Dinner Party! [Luke 14:1, 7-14 - Proper 17C]
The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson
Luke 14:1, 7-14
Dinner Party!
Sometimes in the Gospels Jesus is edgy and sometimes Jesus is
all about dinner party etiquette, apparently.
Today, Jesus dispenses critical advice to those hoping to make a splash
at their next big social outing. If you just
follow his simple advice you too could have the tremendous privilege of being publicly
honored, vindicated before some of society’s finest. If getting to the head of the table is your
goal, Jesus, toucher of lepers, friend of fishermen, celebrated for his Sermon
on the Mount, has a plan that just might get you to the head of the table. Or maybe Jesus isn’t that interested in
etiquette at all; maybe he just showed up late to this party and the only seat
left was the worst seat in the house and this was a not-so-subtle hint for the
host to move him up to a better seat.
What Jesus is doing in today’s Gospel seems rather
pedestrian. He is eating a meal. That is not nearly as noteworthy as healing a
sick person or preaching to crowds of thousands or raising someone from the
dead. It is not even one of his more
famous meals; the feeding of the four thousand and the feeding of the five
thousand are much more impressive episodes; his last supper with his disciples
more consequential. The only thing
unusual at all is that he is having dinner with folks with whom he sometimes
disagrees. That seems weird to us, in
our political climate, but probably not as weird back then.
But as common as this scene appears, Jesus is actually being
quite subversive. Let’s consider the context. In the ancient Mediterranean world sharing
food was a big deal, with significant social ramifications. Social status and social stratification were of
utmost importance – considerations that really informed the structure of one’s
life, one’s social calendar, one’s daily interactions. And all of that found its way into the dining
room.
So, where one sat at a dinner party was a big deal. A seat adjacent to the host was like parking
one’s self under a flashing neon sign that read: I’m a big deal. And seat selection could also be a means of
climbing the social ladder. If you sat
in a prominent seat and no one asked you to move down, you had arrived. Meals weren’t just meals. They were events “used to publicize and
reinforce social hierarchy.”[1]
So Jesus is stepping on some toes here. And because this is Jesus we’re talking about,
we know he doesn’t stop there. He has
already mentioned the unmentionable, at the dinner table. I mean, there was an unspoken social
contract; everyone knew the game: all the jockeying for position. It was a rat race to the head of the
table. And that is just the way it
was. They didn’t need Jesus making them feel guilty
for being normal, for engaging in a practice that was social acceptable.
And so it was already bad enough, Jesus was already pushing
their buttons, and that was before he brought up the guest list. At this point, probably, the host, the person
who invited Jesus to this dinner party, is regretting at least one name on his
guest list.
The seating chart was a big deal. The guest list was even more important. There were certain conventions that were followed,
especially by the well-heeled. When one
composed a guest list for one’s dinner party there were certain criteria that
were considered: namely, would the guest enhance, or at least preserve, my
social standing. And, if they met the
first standard, the next consideration was: will my invitation be reciprocated,
will they invite me to their next big event.
Hosting a dinner party was a high-stakes game. It was taken very seriously.
So, of course, Jesus’ suggestion is utterly ridiculous. One would never invite the poor, the
crippled, the lame, and the blind. That
guest list would in no way enhance a respectable person’s social standing. And the host of that motley crew would be
highly unlikely to receive a corresponding invitation.
Jesus is making some folks uncomfortable. And, thanks to Luke, not just the people around
that 1st century dinner table.
This, by the way, is one of the problems with the Gospels: they preserve
the challenging words of Jesus. You see, I started to think about how I might
respond if Jesus told me to host a dinner party, at my house, and invite only
those who could not reciprocate. To be honest, the thought makes me
uncomfortable.
Personally, I’m not that concerned about status, so what
Jesus says about seating doesn’t really bother me that much. But the guest list thing, I don’t love. That I find challenging.
You see, I figure, most of the people that I know could reciprocate
an invitation. Even folks without much money
could invite me over for a visit. Jesus’
suggested guest list, the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, in Jesus’
world, were the ones on the extreme margins of society. They were the people sleeping in the streets,
begging on the side of the road, the ones who had no home in which to host a
dinner party.
And that made me start thinking about some of the people I’ve
encountered during the past few years in Colorado Springs, especially the ones
who seem to really fit Jesus’ description of the ideal dinner guest:
There was the man I met just this week who insisted that I
guess his astrological sign. Despite my
attempts to shorten our interaction, he was quite persistent and offered me
many, many clues. When I failed to guess
and explained that I don’t really know the astrological signs, he admitted to
me that he knew only his own. But that
telling people his sign was a really great party trick. It is not.
There was the person who pooped in a sock and left the sock
in the garden. Unfortunately for Simon,
he did not know what was in that sock until he picked it up.
There is the person who keeps tearing the doors off of our
little libraries. That person won
because after like four or five times, the libraries are now open-air.
There is the woman who screamed vulgarities at me and then broke
off a Snapple bottle and threw the jagged glass at me because I walked into the
Memorial Garden when she was there.
There is the guy who crashed a funeral I was officiating
while wearing an elf costume; he then laid in the grass during the committal and
flashed the congregation a kind of seductive smile as they walked past him on
the way to the funeral reception. You
know, maybe I would invite that guy to a party.
He seems pretty fun.
There was the person who asked to use the phone at the parish
office and then proceeded to steal all of our petty cash. And the person who spray-painted a swastika on
our utility box. And the guy who, while
pulling along a woman with a little child, repeatedly screamed the f-word at
each person who passed them by.
These are the people who are living in the extreme margins of
our society. They are the ones sleeping
in the streets, begging on the side of the road, the ones who have no homes in
which to host a dinner party. These are
the ones on Jesus’ guest list. And I’ll
be honest, I don’t know about you, but I’d probably try to think of an excuse
to get out of that party. Even less do I
want to host that party in my home. Come
to think of it, I’m not too sure I would want to host Jesus either because apparently
this is the kind of uncomfortable stuff he says at parties; he puts people on
the spot; and I don’t really want that.
Jesus is hard. Following
Jesus is hard. He dares us to look into
the faces of the poor and the crippled and the lame and blind, into the faces
of those sleeping in the streets and those begging on the side of the road,
into the faces of those pushed into the margins of our society, to look and to see
in those faces the face of God. In a
world in which it is considered an honor to be in the presence of those who are
rich and successful and famous and celebrated and brilliant and elite, Jesus
reminds us that he has just as much love for the broken and the beat-down. The hard truth of the Good News is that God
loves the woman who threw the broken bottle at me just as much as God loves me –
just as infinitely, just as unconditionally.
Today’s Gospel makes, I think, one thing clear: the guest
list for the heavenly banquet is gonna be wild.
That dining room is going to be filled with people who someone of Jesus’
status has no business hanging out with.
And as a foretaste, perhaps to prove that he meant what he said in today’s
Gospel, Jesus hosts a meal every Sunday.
And he exclusively invites those who cannot repay him – people who are
flawed and broken, selfish and struggling, people who are desperately hungry
and dying of thirst, people who love status more than they should and love
people less than they should. People
like us. We’re the ones on the guest
list. We are his motley crew. Every Sunday morning Jesus hosts a meal. And though it probably does nothing but hurt
his social status, Jesus invites us to dine at his table.
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