Luke 14: 1, 7-14.
If you have been watching or reading
about any of the activities of the Olympics, you are aware that as far
as the reporters are concerned, nothing is as important as winning.
Even though the Olympic ideal states that the glory of the games is in
the competing, in a friendly manner, among athletes from all nations of
the world, the press and the TV commentators make it sound like you are
persona non grata if you do not win a medal.
Unfortunately, this attitude is
rampant within our society. Go into any bookstore, and among the
best sellers you will find a host of books about self-promotion,
self-enhancement and how to win. There are titles like, “Looking Out
For number One”, “Pulling Your Own String” and an endless list of “How
to Succeed” Books. This emphasis has also spread to the world of
religion. Norman Vincent Peale made a great splash with his book,
written many years ago, but still available, “The power of Positive
Thinking.” He was followed by a group of books by Robert Schuller
such as “Possibility Thinking,” “Tough Times Never Last, but Tough
People Do.” And the list goes on and on.
As a nation, we are obsessed with
identification to personalities. Fans line up to get close to sport
stars, though now their union makes them charge a fee for their
autograph, even though they are making millions of dollars. There are
several magazines that reveal the most intimate details about
personalities in the movies or on television. People love to identify
with winners.
Even in the callused world of finance,
thousands attend the annual meeting of Berkeley Investments simply to
identify with Warren Buffet, the guru of finance who has become a
billionaire through his choice of investments. And hundreds stood
in line in Toronto simply to see Bill Clinton, who hardly qualifies as
a bastion of moral living.
Apparently, this phenomenon and the
desire to be near to successful people is not new. It is as
least as old as the time of Jesus, because in our text Jesus addresses
this very situation. You heard the words when Jim read them. What
Jesus said would not make headlines in today’s world- or maybe it
would, in a very negative way. Jesus said, “When you are invited, don’t
take a seat close to the host, lest another of greater importance comes
in; then, you will be asked to change seats, and you will be
embarrassed. Instead, he said, take a lower seat. Then the host
will perhaps invite you to sit closer to the head of the table, and you
will honored.
I can hear the critics of today:
“don’t back down, you got there first;” “exalt yourself, that’s the way
to be exalted; all this stuff about the humble being exalted is for
losers.” It’s like implying, if not saying, you poor Olympic athlete,
out of all the competitors in the world, you only came 4th or 15th or
25th. Jesus would be asked to leave the broadcasting booth,
because his message runs counter to what the networks want and maybe
what the public wants to hear.
The truth is, no one likes to be last.
Given the option, we would much rather win than lose; at least I would.
It was the late Grantland Rice who penned “It matters not who won
or lost, but how you played the game.” Try and sell that to a
professional coach! They fall into the category of the legendary Vince
Lombardy, coach of Green Bay Packers, who said, “Winning isn’t the most
important thing, it’s the only thing.” Or Leo Durocher of baseball
managing fame, who said
“Nice guys finish last.”
I guess Jesus would never have made it
as a sports coach, an industrial leader, or even a company CEO. He had
a much larger and greater view of life. But most of humanity
wants to be associated with a winner: one who exalts them in the
public’s eye. As usual, Jesus marched to a different
drummer. Listen again to his words. “When you are invited by
anyone to a marriage feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest a
more eminent man than you be 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.” In just those few words, Jesus probes our
motives for seeking honour and position. Almost always, self-promotion
is achieved ‘at the expense of others’. This is another of the almost
unending pronouncements of Jesus that we are to be inclusive people,
not exclusive. Why? For this one reason: people who exclude others are
of necessity judgmental: he is not worthy; she doesn’t have the proper
family connections; they are not good enough for this group: they don’t
come to church very often, how can they hold that position, and on it
goes. You see it in almost every organization in which you become
involved.
We also need to know that social
position was even more important in the society of which Jesus was a
part than it is in ours. Society was highly hierarchical. There was a
place on the ladder for you and your family, and you struggled to go
higher or even to stay where you were, because this was a community
value that was assigned to you. To have to take a lower place within
society was highly embarrassing, and a publicly humiliating thing to
happen. So, when Jesus proclaimed a life of love and acceptance, he was
going against the public norm of that day AND maybe today.
Falsehoods and selfishness tell us
that our own self interests can only be served by denying the interests
of others, or by denying the things of God, or by using all of the
above for our own self interests. Inevitably, such a decision leads to
exploitation and abuse, as we see almost daily. Some people say
judgment is OK, because it is based on values. Stan Hauerwas, a
theologian from Duke University writes “Cars have values, people don’t”
People have practices, behaviour and manners. Show me how a person
behaves, even in the smallest of the practices of everyday life, and
that will tell you all that is important in that person's life.
The saddest reality of the Church of
today is that it is filled with very judgmental individuals, who defend
their point of view with religion. I believe it was Martin Luther King
who stated once that the most segregated hour in America was the hour
of Sunday worship in most Churches. We need to ask, is that true in
Canada? And is it true in Squamish?
Meals were important in the Bible,
particularly in the gospel of Luke. Thumb through this gospel sometime,
and see how many times it mentions encounters while Jesus was seated at
a table having a meal. There is a middle eastern proverb that
says, “I saw them eating and I knew who they were.” This was very true
of the Jews. Meals in Judaism are still a religious experience. Eating
together is a time to celebrate one’s faith. They have very
special cleanliness rules- clean food, clean dishes, clean hands, and
clean hearts. It was precisely at this point where Jesus offended a lot
of people, particularly people of faith. Jesus ate whatever was put
before him, because he was not captive to the dietary laws. He ignored
the finger bowls and the raised finger on the teacup. He was not afraid
to eat with dirty people whose lives revealed a contempt for
religion. People who saw Jesus eating sized him up as being one
who had lost all sense of being right. They saw him as one who condoned
sin by sitting and eating with sinners. He was insulting the good
people who already attended worship and were religious.
Sinners fell into one of five
categories in the world of Jesus; those who did dirty things for a
living, like pig farmers or tax collectors (they still qualify); people
who did immoral things, like liars and adulterers; people who did not
keep the law of Moses up to the standards of the religious authorities;
Samaritans and Gentiles, that’s us. By their standards, Jesus was
a grave sinner. Picture it, he is sitting down at a table, eating
and chatting with prostitutes, and a couple of dirty, heavily hung over
windsurfers just in from the Spit. To his left, there is an
abortion Doctor, and next to her a young man with AIDS. There is a
young women on welfare with five kids by three different Fathers. There
is a crack addict and a grizzled man out on probation. Does all of that
offend you? It sure makes me feel badly, because I don’t think I would
like to be at that table. But that is exactly where I should be. Just a few days ago, I went into the
Bargain Store. When I came out, there was a young man playing his
guitar in front of the Liquor Store, hoping people would throw money
into his case. I passed by and ignored him. Was that the right thing to
do? Up by “Mostly Books”, a dirty, disheveled man asked me for some
change. I gave him a Loonie. Was that the right thing to do? They
come to the soup kitchen that we sponsor. They are a pretty grim group,
and I find it hard not to be judgmental about them. But I thank God,
some people of this Church come down there and feed them; they are
strong enough to leave the judgment to God. We don’t know their story,
and really, if we are followers of Christ, does it matter? I don’t know
about you, but I find trying to live this Christian life is tough! But
that is just what Jesus said it would be. He was loving, giving and
accepting, and they killed him. They killed him because he violated
their religious practices.
William Willimon, one of my
theological heroes and a minister who was recently elected to be a
Bishop in the United Methodist Church echoes this sentiment. He puts it
this way:
“The
Christian does not love his or her neighbour because the neigbour is a
nice person, or because the neighbour deserves love, or because the
neighbour returns love; the Christian loves in response to the love
with which God has loved him or her. The Christian loves first because
of what she or he believes about God, not because of something he or
she believes about humanity. Love in the Biblical sense is an activity,
a decision, a response, something you decide to do because of what you
know about God." (Judson, 1978, “The Gospel For The Person Who
Has Everything," page 70).
That’s the point of the parable that
Jesus told. Where he told it is even more interesting. The
chapter beings with these words; “ One Sabbath…” There is Jesus,
tweaking the religiously pious again. This all occurs on the
Sabbath, one Sabbath when he went to dine at the house of a ruler who
belonged to the Pharisees. They were watching him. Notice
the components of the story-it was the Sabbath, the man is a prominent
citizen (in fact, one of the rulers who is a Pharisee, one steeped in
Jewish law and practice. Then, to rub salt into the wounds of those who
were there, and just so that we don’t miss the point, a man with dropsy
shows up (we would call his ailment oedema, a retention of fluid in the
body that affects one’s blood pressure and thus the heart). Jesus asks
the lawyers and the Pharisees, is it lawful to heal on the
Sabbath? Probably, aware of the healing he did on the Sabbath
that we talked about last week, they were silent. Maybe it was out of
respect for Jesus, or maybe it was because the crowds were joyous when
he healed the women with scoliosis, but whatever the reason, the
leaders were silent. So Jesus healed the man. Then he told them
this parable.
.
What does it mean to you and me? If
you are at the head table now, or heading there, enjoy but beware. If
you are one of the poor, the lame, the crippled, bless you, said
Jesus. Life has a way of making you crippled. Everyone, even the
highly exalted will be humbled someday, and then what will happen to
them in a world that worships success?
Jesus teaches us to remember the
people with whom he likes to party. He reminds us that we are on the
guest list. Pushed away from the head table, we wander around trying to
find someplace to sit. Finally, we see a place, it’s there on the 20th
table. We squeeze into that seat, and there, in that great
celebration, we find that we are seated beside Jesus. May it be so,
right here on Fourth Avenue in Squamish.