Fifteenth
Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 17 – Year C
September
1, 2013
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 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."
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 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."
One
of the joys of my life is being able to walk with my daughters to and from
school. It’s something that I never
thought I would enjoy. I treasure those
15 minutes each day. It’s fascinating
some of the conversations we have: questions about friends, about lunch, about
dinner. New revelations shared with me
that have been learned that day – lessons about the world, about science. News shared excitedly about a test, or a new
book. I treasure those
conversations. I also find the time at
the school, in the playground, before and after school to be a time of enjoyment. I like to meet some of the other parents,
meet the moms or dads of my daughter’s classmates. Some of those previously unknown families
have become good friends.
Playgrounds
are fascinating. I’ve been watching the
playground, and everything that seems to happen there for the last few
years. I’ve come to understand that the
playground is a smaller model of our society itself, the technical term I
suppose is microcosm. Even in first
grade you can see differences and divisions in the kids on the playground. You can identify the leaders from the
followers. You can easily see the kids
who thrive in contact with others, and those that prefer to be by themselves or
in smaller groups. You can see the ones
who like to be noticed, and those that prefer to disappear. You can see the popular kids and the ones who
are excluded for any number of reasons.
It’s
a sad statement on our world and culture that children so young are able to
copy our adult world so well. And it
just gets worse. By the time high school
comes around the divisions are set in place.
People from this neighborhood are “better’ than people from that
one. If you are seen with that group of
people, you’re going to pay the price in your popularity. You are judged based on where you live, what
clothes you wear, who your friends are, what music you listen to, the car you drive,
even what your parents do for a living.
And you better hope that you are doing all the right things if you want
to be able to walk through the halls with a smile on your face and your head
held high.
Do you remember what it was like at school? Do you remember how important it was that you
sat at the right table with the right people in the lunch room? Do you remember the feelings you had when you
were invited to a birthday party or a sleepover, or the feelings you had when
you heard about the event that you hadn’t been invited to? Do you remember the divisions between the
band geeks, the theater nerds, and the jocks?
Remember how there were seats of honor on the school buses, places that
were fought for and sometimes had to be given up? It’s not that school is so much worse than
the world – it’s actually pretty close to how the world tends to operate – it’s
just that it’s so much easier to see in the school. It’s easier to see in other settings too,
like when you have a dinner party.
In our text from Luke we find Jesus at a dinner party hosted by a leader
of the Pharisees, and I’m sure there were all sorts of people there who were
part of the elite crowd. Jesus had
already gotten all the folk present more than a little on edge with his talking
about the Sabbath, and his healing on the Sabbath, and his hanging out with a
group of people who were uneducated and came from, well let’s be honest, the
wrong parts of town. Maybe here, when he
is in a different setting when he is surrounded by the “right people’ he will
mind his manners, and keep from being too disruptive. Yeah, good luck with that.
He gets off to a pretty good start, though. In his first comments he sounds a lot like
parts of Proverbs, offering sage advice on how to be a good person - don’t think too highly of yourself. Be
modest. It’s better to start from a lower position and be invited higher than
place yourself ahead of others and then be asked to vacate your place so
another can have it. And then, Jesus
has to keep going, keep talking. Hold on
to your seats folks, here comes the crazy talk!
"The next time you put on a dinner,
don't just invite your friends and family and rich neighbors, the kind of
people who will return the favor. Invite
some people who never get invited out, the misfits from the wrong side of the
tracks.”[1] If
we think that there are all sorts of rules about how to act and interact on the
playground and in school, the rules for first-century dinner parties were at a
whole other level. There were rules
about who would be invited, who
should sit where, what could be served, how it should be prepared, who should
serve it; and those were just the easy ones. Meals were often a reflection of the power
and status of those who were invited, and Jesus is saying to invite those who
have no power? That’s crazy talk. What do you mean
it’s not all about me, what I want, who I want to be with, how I want people to
see or think of me?
“Jesus
talks about a new kind of order, a new kind of kingdom where the tables are
turned, the hierarchies are upended, and every person, slave or free, Jew or
Roman, peasant or king, woman or man, everyone is welcome, especially the ones
at the edges.”[2] The way things are going to operate in this
new kingdom is different than the way things operate now; it’s not about power
and privilege, it’s about justice and compassion. It was political.
One
of the phrases we often hear is that religion and politics don’t mix. But, I’m not sure that’s true. The root word for politics is polis, it’s a Greek word meaning city or
a group of people, citizens. Are we, or
are we not citizens of God’s Kingdom, future residents of the city of God? If
that is the case, is not religion by its very nature political? Jesus’ political message, his message about
life in the Kingdom was that the least likely, the poor, the marginalized, the
ones who don’t count, the ones who struggle to keep body and soul together, the
ones we look past and look over, the ones we don’t invite or seek the attention
of, these ones are the first ones to be welcomed at the doors of the kingdom. In the honor driven society of the
first-century Palestine this was a radical statement, a revolutionary
statement. It still is, even today.
Unfortunately,
the church in the last 1500 years or so hasn’t done a whole lot to make this revolution
a reality; rather, we have done a pretty good job of ignoring it. More often than not we have interpreted Jesus’
parables and revolutionary statements about life in the Kingdom as being about
some wonderful, beautiful, holy future day; a day that would come in some great
apocalyptic end of time battle between good and evil. Rather than our faith guiding us in our
public lives, faith became a private thing.
It was focused on the relationship you had with God, and not so much on
the relationship you had with others.
Benevolence for the poor and down-trodden was embraced as a thing of
good work and Christian service, and the church has served countless billions
of hungry and destitute people through the ages. Yet, it was rare for the church to question
the “why’s” of poverty and oppression; and even rarer to work to change that
reality. As the Brazilian Bishop Dom Helder Camera
once said “When I gave food to the poor, they called me a saint; when I asked
why there were so many poor, they called me a communist.”
The
idea and concept of a separation between our faith lives and our public lives
is something we do not see in the life and teaching of Jesus, in the writings
and teachings of the prophets of the Old Testament. “Our tradition, so clearly illustrated in the
stories of the bible, tells us that we are to care about the fabric of our
common life, not just the comfort of our private lives. We are not about the
creation of a utopia, but we are about participation in the common good.”[3]
The model for us in seeking to
change the ways of this world is found in the one who made the world in the
first place. The way that God desires
and wants us to live with and treat one another is the way that God treats
us. God has created us, providing us
with all that we need for life itself; God cares for us, forgives us, and has
redeemed us – not because of something we can do for God in return. There is nothing we can give to God that God
needs from us other than sharing what God has given us with others. This is what life looks like in the kingdom.
Fifty years ago this Sunday
hundreds of thousands of people were returning to their homes and congregations
after hearing the powerful words of Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘I have a dream’
speech. Reverend King’s words and
actions are among the finest examples we have of what can happen when you dare
to speak out against the wrongs of the world, when you dare to work to change
this place, when you seek to bring the ways of the kingdom into our live and
places. And he paid for it with his
life, he and many others. Life in the
kingdom isn’t about doing what is easy, it isn’t about doing what is popular;
it isn’t about doing what will bring you fame, fortune and notoriety. It’s about doing God’s will.
God doesn’t say it’s going to be
easy. But, how easy was it to die on a
cross between two thieves? Amen.
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