Psalm 81:1, 10-16
81:1 Sing aloud to God our strength; shout for joy to the God of Jacob.
81:10 I am the LORD your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.
81:11 “But my people did not listen to my voice; Israel would not submit to me.
81:12 So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels.
81:13 O that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways!
81:14 Then I would quickly subdue their enemies, and turn my hand against their foes.
81:15 Those who hate the LORD would cringe before him, and their doom would last forever.
81:16 I would feed you with the finest of the wheat, and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.”
Luke 14:1 One Sabbath, when Jesus went to share a meal in the home of one of the leaders of the Pharisees, they were watching him closely.
Luke 14:7 When Jesus noticed how the guests sought out the best seats at the table, he told them a parable. 8 “When someone invites you to a wedding celebration, don’t take your seat in the place of honor. Someone more highly regarded than you could have been invited by your host. 9 The host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give your seat to this other person.’ Embarrassed, you will take your seat in the least important place. 10 Instead, when you receive an invitation, go and sit in the least important place. When your host approaches you, he will say, ‘Friend, move up here to a better seat.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all your fellow guests. 11 All who lift themselves up will be brought low, and those who make themselves low will be lifted up.”
Then Jesus said to the person who had invited him, “When you host a lunch or dinner, don’t invite your friends, your brothers and sisters, your relatives, or rich neighbors. If you do, they will invite you in return and that will be your reward. 13 Instead, when you give a banquet, invite the poor, crippled, lame, and blind. 14 And you will be blessed because they can’t repay you. Instead, you will be repaid when the just are resurrected.”
The word of God for the people of God.
Thanks be to God.
When I first started attending the Presbyterian church some years ago, a friend of mine remarked to me that regardless of what you say about the way the church functions, no matter how fast or slow we might move, whether you like the liturgy, there are some things we always do well. When you come to a gathering at church, you never leave hungry. In my experience, she is correct – we have a thing for food. I mean, food brings us together, a shared meal is a wonderful way to get to know someone. Covid curtailed that practice a lot, but I’ve seen a re-emergence of outdoor dining – or socially distanced eating where you get a chance to interact with your neighbors and friends. I know that the first opportunity we had to have a shared gathering, outside of worship, as a church community we had an Easter breakfast and we are planning another similar gathering for Rally day this year.
Aside from the obvious benefits of social interactions, sharing a meal is also a theological statement. Whether we are the host or the guest, we take part in the meal and in the conversation that comes out of being together. Our liturgical structure leads us through these steps when we take communion, and we recognize the significance of coming to the table as the guest. It is at the table where we are fed and brought together.
In our passage today, Jesus seems to be offering some wise advice regarding gatherings and the rules of social interaction that seem to govern them. There is no harm in reading this text as a set of rules for good table manners, being a good guest, and for living wisely while navigating the politics of everyday living.
However, there is some history and context to understanding this particular gathering. In the imperial Roman world where Jesus was teaching, money gained you access. This could be access to the guest of honor. It could be access to new opportunities. If you were in a position to be hosting a party with the hottest, newest, unusually controversial teacher, as host it would put you in the position of determining access and social prestige. The host can determine seating order based on what they could get out of it. It allowed the host to play gatekeeper – to determine what they would get in order to allow access to the guest. Which – in some circles – isn’t all that different from today. Social status and position also played into where people were seated. You might think of it like concentric circles: the closer to the center you were, the more power and prestige you had to offer to the host.
The host has the power to determine the guest list.
Like any social gathering, there are rules – spoken and unspoken – about who sits where and who has access to the guests of honor. In the Art of Gathering, author Priya Parker argues that in these situations, there are rules and guidelines that can be used to make these determinations – the purpose of the gathering is what will drive those decisions on who is included and where they are seated.
She uses the example of a wedding reception and writes “If you commit to a purpose of your wedding as a ceremonial repayment of your parents for all they have done for you as you set off to build your own family, that is disputable, and it will immediately help you make choices. That one remaining seat will go to your parents’ long-lost friend, not your estranged college buddy. If, on the other hand, you commit to the equally valid purpose of a wedding as a melding of a new couple with the tribe of people with whom they feel the most open, that, too, is disputable, and it implies clear and different answers. The parents’ friend may have to stand down for the college buddy. The purpose is the determining factor.
In the case of the gathering presented in our gospel reading, it is likely that favors and prestige were exchanged for access to hear this new teacher, allowing the host of the gathering social capital that could be exchanged in other ways for other purposes. All of this was in alignment with the social order and construct of the Roman empire. It might be worth noting that Jesus does not refuse to participate in the system, rather it should be noted that such social ranking was commonplace in Greco-Roman society. Meals were situations that particularly highlighted social disparities in the first-century world. There was a wealth of advice given about how to act at such meals. The wisdom book, Sirach, warns of being greedy and advises being deferential at such meals. This sort of power exchange and social politics was a known quantity. While it seems that Jesus was aware of these writings, and how they were to be used to interact in social settings, his advice on how one should act goes farther than the advice given in the Sirach; Jesus warned against seeking out the most honorable seats and encouraged humility. Humility was very rarely considered a virtue in Greco-Roman moral discourse, but throughout the New Testament, humility is often called out as being something to aspire to as a defining characteristic of Jesus’s followers.
When Jesus begins to teach with a parable about a wedding feast, he is not just giving advice about good manners. Rather, he is offering a critique of the entire social system and the structure of the known social order. In this parable, Jesus is using something ordinary – that is – a dinner party and a parable about a wedding feast, as a way of exploring the divine. Jesus’ words shift from being advice for how to act at parties, to advice given for how we engage with one another, how we engage with the social constructs around us, and how we are to live as the people of God. The lessons he teaches here have deeper repercussions. What might be dismissed as simple table manners reveal something about how we should act toward each other and how those actions either build the kin-dom of God or break it down.
There is a deeply theological nature underlying the statement “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” Scholars argue that this is a foreshadowing of the crucifixion where Jesus is both humbled to the point of death and exalted in the resurrection. I think these words are a guiding principle for the church. There is never a place for supremacy or superiority in christian faith, rather – humility and service to all of God’s creation and most of all to those on the margins are (should be) markers of those who seek to follow in Christ’s footsteps.
The table manners that Jesus starts with reveal something about who we are – are we people who run to the front to seek out the most prestigious places, seeking the spotlight, and talking about how great we are? Are we people who exclude and demean others for what they don’t have or what they cannot offer to us? Are we people who sit at the back of the room and try to avoid notice? Are we people who work to make sure everyone else has a seat and is taken care of? How we act in such cases reveals who we are. In our actions – both great and small, we tell the world who we are and what we believe. By those same actions, we tell God who we are and what we believe.
To drive his point home, Jesus addresses his next instructions directly to the host of the party. He says to the host – When you host a lunch or dinner, don’t invite your friends, your brothers and sisters, your relatives, or rich neighbors. If you do, they will invite you in return and that will be your reward. Instead, when you give a banquet, invite the poor, crippled, lame, and blind. And you will be blessed because they can’t repay you. Instead, you will be repaid when the just are resurrected.” Jesus’ exhortation to host “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind” runs counter to the cultural wisdom to invite only those from whom you can extract some favor or power.
This is not to suggest that you should not gather with your family and friends. This is not to say that those connections are not important. It is to say that we should not live in and for a society where reciprocal invitations and connections are the purpose for our gatherings. We need to expand our awareness, our invitations, to those we might not think to invite – not out of an expectation of what we might gain but rather that which we might give.
There is something more at stake with inviting those who cannot repay: “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind” They cannot repay you as the others do in a typical social setting. I believe these words are prophetic. As a people, we are called to go out into the community, serving one another, not looking for ways to build our social status or increase our followers. Instead we should go out and serve as a way of recognizing the already present Kin-dom of God.
The Kin-dom is both now and not yet, which means that while the work of reconciling God and humanity has already been accomplished with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we are called to live into that kin-dom and to be the people who build it – here and now. The question for us is how? How do we do that?
Scripture provides guidance, a liturgy for us in understanding what we are called to do, how we should treat one another, and how the world will look if we follow that guidance. For example, at a dinner party how we interact with others can reveal if our purpose is other than just, to be a good guest. How we act at the grocery store, or as we do our jobs can reveal our nature to others. How we serve one another – both neighbors we know and neighbors we don’t know reveals who we are. Our work and our calling tells us we cannot stay inside our own bubbles, only interacting with people who think like us, act like us or look like us. Rather, we need to be active in the world. Because everything we do – every action we take – large and small, changes the world in some way.
When I watch or read the news, I quite often find that I am overwhelmed at the enormity of the cruelty in the world – the lack of acknowledgement or awareness of those in need. In those moments as I listen to or read some talking head argue about how extending meal benefits for children is a bad thing, in a world where 1 in 7 children in this country go hungry, or argue that other peoples rights are less important than their own, and treat others as if they are less than human, it can feel pointless to continue. In those moments, I think about the work of Fred Rogers. He is probably the closest thing I have to a patron saint. Rev. Fred Rogers, who spoke mostly to children teaching them simplicity and kindness, reminds me that following Jesus often means being present in ways that I had not anticipated, helping others when help is needed, and being willing to reflect the love of God in all places at all times.
So… Liturgy is one of those ‘church words’ that I think that we often hear and use without understanding its meaning. According to Merriam-Webster, Liturgy is defined as “a form or formulary according to which public religious worship is conducted” Friends, How we act in public, the actions we take, the words we speak are all part of our worship in the world. This is our lived liturgy, out in the world, as an act of worship. Our lives and the ways we live them tell others who we are and those actions should be a liturgy of love practiced in the world.
I think this is where Jesus’ words take me today – to how our actions become a liturgy of love that we live out loud. It’s not about our manners per se, but rather how we live and serve one another, how we help one another, and how we reflect the love of God to all people, in all places, at all times. The great joy is that we do not have to do this work alone. We do it in community, we do it filled with the holy spirit, and we do it in the presence of God who loves us.
Filled with joy in the knowledge that God is with us, let us go out into the world, humbly seeking to serve one another, living our Liturgy of Love.
Amen.
Matthew Messenger 