14. Sunday after Pentecost, 08/29/2010

Sermon on Luke 14:1-14, by Hubert Beck

One Sabbath, when he went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him carefully. And behold, there was a man before him who had dropsy. And Jesus responded to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?" But they remained silent. Then he took him and healed him and sent him away. And he said to them, "Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?" And they could not reply to these things.

Now he told a parable to those who were invited, when he noticed how they chose the places of honor, saying to them, "When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this person,' and then you will begin with shame to take the lower place. But when you are invited, go and sit in 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 table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."

He said also to the man who had invited him, "When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just."

PROTOCOL FOR THE HEAVENLY FEAST

Upon a first reading of the parable at the heart of today' text Jesus could appear to be a pop psychologist offering advice on how to enhance one's name without making a big to-do about it. He sets himself up - almost rudely! - as the host setting forth a table protocol for a meal where he, himself, is one of the guests. The point he appears to be making at first reading is simple: Do not be obvious about your sense of self-importance when you are in good company. Make light of yourself. Make yourself so obscure, in fact, that you are hardly noticeable. One must be quite certain, of course, that the host of the meal will recognize your apparent humility by inviting you to a higher position of respect. In that way considerable attention will be drawn to you when you displace others as you are brought out of your obscurity into the limelight. "Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you." I.e., the way to get attention is to virtually disappear from sight at first, virtually provoking the host to draw attention to you by calling you to a more privileged place. It is great reverse psychology!

The Problem

Such a first reading is brought up short, however, when Jesus turns to the host who theoretically would invite you to a higher place and tells him that he shouldn't have invited you at all! That changes the whole sense of what you first thought you were hearing when Jesus told that parable! Instead of inviting you, recognizing your status as an esteemed member of the community, he should have ignored the expected guest list of friends, brothers, relatives, and rich neighbors. He should have made up a whole new guest list: the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind. What a difference that would have made in how the banquet dinner would have been celebrated! Those who were present when Jesus said these words would have, themselves, disdained an invitation to a feast such as this, even if they had been invited. The revised guest list just wouldn't include their kind, and they would have felt miserably ill at east sitting at the same table with them.

So what happened to that first impression? Instead of a pop psychologist instructing people on how to enhance their reputation, Jesus suddenly became a fly in the ointment. His reputation as a master of table protocol - not to speak of admiration-enhancer - is not only tarnished - it is, in fact, totally shattered - quickly, completely, thoroughly destroyed.

The Test is Reversed

You undoubtedly recognized rather quickly that I plucked the parable out of its context when I suggested that Jesus was acting as a pop psychologist giving advice on how to enhance one's reputation. That was on purpose, however, in order to make clear what was really at issue in today's Gospel. The setting of this scene establishes the direction of Luke's line of thought when he introduces this parable - not as a psychological piece of advice or a little folk wisdom, but a highly theological bit of instruction.

Jesus had been invited to "dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees" where "they were watching him carefully." You can be sure that they were not watching him to check out his table manners. They were ready to pounce on him for any religious mis-step he might make. Up to this point in his ministry, according to Luke, he still had some "breathing room," for, although he had raised many an eyebrow in what he said and did, he still had plenty of supporters - even among the Pharisees. Just before the words of our text, in fact, we read that "some Pharisees came and said to him, ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.'" Quite apparently some Pharisees were more than friendly toward him. They were downright protective of him.

So their "watching him carefully" was not necessarily to condemn him so much as it was to check him out. They were, in short, testing him to see just exactly where he stood on issues central to their concern.

Then a strange twist took place. While they were testing him out, he tested them out! How the man who had dropsy got into this dining hall of the Pharisee is hard to say, but there he was, right in their midst. Most lectionary systems omit this encounter with the man who needed healing in that which is to be read as today's Gospel, but Luke must have had a reason for placing this account into the middle of his narrative telling of the Sabbath meal at which Jesus was a guest. One can very likely discern the reason for it through the way he tells us that "Jesus responded to the lawyers and Pharisees." We have not been told they said anything or even questioned him at all up to this point. We are simply told that Jesus "responded to them," asking those around him - significant figures in the religious life of his time - "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?" The meal to which Jesus had been invited is specifically said to have taken place on the Sabbath - and perhaps that, in itself, was why the lawyers and Pharisees were watching Jesus so carefully. He was known to be less than observant of Sabbath rules on occasion, even having claimed that "the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath." (Luke 6:1-5)

So now they who were testing Jesus' observance of the Sabbath rules. Did they not all recognize, he asked, that, for all the sacredness of the Sabbath, acts of caring concern, not to speak of acts of necessity, superceded the rest required on the Sabbath? Would not any one of them save a son or even an ox that needed rescue on a Sabbath? He had put that into perspective much earlier when he claimed that "the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." (Mark 2:27) Without further ado Jesus healed the man and sent him on his way. "And they could not reply to these things." His first test of them went uncontested.

The Reversal Intensifies

But then Jesus went a step further, testing those "who were invited, when he noticed how they chose the places of honor." He had a disconcerting way time after time of unexpectedly presenting himself as the host at meals to which he was invited as a guest as we noted earlier. He took it upon himself to admonish the guests of this Pharisee for the way they were making fools of themselves in their attempts at drawing attention to themselves by vying for places of special honor. There were no place-names at this meal. It was every man for himself, and they were making the most of whatever place at the table into which they could maneuver themselves. There was a certain hierarchy in the honors accorded those who sat closest to the host at meals such as this and they were doing everything in their power to squeeze out the honor and respect that came from such seating positions.

Lest we condemn these guests too quickly, let us recognize that they represent us in our many different ways of gaining a sense of self-worth by means of seeking the approval - even the endorsement and esteem - of those around us. We may not do it so obviously as those to whom Jesus addresses himself, but in many subtle ways we jockey for a position in society that will gain for us some representative "place of honor." It is hard for us to confess - largely because it is difficult for us to recognize - the subtle ways we do this as we seek the appreciation or even the admiration of others. Some draw attention to self through silence and others do it with bluster. Some like to "name-drop," quietly noting important figures with whom we have recently associated, while others like to "deed-drop," calling attention to our most recent successful efforts at this or that. For the most part, however, we find delicate and restrained ways of doing this - even, at times, clever and cunning ways.

Such scrambling for the approval of those around us gets even worse when we are brought face to face with how subtly we try to raise the eyebrows of God as we attempt to impress him! Yes, there is even a "jockeying for position" before God. The disciples, themselves, fell victim to this competition for position with Jesus, threatening the inner unity of the disciples. John and James asked Jesus for special seats of honor when Jesus brought his kingdom into full view, thus usurping any aspirations of the other disciples for such a place. (Mark 10:35-41) This hardly sat well with the other ten, as you can well imagine. Each one, in his turn, was sure that such a position of honor belonged to him! It is not a stretch of the imagination, then, to recognize our own temptations to point out to God those things in our lives that are especially noteworthy and admirable ... things that would give us a special place of honor with him. Not overtly, of course, for we are well aware that this would certainly offend God. But we do it so quietly and unobtrusively - often even subconsciously - that even we, who do it, hardly recognize that we are doing it. It is ever so human to do it, though, whether we admit it or not! We all crave the recognition of others in order to buoy up our self-esteem, and it takes considerable restraint on our part to steer clear of such efforts at getting such unwarranted recognition.

It is important, then, that we recognize these guests at the table. They are us. The only difference, perhaps, is the directness and openness that they exhibited in seeking the notice and admiration of those around them. It is ever so difficult, however, to contain our ego when we sense how superior (not greatly superior, of course, but at least a little bit superior!) we are to the overtly sinful, the clearly ungodly, even the lesser members of the church who come only seldom and can rarely, if ever, be depended upon for doing the good things that are so obviously necessary to do! It is difficult to understand ourselves to be the "poor, crippled, lame and blind" when it is so clear to our eyes that we are those who are reasonably wealthy, capable of walking on our own and with a clear vision of what must be done compared to others around us. It has been observed that there is a notorious paradox in humility: It is impossible to generate it without killing it in the process. C. S. Lewis sets the paradox clearly before our eyes in his book The Screwtape Letters. Wormwood, an apprentice devil to Screwtape, the chief devil, has become alarmed over a sudden burst of humility in the child of God to whose destruction he has been assigned. Screwtape instructs Wormwood to remind this human endlessly of his humility. Never let him forget how humble he is, he urges. Soon he will be so proud of his humility that he will hardly recognize what humility is any more.

Jesus' response to this scrambling for position was not a reverse psychology as I suggested earlier. It was a straightforward exhortation to humility. That was what lay behind his suggestion that, rather than having all these attention-hungry people stumbling over each other in an attempt at gaining places of honor, the host would have done better to invite people who "cannot repay you." The host, himself, was seeking honor and reputation by the way he invited the cream of the crop to his table - including Jesus, in spite of his uncertain status in the eyes of the religious authorities - since they would either add to his reputation and / or in all likelihood respond with invitations of their own to festive meals in their homes, thus enhancing the standing of the man who now hosted them. He was just participating in an endless round of status-seeking among people of high repute.

To have invited "the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind" would have made the man an object of scorn for these position-seekers whom he had gathered at his table. They would have thought him quite out of his mind, both because he would have gathered the most unlikely ones of society at his table and, more than that, he would have, himself, lowered himself to a very scornful and disdainful place in the eyes of those who were more noble and reputable.

The Divine Reversal

This is the very reason why it is so hard to recognize God in the way he is present among us! He, in the form of Jesus, associates with "the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind." From our human point of view, this is not how the Lord of Hosts is to conduct himself. A primary charge against Jesus was the company he kept! Although his disciples were, by and large, of reasonably good repute, he even included among them a tax-collector who was hardly well-thought-of in the best religious circles and a zealot devoted to rebellion against Rome - a rather risky companion! But Jesus not only was "at home" with those whom society scorned, he actually sought them out! It was just outrageous that God would ignore those of whom everyone thinks he should be proud and, instead, to look up sinners and eat with them. Jesus not only said that was the way it was with God - but he did it!

Ah, but he did so much more than eat with them! He bore their illnesses in his body as he healed them. He took up their hunger as he fed them. He took the darkness of the blind into his body as he gave sight to them. He took up the dying-ness in them as he went to the cross. He even brought life into the midst of death - including his own! There was no way that the rascals with whom he associated could repay him - no way for the dying to give him life - no way for the impoverished to enrich the treasury of his being. He took everything that had gone wrong in this earth into himself and poured new life into old dying-ness.

That was the challenge he threw before those of whom we read in today's Gospel - and with considerable frequency before all with whom he ever walked and talked ... including us! Give away all that this earth offers you so that something far more rich can be poured into you. "For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." It has been well said: The world does not give what it offers - and it takes back what it does offer. When one scrambles after that which the world offers one will inevitably be disappointed. Only those who abandon the free-for-all of self-enhancement in favor of humility before God and neighbor will ever truly discover what life is all about.

The Key to Humility

And just how is this kind of humility to be obtained? It certainly isn't anything we find in ourselves. It is not simply a matter of personal abnegation, a groveling before others in a "self-put-down" fashion or an affected spirit of being less than others, pretending to be a nothing or a Charlie Brown type of constant failure. When humility is either defined or acted out in ways like that, it calls on us to do little more than to suppress our ego, to search for weaknesses or frailties within ourselves that must then be put on display before others. That type of "humility" requires intense self-searching commonly leading to self-denunciation as an unworthy no-good - which, of course, attracts a lot of attention, in turn, to itself! It is strange how quickly humility like that becomes a form of arrogance - an assertion that I am more humble then you!

Quite the opposite, the humility to which Jesus points us in the Gospel is the humility found when one stands openly and honestly before God. It is a humility that looks outward from our selves to the one from whom we came, recognizing that all we are and have is pure gift, a totally unworthy bestowal of endowments and abilities by a gracious giver who wills that we become channels of his gifts to others. It is, as the psalmist puts it, to "look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place" in order to ask "what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?" (Psalm 8:3, 4) It is noteworthy that in the few short verses of the parable Jesus told, the word "invite" appears four times. The guests were not at the table because of who they were, but because of the one who had invited them there! Paul emphasizes this very strongly when he writes, "God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus." (1 Corinthians 1:27-30a) When we recognize that we are the "poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind" who have been chosen by God, invited to his table, we know that our place in the kingdom is established by God, not by our own innate possibilities, works or personalities.

This is, in fact, the simple "key" to understanding him who speaks of humility in the text before us this morning. Paul urges the Philippians to humility in this way: "Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men." He appeared among us as the one at the foot of the table, unobtrusively appearing among us as the child in Bethlehem. Paul then goes on to point out that it was in this humble human form that he "became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." (Philippians 2:5-8) There was no better demonstration of that humility than when, at the last supper, Jesus washed the feet of the disciples. When Peter balked at this, Jesus made it plain that to refuse his service was to condemn one's self to having no part in him ... or among God's people. "Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master." (John 13:12b-14a) Jesus sat at the foot of the table so that the Father, in his own time, would call him up higher, where he was "honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you," as our text says.

Humility before those around us is born from standing in the presence of God who humbly stooped down into our fleshliness to reclaim us from the human pride first exhibited in Eden when those first humans took it upon themselves to claim their own place in creation. Human history is the story of pride such as that - a willingness to have our own way rather than to follow God's way, a pushing against all that life was meant to be in order to make a life such as we want it to be in our human short-sightedness. Only when we recognize through our stance before God that we were meant to be conduits of his goodness and grace do we see that we, as "little Christs," to use Luther's phrase, are servants to all who sit at the table of the Lord. Jesus is clear: "Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." Humility is to forget our selves and to be absorbed in God and our neighbor. It is to know that we have come from God, that we go to God, and that in this in-between time we are to take the gifts that God has given us - whether they be energy, time, money, talents, or any number of other gifts - and to use them in behalf of God among those whom God has placed around us.

Who is superior or inferior when we come to the table at which Christ offers himself to those whom he has claimed in the washing of baptism? Is one greater than another there? Is one lesser than another there? It is there where he who invited you has the last say! And he says to all who have been invited, all who have been washed in the blood of the Lamb, "Live and work together in peace and with all humility as brothers and sisters, rejoicing in the life that knows no end!" That is the protocol at the heavenly table ... so let it be that way here on earth!

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Lutheran Pastor, Retired Hubert Beck
Austin, Texas
E-Mail: hbeck@austin.rr.com

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