Scripture Luke 14:1; 7-14
On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the Sabbath, they were watching him closely. When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. “When you are invited by someone 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. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers and sisters 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. And you will be blessed because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
Sermon
Being invited to dinner can be a very special experience. I’m not talking about Thanksgiving dinner at our grandparents’ house, though of course that is special, too. But we know our place at our grandparents’ house. All the relationships are predetermined, siblings, niblings, aunts and uncles. There are no surprises.
The kind of dinner I’m talking about is usually small, and intimate. I remember the first time I was invited to dinner as a grownup. It was my second year of college, and suddenly I had a whole new group of friends. One of them invited all six of us to her mother’s home for a spring dinner. It was a chance to get out of the dorms. It was a chance to taste my new friend’s cooking. It was a chance to get to know these people even better. I dressed up. There were candles. There were things I’d never eaten before, like Chicken Cordon Bleu, and a sauce made with cognac and sugar that my friend served over strawberries for dessert. A dinner like this is an occasion. It’s unforgettable. And it makes everyone there feel very special.
Contrast this to a dinner, maybe a large one, where you don’t know everyone, but you know who the important people are. A dinner where people make speeches. Let’s say, a wedding. The guests can be made to feel very special at a wedding, but there’s no question as to who are the ones in the spotlight: the couple being married. Their families. Their closest friends. And then, perhaps, what I think of as concentric circles of closeness or distance, depending on how you look at it. It’s one thing to go as to a wedding as a groomsman. It’s quite another to go as the spouse of a college roommate.
Jesus is at a Very Important Dinner in today’s passage. In fact, according to Luke’s gospel, this is the third time he’s been invited to dinner by some Pharisees, and it’s the third time he’s accepted. And, we are told, they are watching him.
A word about Pharisees, before I go any further. At times, the gospels insinuate that the Pharisees are enemies of Jesus. I’d like to counterbalance that argument. In the chapter prior to this one, when Jesus is in Jerusalem, the Pharisees have warned Jesus, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you” (Luke 13:31). That doesn’t sound like something an enemy would do. And the Pharisees and Jesus have many beliefs that align with one another. Like Jesus, Pharisees believed in one God, in the divine inspiration of the scriptures, in the resurrection of the dead, and in the sacredness of everyday life. Like Jesus, the Pharisees believed that blessings ought to be in the hands of regular people, and not just the province of religious leaders. And like Jesus, Pharisees believed that God so loved humanity that God gave us that which would lead us to eternal life—the Word. Some scholars are beginning to think that Jesus himself may have been a Pharisee, since they stood for a lot of the same things Jesus stood for.
But the Pharisees also had robust conversations about all these things, and they sometimes disagreed, and that debate was how they tried to arrive at the truth. Also, they seemed to like having Jesus to dinner. And while he is at dinner, they watch him. They are interested in him. They don’t entirely understand him, and they are, frankly, alarmed at the some of the things they hear about him being able to cast out demons and miraculously heal people. They are curious. They watch him.
But Jesus is watching the Pharisees, too. And he notices something interesting: they seem to be deliberately choosing to sit in the places that indicate honor or prestige. And this flies in the face of some of their positions—for example, their conviction that the temple priests held onto too tightly to power and position. And it wasn’t unusual in these kinds of dinners for the place one sat to be an actual indication of whether one was “in” or “out,” whether they were a VIP or a persona non grata.
You know what? Jesus said. I’m going to tell you a parable about a wedding banquet. (A an aside, this doesn’t sound like a parable. It sounds like a teaching.) When you go to a wedding banquet, don’t angle for the best seat. Because, what if the host of that wedding banquet has someone else in mind for the best seat, and so they send you all the way to the back of the room, far away from the VIP’s? That would be pretty humiliating, right? So instead, go and sit there from the get-go. Be the guy in the back. Because then the host might see you and say, No, I don’t want you all the way back there—come sit up here, near me! And then everyone there will say, “Hey, he's a VIP!” And wouldn’t that be nice?
For, says Jesus, all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
This is “kingdom/ kin-dom of God 101.” From the very beginning of this gospel, even Mary, the mother of Jesus, pregnant with the future Messiah, talks about how God’s way of salvation is upside down to the way the world usually functions. She sings,
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
who has looked with favor on the lowly state of his servant.
Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed…” ~Luke 1:46-48
And then a little later, she sings,
“God has shown strength with his arm,
and has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
God has brought down the powerful from their thrones
and lifted up the lowly;
God has filled the hungry with good things
and sent the rich away empty.” ~Luke 1:51-53
Mary can hardly believe that a nobody such as herself has been selected to be the mother of the Messiah. Those who are most humble are honored. Those who are most honored are humbled.
Take note: Jesus is not talking here to the crowds who flock to him, hopeful, or broken, and longing for wholeness. He talking to religious leaders. To Pharisees, who are privileged and powerful. He is speaking to them. Jesus advises them not to take their status for granted. He suggests they demonstrate humility. The next part of his teaching makes it clear that dining for status isn’t the best plan. Instead, he tells them, invite those who can’t repay you with a good connection or a more elevated position. Invite the poor, the disabled, the lame, and the blind. That will be a greater blessing to you than any connection you can make with the elites you usually rub elbows with.
Jesus is encouraging the Pharisees to embrace humility. Humility is about understanding who and where we are in the grand scheme of things. We are children of the Most High God, and members of the Body of Christ. We are also entirely earthbound—a part of a creation that dwarfs us, shows us how very small we are in that grand scheme. A professor of mine once described humility as having a slip of paper in each pocket. On one it reads, “You are a beloved child of God, and all the d galaxies in their beauty were created just for you.” And on the other piece of paper it reads, “You are lower than the lowest worm that crawls in the dirt.” Humility, she said, is knowing that both statements are true.
It is lovely to feel special… and so we should do all we can to give that gift away, to help others to feel special and cherished, because that is the truth about them. They are special and cherished. They were created by God. They are beloved children of the Most High. And if by chance we are given that lovely gift, we can be grateful for it, and appreciate it, and remind ourselves, again to give that gift to another person the first chance we get.
Humility is central to the work of faithfulness. Knowing where we are in the world and what that means. That each of us has dignity and worth, and that we are one of many who have that same dignity and worth. That any judgment we cast on anyone else is perilous to our own spiritual journey. That the ability to understand that those we have known as “the least of these” are, in God’s eyes, those to be lifted up. And the last, in God’s eyes, will be first.
Thanks be to God. Amen.