sort of drama. And today’s lesson offers us Jesus at such a dinner party. He’s at the house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees. After he heals someone, Jesus watches how the guests all take their seats, and decides to tell them a parable.
“When you are invited to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone with more honor has also come to the party and will shamefully displace you from your seat. Take instead a seat of lower honor, then you may be honored with a less shameful seat when the host sees your humility.”
How awkward. The leader of the Pharisees invited Jesus over for a sabbath meal, and after all the guests had just sat down, Jesus tells them how to choose a seat correctly. I bet many of them started to squirm. How uncomfortable. How insulting, even.
For in the society in which Jesus lived, where one sits advertises one’s social status. If you sat close to the host, you were important and of high honor. If you sat further away from the host, your position in society was seen as less than. Your seat determined your social capital. And your social capital was your currency and your honor. So, if you overplay your hand, Jesus tells them, you risk your social status, your honor, and can bring shame upon you and your household. So choose your seat wisely.
Seems like good advice. Makes sense, right? Be the best at humility!
But is this what Jesus really teaches in this parable? To be the best at humility? Why would Jesus give advice on how to politely live into our vain tendencies of self-promotion? Is he really a proponent of such social gamesmanship? That doesn’t seem like his M.O. So, as a professor once told me, keep reading.
“For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” Jesus switches the script.
If he hadn’t added this last sentence, Jesus’ teaching might have been just some good advice on how to game the seating system in an honor/shame-based society. But this final sentence of humbling and exalting puts this parable into a much broader way of thinking. Sure, he is talking about a seating chart, but he is teaching them about so much more. He is instructing them on how the seating chart works in the Kingdom of God, which we hear first in a song from his mother Mary- the lowly are exalted, and the exalted are brought low.
And he is also speaking of his own future exaltation, the exaltation by which all glory, all honor, and all shame are measured, his cross.
I wonder what modern-day equivalents of this we might have. In what ways, in socially prescribed or other acceptable ways, do we exalt ourselves, do we move to the proverbial best chairs in the room? Facebook posts that illustrate how well read we are, how enlightened we are politically and socially? Instagram posts that show only our most perfect days and vacations? Talking ill about someone without working the issue out with that person?
What are the ways in which we figuratively, and literally, massage our resumes, to claim the best chairs in the room?
There are many ways in which we do this, but how we do it, I suppose, isn’t as important as why we do it. What are we trying to prove or gain? What hole are we trying to fill? What need do we feel wanting?
The guests in today’s parable fought for the best chairs in the room because they wanted to name and claim their worth before their leaders and peers. But our worth is not defined by which chair we sit in. That’s the freedom of the cross.
The freedom and the good news of the cross is that we don’t have to create or sustain our own worth. Our worth, our freedom, our currency, and our status is not defined by which chair we sit in, but by the God who claims us as his own. Our worth is found in our baptism, as sons and daughters, as members of the very one who is Lord of all.
In Christ, we don’t have to compete for our seat at the table. There is plenty of room for all of us. There is no scarcity, no ranking, just the invitation to sit and eat.
Back to the reading, Jesus then turns to the host.
“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.”
Like the chairs, these dinner invitations were marks of one’s status. If you had an invite, you were part of that circle. You were part of the circle because invitations weren’t seen as pure gifts, but as invitations of reciprocity. If I invited you to my place back then, I would expect you to invite me over to your place next time you threw a party. I kept your honor intact in inviting you, so you are expected to keep mine intact as well.
You can see how this creates a bit of an insulated circle, then, right? The powerful take care of the powerful, while the poor, the lame, and the blind, as Luke writes it, get left out.
But the genius of the honor/shame system is that if a powerful person, let’s say a leader of the pharisees, were to honor someone who didn’t have the same social standing with an invite to their party, that person would be expected to invite the leader over to their place. But presuming, because of their physical condition, social location, or poverty, they didn’t have a house, or their house was small and run-down, that person would not be in a position to reciprocate the invitation, thus bringing shame upon such a person. So, to keep from shaming such a person, it was seen as better not to invite them in the first place. “You stay in your circles and I’ll stay in mine. It really is better off for you anyway if I don’t invite you over.” This system was built to keep people in their social locations and to keep those locations separate. And so Jesus says to the leader, ‘invite them, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.’ All have honor and worth and dignity.
Their honor and worth and dignity is not up to you to decide or demand in return. We are not meant to eat separately.
Again, Jesus teaches from his mother’s song,
“He has put down the mighty from their seat, and has exalted the humble and the meek. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.”
Jesus did not cover table manners when he preached the sermon on the mount. But he did teach us what manner of life we are to live at every proverbial table we sit at. And today’s parable is about more than table manners. It’s more than party etiquette. It is Jesus explaining yet again, around a table, how he is reordering this world around his way of grace.
God’s table is big enough for all of us, so pull up a chair. And pull up a chair for your neighbor. And may we always eat together, in all that that signifies. Amen.
The Rev. Daniel J. Reeves