josephholubsermons
Lent 3
March 7, 2010
Luke 14:15-24
Outrageous!
The 14th chapter of Luke, from which our gospel for today
comes, is a most outrageous
chapter.
Three times in this chapter
Jesus lays out, what I’m sure was considered to be by many of his time,
rather disgraceful and
disgusting dinner-party etiquette.
I
did some research about dinner parties on the internet this week
consulting several etiquette web sites.
Since I don’t have a clue about such things, I found it all quite
interesting and even humorous.
For example, one web site made the point that when drawing up the
seating chart for your
guests, you should never place people together who have
opposing political views –
probably not a bad idea.
The risk for disruption is
simply too great, and it might
ruin the party.
Another point was that when selecting guests it was suggested on the one
hand, choose an interesting mix of characters, but on the other hand,
make sure they will all get
along. In other words,
consider the potential chemistry
of the mix of your guests.
Careful selection of guests
trumps inclusivity
Another point
was made for invited guests,
and I personally identified
with this one,
“Don’t be intimidated by the vast
array of silverware surrounding your plates. If you’re unsure of the
order in which to use your silverware, a good rule of thumb is to work
your way from the outside in. If you’re still uncertain, follow the lead
of those around you, and always remember that dirty silverware should
never touch the tablecloth.”
I could have used that information some time ago when Marcia and
I were at a dinner-party.
When I sat down at my place a vast collection of silverware and
cutlery was laid out before me.
I was totally clueless
as to which instrument to grab first and which to use for what.
I gave Marcia one of those
“What am I supposed to do?”
looks. I got no help! I also think I broke
the cardinal rule of allowing my dirty silverware to touch the
tablecloth.
One
more tip
I discovered for invited guests is,
“if you’re an honored
guest at the event it’s permissible
to intentionally show up late so
that you will be noticed when entering.”
Luke’s 14th chapter begins with Jesus going to a dinner party
of a
“leader of the Pharisees”
which tells us it was a
prestigious event. It
was at this party that
Jesus advanced his
outrageous points of etiquette in
three different ways; points
that clashed and conflicted with “proper” dinner-party etiquette of his
time, and I think our time as well.
First,
observing that many of the guests chose the preferential places of rank
and honor, Jesus seized it as a
teaching point.
He said when going to a dinner party to
not seek out the places of
honor, but to intentionally seek out the
lowest place, the place of
least distinction, the place
of humility.
Second,
he suggested directly to the host that the next time he had a party to
not invite all his friends,
colleagues, relatives and status people of the community who would most
likely return the favor back to him which would create a
close circle of mutual
affirmation, but “invite the
poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind… because they cannot repay
you.”
If there were any dinner-party rules of etiquette back then about
not insulting your host it
seems to me Jesus had already crossed that line even before he got
around to telling the story that is our gospel for today. To “invite
the poor, crippled, lame and blind” was for a Pharisee to invite
those considered religiously
unclean, and there were many
religious prohibitions against contact with the unclean, especially
around the table of fellowship.
So third,
with everyone sufficiently insulted, Jesus plows ahead and tells a story
about someone who gave a party and invited all the people that one would
expect at a prestigious dinner party.
The implication was that these invited guest had already RSVP’d
their acceptance.
It was the custom in those days to send a servant out to the
homes of the invited guests to announce, to those who had accepted, that
all was ready and
now was the time to come.
But, as the servant made his rounds, he encountered a litany
of last minute cancellations and a host of excuses.
Two were about business matters and one was very personal in that
he just been married and was on the honeymoon.
The servant returned and told the host of the cancellations and
the host became angry.
Who wouldn’t? If you
had a party and everyone cancelled an hour before, you would be angry
too.
But the host was adamant and would not be discouraged or denied. He was
going to have the party come heck or high water!
So, he his sent his
servants out to the community
margins to invite the poor, crippled, blind and lame to his party.
When they finished their rounds they announced to the host that
there was still room for more. Again, the host
sent the servants back out
with an even greater sense of
resolve, perseverance and urgency so that his house would be filled.
I can’t help to wonder if the Pharisee host of the party Jesus
was attending might have thought,
“Last time I invite Jesus to one of my parties.”
It wouldn’t surprise me if Jesus was probably blacklisted
from Galilee dinner parties after that.
So what are these stories really all about?
In Luke’s gospel, more than any of the others,
table fellowship and
dinner-party imagery dominate the landscape.
In the very next chapter Jesus tells the familiar story about a
wayward son who finally comes home after squandering his inheritance,
and instead of incurring judgment and wrath, the father throws a
blow-out of a party, much to the disdain of his older self-righteous
stuff-shirted brother.
For Luke,
dinner-party imagery is a
metaphor for the kingdom of God, the way God desires for the world
to be. Two things hit me
this week while wrestling with this story and this 14th
chapter of Luke.
First,
Luke’s community experienced
Jesus as the bringer of a whole new vision of reality.
They experienced Jesus as one who injected a
radical vision of a
new way to be a human being
and a new way to live in
community. Luke’s Jesus
insists that all of the carefully articulated rules of proper etiquette
that regulate who is to be
included and who is to be excluded; who are the
insiders and who are the
outsiders; who are the
first
class citizens and who are second and third class citizens were to
be thrown away as so much
rubbish and replaced by a wild
and lavish inclusive grace that embraced and welcomed all, even and
especially those that had been economically, socially, politically and
religiously marginalized.
In Luke 14 Jesus paints a picture that shook their world, caught them by
surprise and knocked them off their feet – and if
we allow this vision to
inform and shape our lives, it will do the same to us.
Jesus pulls us into a
vision of a whole different kind of world where grace is not
controlled, not structured, not qualified, not rationed restrictively and according to proper etiquette, but is
spread around lavishly and extravagantly.
Let’s face it Luke’s 14th chapter makes it pretty
clear that God’s grace is over
the top!
Unless you’re visiting us today, you already know that Lord of the
Mountains co-sponsors
“The Community Dinner”
that occurs every Tuesday evening at the Silverthorne Elk’s Club.
It’s just that – a free inclusive community dinner.
Show up and you are welcomed and provided a scrumptious meal no
matter who you are. All the
“proper” restrictive rules of etiquette have been superseded by an
inclusive dinner-party experience.
Every time I serve there I am
always asked the question at least once by an attendee,
“Why do you do this?”
My answer is something like,
“Because this is more the way we
perceive God wants things to be in the world!”
The second thing
that hit me was the contrast
in this story between the guests
excuses and the host’s
intensive effort to fill his house.
What that is all about is a
clash of agendas that
forms the basis of this story
and where it intersects with our lives.
We see the clash between the agenda of the invited guests
that caused them to opt-out
out of the dinner party, and the agenda of the host who was passionate
about putting his inclusive dinner-party agenda into motion.
For Luke’s community then and for us now, it gets down to a
question of profound self-examination,
“Which agenda is going to
dominate/rule/shape my life/your life/community life?”
The parable ends with a splash
of ice water in the face: Jesus said,
“For I tell you, none of those
who were invited will taste my dinner.”
I don’t read that as a threat or even a statement of judgment,
but rather a statement of fact and a challenge for us.
The original invited guests were not uninvited, the invitation
was still in effect. It was
a matter of them opting-out
of the party. They were not included because
they opted out.
And that’s what it gets down to in the end for us.
None of the excuses provided by invited guests were bad things.
They were acceptable, rather ordinary everyday things.
But that’s just the
point! That’s what it gets down to!
Which agenda is
going to be the basis of my
life, your life,
our life together as a faith
community? Whose agenda is
going to be advanced: our
own personal agendas that are often riddled with the accepted values of
everyday “etiquette” that usually gravitate toward being narrow,
exclusive, prejudicial, self-indulgent and conditional?
Or will we open ourselves up to the agenda of the inclusive
grace of the great dinner-party of Jesus
and allow that vision
to shape who we are and how we live?