Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 14: 1,7-14
As I have said in countless Bible Studies through the years, Luke is my favorite Gospel. I always thought that was because Luke writes about Jesus giving acknowledgment and distinction to women. But as I studied the text for this week I found that there is another reason, possibly more subliminal, for why I like the Gospel of Luke best. It seems in the gospel of Luke Jesus is always eating. He's either going to a meal or coming from a meal or being treated to food at someone's house. In the Gospel of Luke Jesus attends nineteen meals, thirteen of which are not mentioned in any of the other gospels. It's no wonder that, in this gospel, his enemies criticize him for being a "glutton and a drunkard" (7:34) and criticize him for eating with tax collectors and sinners (5:30, 15:1-2). According to his enemies he's got two problems: he eats too much, and he eats with the wrong sort of people.
Luke sets the direction of Jesus teaching firmly in our minds right from the beginning. In one of the most beautiful passages of the gospel, a passage that sets the stage for everything else that will occur, Mary exclaims to her cousin Elizabeth "My soul magnifies the Lord...He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty...
Jesus often, in his teaching, likens the kingdom of God to a banquet. That is a key for us in our text for today and we must keep it in mind. I don't really believe that the importance of this text is in the etiquette advice it gives. Jesus is not trying to be the Miss Manners or Emily Post of the first century. Jesus is not ultimately concerned about the embarrassment of the big wigs and snobs that are at this fancy party. I read it and think, wow it would really serve them right to get knocked down a peg or two by being moved down in the seating order.
No the lesson tells us very clearly that there is more depth here than a simple etiquette lesson. Luke tells us Jesus told them a parable. Now a parable, as we teach our confirmands, is an earthly story with a heavenly point, or said another way a parable might easily begin, "The Kingdom of God is like..."
This story is telling us something about what to expect of God's hospitality, in God's kingdom. It is not about pretending some false modesty, putting ourselves down so that others can assure of us our worth. Indeed it is about the ultimate kind of self esteem, the self esteem that comes from being a child of God. One contemporary author in her book about the rule of Benedict notes that "If we need to run to the front seats, it may indicate arrogance or insecurity. If we need to hide in the back rows it may be self denigration. But if we trust that the host (God) values and loves us, then we ought to be reasonably comfortable whether we end up in the front or the back of the room.
Humility and self esteem are not opposites; in fact they are the results of the same thing. Humility is to know that God is God (and I am not) and that God has created, loved, forgiven and called me. It is to know that God has provided purpose and meaning for my life.
Self esteem is to know and accept, deep within, that I have intrinsic value; it is to believe God's promise that I am loved, cherished and called to purpose and meaning.
This self esteem--humility concern was well described to me by a grade school teacher I know. She said, "Every child needs to know that they are special. I think they are getting that message very well these days. But every child needs to know that every other child is special too. I'm not sure that's getting across as well.
I'm not sure that part of the message gets across to us adults either.
Flannery O Connor was a great author of the mid 1900's. She described herself as a Christian realist. She saw human reality as "fallen, judged and redeemed. Her task as an artist was to portray the world through the eyes of faith, to show it held fast in the grip of evil but constantly assaulted by God's grace. "All my stories" she wrote "are about the action of grace on a character who is not willing to support it..."
In her wonderful short story "Revelation" she portrays a character, Mrs. Turpin, who is all the world and more like a modern day Pharisee. As Mrs. Turpin enters the doctor's office with her husband Claud she instantly begins to size up all the fellow patients. "There was one vacant chair and a place on the sofa occupied by a blond child in a dirty blue romper who should have been told to move over and make room for the lady. The only other man in the room besides Claude was a stringy old fellow with a rusty hand spread out on each knee, whose eyes were closed as if he were asleep or dead. Mrs. Turpin's gaze settled agreeably on a well dressed grey haired woman whose eyes met hers and whose expression said: if that child belonged to me he would have some manners and move over. Mrs. Turpin could not understand why a doctor -with as much money as they made--couldn't afford a decent sized waiting room. . Next to her was a fat girl of eighteen or nineteen scowling into a thick blue book which Mrs. Turpin saw was entitled Human Development. Mrs. Turpin thought how pitiful it was to have a face like that at that age. Next to the child's mother was a red=headed woman, reading one of the magazines and working a piece of chewing gum, hell for leather as Claude would say. She was not white trash just common. Sometimes Mrs. Turpin occupied herself at night managing the classes of people. Usually by the time she had fallen asleep all the classes of people were moiling and roiling themselves around in her head..."
The thing that's so disconcerting about Mrs. Turpin in this story is that she is so real. She is the modern day Pharisee, checking out how she lines up against everybody else. Who is better, who is worse. Mrs. Turpin comes to the same conclusion so many of us do
Mrs. Turpin's thoughts turned sober. To help anybody out that needed it that was her philosophy of life. And of all she had to be thankful for, she was most thankful that this was so. If Jesus had said, "You can be high society and have all the money you want and be thin and svelte like, but you can't be a good woman she would have had to say. "Well don't make me that then. Make me a good woman and it don't matter what else, how fat or how ugly or how poor! Jesus thank you! She said, Thank you thank You thank you."
Then an incident happens and Mrs. Turbin is forced to reassess her take on God's kingdom. Jesus didn't make her so much better than everyone else. Maybe her very righteousness was her stumbling block. In the final scene she has a vision and sees all manner of people on the march crossing a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. A vast horde of souls rumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of people just like those she had seen in the doctor's office. There were battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who like herself and Claud had a little bit of everything and the God given wit to use it right. She leaned forward to observe them closer. They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away.... In a moment the vision faded."
So this is what God's kingdom is all about. It's not about who's better or worse, it's not about earning God's favor by our goodness. God's kingdom is like that great procession of people all needing forgiveness, all standing in need of grace.
In the "real" world the homeless woman pushing her shopping cart down Wacker Drive is not acknowledged as much as the woman in the Armani suit stepping from the Limo outside the Suissotel. But in God's kingdom things are different. Both are given seats of honor at God's banquet. Which do you think will find it easier to understand and admit their dependency on God?
In the real world we find it hard to imagine God's hospitality and certainly much harder to make that real in our lives. We may get discouraged and disheartened thinking that in the "real" world God's hospitality has no place. At those times we gather at the table, this table to admit our shortcomings and to dedicate ourselves afresh to receiving God's hospitality into our world.
Amen