Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, 09/02/2007

Sermon on Luke 14:1, 7-14, by David Zersen

One sabbath when he went to dine at the house of a ruler who belonged to the Pharisees, they were watching him. Now he told a parable to those who were invited, when he marked how they chose the places of honor, saying to them, "When you are invited by any one to a marriage feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest a more eminent man than you be invited by him; and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give place to this man,' and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest 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, go up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. For every one 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 kinsmen or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just." (RSV)

SCRAMBLING TO SERVE

Everybody likes a party and likes to dream beforehand about how they will enjoy themselves and be accepted by those assembled. The media recently speculated about a White House party in the offing. Jenna Bush is engaged to Henry Hager and a White House wedding may be planned. Already, says the Press, people are beginning to scramble to assure they will be on the very limited list of guests who might be invited for this auspicious occasion.

I actually know somebody like this. If there's a party, which might gather people in his area of interest, he tries to get an invite so that he can be seen and recognized with influential people in his field.

Something like that was going on at the party to which Jesus was invited in our text. It was a party at a ruler's house, who happened to be a member of the Pharisee party ("the really good people"). As was traditional, there were places of honor, and those invited scrambled to see if they could get someone's ok to sit next to important guests. Jesus was watching them, interested in understanding how they established their values and their sense of worth in the community.

When working at self-affirmation becomes a dead end

Of course, this text is not just about parties and who sits where. It's about how we establish our self-worth and how the wrong approach can lead to a really dead end.

Even more problematic for us, the text is about how whole communities of people establish values and work more at exclusion than inclusion.

Community values and family values are big issues today, both in the religious and in the political realm. People are criticized and challenged if they don't support the values that certain groups find appropriate. A presidential candidate from an "outsider" religious group is affirmed if it can be said, "well, at least he supports traditional family values."

What are those family values? In the political arena, they largely have to do with pro-life and anti-gay issues (as defined by conservatives from the right wing of mainstream politics). Yet there are much broader issues. What does it mean to meet the expectations of the family and the community? These are changing times, and it's difficult to name values with which everyone might agree, but we could perhaps name a few. Among those mentioned often might be respect for parents and others in authority, honesty and integrity, showing gratitude, performing civic duty, striving to achieve, being patriotic, caring for your neighbor, staying out of trouble, abstaining from sex before marriage, etc. The list can get very long. And most of it is good stuff, the kinds of things that families and communities have championed for generations, maybe centuries, to assure that the next generation would have substance and character.

So, where's the problem? In our text there were a group of people, the Pharisees, who had a strong value system-and they were concerned that not only they, but also others followed it. So, at this dinner party, they were watching Jesus and his disciples. They knew he broke the rules upon occasion. Jesus worked on the Sabbath day. He touched unclean people like lepers. He sat at table with "dirty hands." There were murmurs, rumors, condescensions, disclaimers. There was a spirit of exclusion: "He's not one of us; he's an outsider."

Here's the problem with values of any kind, family or community. They can lead to levels of personal or communal status that affirm individuals or groups and exclude others. They can be the means by which a person or a group affirms itself: "We are on the inside, you are on the outside." And such exclusives can lead to a dead end. A really dead end! From the standpoint of Jesus, people who exalt themselves will be debased or humbled. In end, God has no use, Jesus might say, for those whose self-worth is based on the values and standards held up as symbols of their righteousness.

Now, you and I may say that we know all this in theory, but let's see how far Jesus takes this to make his point with us. Jesus can be shocking when it comes to his methods of explaining and demonstrating what life is all about.

When building community becomes life-enhancing

As the guests were assembled, Jesus tells them a story about people at a dinner party who were scrambling for places of honor. "Don't take the best seats," Jesus tells them, "because the host might embarrass you by telling you that someone else has to sit where you are sitting." Actually, everybody could agree with this, even if they had been jockeying for position, because the Old Testament text for today from Proverbs says that very thing. It was a family/community value with which they were all acquainted. Jesus may have been calling them on the carpet, but they should have known better. They had grown up with this understanding.

But now comes the shocker. "When you throw a party," he says to the host himself, "you shouldn't bother with all these high and mighty people who can invite you back anyway. But next time, invite the riff-raff, the people with dirty hands, the unclean, the ones these people like to condescend to." Wow. If that wasn't a slap in the face! What do you think the host thought: "Well, I'll never invite him again? Did I invite this guy? Who does he think he is?"

But this is how Jesus was-and we need to get rid of all this baby talk that we use about him: Lovely Jesus, meek and mild, Holy Jesus, infant child. He was a person who told it like it is. More than that, in his words and in his life, he demonstrated what he understood the core meaning of life to be. It was not life, which established its meaning through self-aggrandizement. Remember his parable about the Pharisee who missed the point of life in saying, "Oh God, I thank you that I am not as others are... " And then, to paraphrase how he continued his thought, "for I am a man of values, standards, I know whereof I speak, and while others here are of lesser quality, I am one whom you really ought to reward."

And then Jesus made his point in the most extreme way, as only Jesus could. When they said, he was crazy, he continued to serve the outsiders, the disenfranchised. When they said, he was a troublemaker and friend of sinners, he took it. When they regarded him as an outsider and slapped his face, his accepted it. When they whipped and abused him, he shouldered the burden. And when they crucified him, he allowed us to see what he had become for us: the lowest of the low, the one despised and rejected of men.

But God would not, could not, allow that to be the last word. So he gave him back to us by raising Jesus back to life. In such a once-and-for all action, God said to us, something we must hear. He said, self-affirmation, setting yourself up as more worthy than others, is a dead end street-and it will lead you to a really dead end in my sight! But seeking life's meaning in service to others is a value I will never allow to die. Seeking to be an inclusive, not an exclusive person, is what real life, abundant life, is all about. For such, even though death brings earthly finality, there is resurrection.

We need to hear that loudly and clearly this morning as we reflect on our own place and purpose in community. A film that has helped me understand that profoundly in recent years has been The Cider House Rules. It's a story about a young man (played by Toby McGuire) who is trying to find his place in life. He was raised in an orphanage where he was taught to perform abortions for the doctor ( ) who ran the orphanage. But disliking these values, he went home with a girl who had come for an abortion and lived for a time at their orchard ranch. In the house where the tenants worked, and the cider was pressed, there were a set of House Rules. The Cider House Rules. They talked about trivial things like not smoking in bed, etc. However, one of the tenants, who had got his own daughter pregnant, said "We didn't make those rules and we don't have to follow those rules." It is the telling line in the story, which shares all kinds of immorality with the viewer. If rules are just imposed on you from the outside, they can't get on your inside. And you can life as amorally as you choose.

This is why, as we listen to what Jesus says in today's text, we cannot simply see these as standards and values imposed on us from the outside. They would then simply be another set of laws, and we already have enough laws to condemn us. If it comes to all the laws we have disobeyed, each of us has a real dead end in sight. The values and the standards that we seek to live out as individuals and as members of this congregation can rather be initiated from the inside. As we see Jesus going into death, taking his last stand for the kind of inclusivism which makes all humans our brothers and sisters, no matter their faults or differences, a new spirit seeks to claim us. We hear him saying: "A new commandment I give, that you love one another." A new future I offer you, one in which you scramble to serve one another rather than to establish your position over others. This is a Gospel alternative to the Law, a new spirit at work within our spirits, giving evidence to the Christ within us who is our life and hope before God.

And that leads to the vision statement that needs to express the hopes and action of the people in this parish. The man for others is calling you to be an inclusive community. He is seeking to be your life's meaning through giving, not taking; through embracing, not rejecting; through sharing hope with others, not just counting your successes. How will you work that out, as individuals and as a community of Christ's followers? How will you seek to show that you are Jesus people, an inclusive community, dependent on his life at work within you?

It will surely be the opportunity of a lifetime to discover individually and collectively that this was the place where you came to understand that Jesus was alive and well because you met him in the faces of those you learned to serve here.

Prof. Dr. Dr. / President Emeritus David Zersen
Concordia University at Austin
E-Mail: djzersen@aol.com

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