Proper 17

Preparation

    Please begin by reading Luke 14:1, 7-14 in your Bible. If you do not have one at hand, we have provided that text for you at the end of this reflection.

Reflection--The “H” Words

We overhear Jesus teach more faith basics today as we continue walking with him toward Jerusalem.  This time its about two “H” words, humility and hospitality.  The two are more closely related than you might think.

The setting at a formal dinner is significant.  Some things haven’t changed much in 2,000 years.  Such dinners, then and now, are often as much about status and position as about a pleasant evening.  They are clues to who’s “in” and who’s “out.”  There is one social ranking “filter” in who’s invited in the first place and a second filter in the form of the seating chart.  For example, those who are the most “in” among the “in crowd” may get seated closest to the host or the hostess.  Put bluntly, that seating placement is as often as much about what the host or hostess thinks he or she can get out of it personally as it is about honoring the guest.

On one level, Jesus’ first teaching could be viewed as little more than a practical lesson in social graces (one which might cause us to say “thank goodness for place cards!”).  Boiled down to its simplest and put in everyday modern speech, it might go something like this:  “When somebody invites you to dinner, don’t be like other people fighting for the best seat.  You may wind up looking stupid if the host or hostess wants that place for somebody else and asks you to move.  You’ll look a lot better if you take the worst seat and then get invited to take a better one.”  And good advice it is!

But of course there is more than that going on.  What Jesus wants us to realize is that things are a little different at God’s banquet table.  All the usual values get turned upside down there!

There are some clues to the deeper lesson.  One is in the verse “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”  This isn’t just a social lesson like the kind we might get from an etiquette expert.  It’s a lesson about the approach we should take to life.  It’s also about God’s role in the world.  It is God who will do the exalting and the humbling.  We should not forget that God is still in charge!

Another clue is in Jesus’ lesson about hospitality in the form of the suggestion to the host of the dinner that in the future the host or hostess should invite those who need their bounty the most, not those who need it the least.  It’s a very different spin on the concept of a “power lunch.”  Who’s the most important in God’s book and who’s the most important in ours may be quite different.  We are invited, as part of our lesson in humility, to reassess our ideas about hospitality.  The values are no longer, “what’s in it for me,” but “what would God have me do.”  That often leads to another question, “where is the greatest need?”

Things get turned upside down because Jesus invites us to look to God for our values, rather than to the values of a grasping world.  We are the regular recipients of God’s favor, not because of anything God can get out of it or even because we particularly deserve it.  God is good to us because it is in God’s nature to be good to us.  This goodness that flows from God even though we don’t deserve it is what Christians call “grace.”  We are flooded by that grace every day.  We, in turn, are called to be God’s instruments of grace.  God gives us possessions and gifts.  We hold them in stewardship for doing God’s work.

So we are called to be humble; realizing, as one wag put it, that we have a lot to be humble about.  The good things in life that come to us come to us through God’s grace.  In our use of what we have, we are called to emulate God in giving freely with no thought of what we might get out of it in return. 

Again Jesus wants to set us free.  “These are liberating words that can free us from the necessity of succeeding in our culture’s contests of power and esteem.  They free us from over-under relationships and the attitudes and barriers they create, so that we may be free to create human community and enjoy the security of God’s grace.”[1]   Amen!

revclay

_______________________________

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 [Jesus] 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.”  [NRSV]