Preached August 29, 2010
Luke 14:1,7-14
What position of importance do you think you deserve? At home? At work? With your friends and family? At church? Jesus has much to teach us in this week's gospel lesson from Luke about what it means to honor others and be honored by them. Jesus was a people watcher. We have talked several times recently about how Jesus has an uncanny ability to see people that others are overlooking, and to see people as they really are. . .warts and all.
Remember that Jesus and the disciples are on their way to Jerusalem. This summer and into the fall we will be following Jesus on this journey as he teaches his disciples what it means to be a follower of Christ. He has been telling them what the New Community of God will be like when it comes into existence and this passage is also about that New Community. He has just finished a discourse on the Banquet that God will give when the New Community comes into existence. People from all parts of the world will stream into the banquet, even those that the Jewish nation at that time felt were beyond God’s love and acceptance. I’ve asked this question before: Who is it that you don’t expect to see, or don’t want to see seated at the same table in God’s New Community for that Great Banquet? I believe you will be surprised by who God seats next to you!
One of the things that Luke does in his creative writing of the life of Christ is to repeat events, just so that the reader will not miss the warning or truth Luke is trying to express through the words and actions of Jesus. We don’t get to read all of the passages between one week and another, or even all of the verses of a passage on any particular week, so we often miss these repeated stories as they are left out of the weekly lectionary choices.
Between verses one and seven in today’s lectionary, verses we didn’t read, Jesus is at a banquet on the Sabbath at a Pharisee’s home. Luke wants us to know that this isn’t an ordinary banquet, because today, on the menu is a theological discussion about God’s presence in our lives and what that means in the way we respond to the needs of others. Luke tells us that everyone is watching Jesus, but the English doesn’t get at the Greek undertones which actually say that they were watching him ominously, expecting him to do something that was against their rules and regulations. This is probably the real reason behind his being invited to the banquet. And Jesus doesn’t disappoint them.
On this particular day there is a man with dropsy in need of healing and Jesus not being one to wait when he sees someone in great need, and repeating the lesson we had from last week when he healed a woman on the Sabbath in the Synagogue, Jesus asks his host and those gathered if it is allowed to heal on the Sabbath. No one answers him. Remember what happened last week when the Synagogue leader objected to Jesus healing on the Sabbath. They are probably thinking they don’t want to be the object of Jesus’ verbal response.
Now you need to know that dropsy is a disease where your arms and legs swell grossly. It was a disease associated by rabbinical thought with immorality and un-cleanliness. Don’t miss the important fact here that when Jesus heals someone he is also pronouncing forgiveness upon them. The rabbi’s thought that no healing could come to anyone unless God forgave that person of the sin they believed caused the illness. This is one of the things they have against Jesus, he is pronouncing people healed, and something which they believe only God can do. But the evidence of God’s forgiveness is seen in the healing of the persons Jesus touches. So knowing what they are thinking, Jesus heals the man.
Though they say nothing Jesus more or less knows exactly what they are thinking, how can he heal, that is do work on the Sabbath? They were probably upset because healing implied that the man was pronounced forgiven for any sins he had, which they believed were the cause of his affliction in the first place. But that's for another discussion.
Please understand that the Pharisees aren’t the bad guys. They are faithful believers in God and they are trying to apply the wisdom of the scriptures to their lives. Yes, they have created 614 rules they have to keep in order to be faithful and they get all caught up in whether a person is or isn’t keeping all 614 rules…because if you don’t then they believe you aren’t faithful. They have become so trapped in their thinking that they have forgotten all about God’s compassion and love, forgiveness and acceptance, and they fail to apply those overriding principles to their own treatment of others.
Jesus argues with their unasked questions, again, as was typical of rabbis, from a lesser situation to the greater situation. He reminds them that if their ox or a child falls into a ditch or a well on the Sabbath that they will quickly work to get the ox or the child out of the ditch without compromising the Sabbath Laws. How much more important is a person in great need of healing than an ox in the ditch?
I rather think that Jesus knows that his followers and the Pharisees at this banquet are missing the real lessons he is trying to teach them about what it means to be a disciple. False pride and social status have nothing to do with being a true disciple of Christ.
Jesus was a people watcher. Do you like to go the mall and sit on a bench and just watch people as they go by? Lots of interesting things happen. You can learn a lot about someone just by watching how they talk and act in public. Jesus, as we know, from other passages was a great lover of people watching. This day he observes how those in attendance try to take the most important positions of honor at the table as they arrive. The seating was on couches arranged in a U with two to four persons reclining on each couch, and with the host seated at the base of the U and honored guests seated immediately to his left and right with the most honored position being the seat immediately to his right. Simply put, the closer you were seated to the host, the higher up in the pecking order you were. Some, who take seats beyond their social position, may have to be told by their host that they have to give up their seat so that a more important person can have it. The Greek here implies a long slow agonizing walk to the couch at the end of the table, knowing all the way that everyone is watching as you are put in your place in the lowest seat in the social pecking order. How embarrassing as you are hurt more with every step you take. Jesus tells them that it would be better to take seats of lesser importance and then have the host escort them to more important seats of honor.
Jesus’ point is that honor is not something we grab with gusto for ourselves, but something that is bestowed upon us as an honor. How much different for the guest to take the last seat at the beginning of the banquet, and then have the host tell this humble quest that he or she will be ushered to a greater seat of honor. In fact Jesus uses the term “glory” to characterize the honor that results. “For everyone who exalts (our glories) himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted (gloried).” It is a theme about the New Community of God that Jesus repeats often in Luke’s gospel often and it is a reversal of the usual thinking of his contemporaries.
Jesus is not against giving honor to those who deserve honor, he is, however, against the use of power and prestige to puff yourself up. God honors the humble person and the door to the New Community of God is through humility. We are truly humble when we recognize our great need for God in our lives, and not any so-called rights to God’s blessings.
Jesus expands on this thought by observing who has been invited to this banquet and sees that they apparently all have the ability to return the favor and in fact according to custom and society are expected to return the invitation by inviting the host to their home for dinner. This kind of payback hospitality is not what should exist in the New Community of God.
How much better, Jesus tells them, would it be if they invited those to dinner those who had no ability to repay them and from whom they never expected to get an invitation to dinner in return: the poor, the powerless, the sick and invalid, the homeless and, shall I say it, even unlawful immigrants. He tells them to invite the outcasts of society, those people that would normally not be welcomed into their homes. Such a dinner would be a true reflection of the Banquet of the New Community of God that Jesus says will take place when God's ways are truly able to be put into practice on a daily basis in our lives. We will do for others without expecting to get something back from them. We will care for others in a loving manner that doesn’t reflect our hopes for a return favor someday…not even an expression of appreciation. How often have you said something like, “They didn’t even thank me for my kindness?” I think Jesus would ask us, “Did you do it because you expected them to thank you? Did you do it because you wanted to be appreciated and lifted up into a more honorable position in society or in relationship to this person? Or did you care for them because you really wanted to help them? If the latter, then you don’t need to expect a thank you, just appreciate your own good behavior and the fact that you have helped someone in need.”
The story continues with Jesus telling another parable about a man who invites high society guests to his banquet but everyone turns him down so he sends his servants out to bring in all those who would never get an invitation to such a banquet: the poor, the lame, the blind and the maimed. But there is still room even after they come so the host sends his servants out to bring in total strangers and even foreigners by bringing back all those on the highways and the hedges, an illusion to the Gentiles, those that most rabbis thought were far beyond God’s love and acceptance.
There is a warning here, that those who feel they deserve the blessings of God may not experience those blessings if they turn away from God and away from God’s New Community because they do not want to associate with those very same persons that God loves and accepts, forgives and includes, even when those persons are not normally accepted into human society for one reason or another.
Let’s get to the crux of the matter: Do you expect to get something back from others when you do something nice for them? Or do you simply do the nice thing for others because that is what God expects from us all of the time: truly caring for the needs of others in compassionate and loving ways?
There are no exceptions to being compassionate and loving in the Bible and if you do think you have discovered a passage that gives you the right to exclude and ignore any other person then perhaps you haven't studied the Bible enough and need to go back to really reading the Bible in its entirety and stop just picking out favorite verses and ignoring the rest of what it has to say.
So will you join in the banquet in the new community of God today, or will you refuse God’s invitation to join God and all of those that God includes in God’s New Community? It’s up to you, stay on the outside, or come inside to experience God’s love and hope and peace.
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