Eleventh Sunday after Trinity, 1st September 2019

Lectionary readings: Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16 and Luke 14:1, 7-14

Our readings today are concerned with table manners.

I remember, from my childhood, all manner of table manners. Don’t put your elbows on the table. The proper and highly improper way to hold and use a fork. That kind of thing.

Our Gospel reading recounts one occasion when Jesus went to eat at the house of a leading Pharisee. This is not the first time, in Luke’s Gospel, that Jesus has been a dinner guest in the home of a Pharisee. Moreover, we’ve encountered Pharisees among a large gathering in the home where Jesus was resident. But we’ve also seen Jesus eating in the homes of various other people—tax collectors; two adult and yet unmarried sisters—at least some of whom at least some Pharisees felt uncomfortable with.

The Pharisees were a grass-roots social movement that resisted the influence of Greco-Roman culture on Judaism, and emphasised the importance of interpreting the Torah—the Law given through Moses—for everyday Jewish life in their own day, prioritising that over the rituals of the temple in Jerusalem. They were sincere people, mature in faith. And they were of mixed opinion, in relation to Jesus. Some saw in him a natural ally, one of them even. Others saw him as a threat, a fifth columnist, as it were. Almost certainly, some Pharisees were, initially, supportive of Jesus, but later distanced themselves and even opposed him outright, both openly and clandestinely. In the passage immediately prior to today’s reading, a group of Pharisees seek to save Jesus’ life. In our passage today, Jesus encounters both invitation and close, critical examination. We need to resist viewing this group in simplistic and negative terms. Their motives are, for the most part, good; but good people can do terrible things; and they have yet to move from devout lives to lives totally surrendered to the will of God. Like many good people, they enjoy the rewards of goodness—they take their compensation for goodness—in material comfort and social standing.

Jesus goes to the house of a leading Pharisee, and observes how the guests chose the places of honour. A formal meal like this would have involved reclining at three couches around a table, one side kept open for serving from, with the host on the left-hand couch and guests arranged on the other couches in a strict order from most-to-least important. As Luke tells it, Jesus is watching a deliberate act of picking out the best positions at the table, perhaps even arguing over them. Ordinarily, the host would set the seating plan. This would suggest that either the host had chosen not to take part in this social convention, or that several of his guests were choosing to snub their host. Either would be shocking.

Jesus first addresses the other guests, telling them a parable of comedic exaggeration. Rather than fight over the best seat, he advises, head straight for the lowest place. At first, this sounds like a magnificent manipulation, to guarantee not only a better seat but a public commendation by the host, to boot. But on reflection, it exposes the whole system by throwing it into anxiety. To sit in the place not chosen for you is to dishonour your host, exposes them (and you) to shame, whether one sits up or down (hence the host must intervene to restore right social order). And those who buy-into the honour-shame economy experience a perpetual rising and falling, taking great pride in their humility: it is a classic Catch-22 situation.

Leaving the other guests trying to square the circle, Jesus turns to his host, with advice on how to conduct future dinner parties. Don’t invite the usual suspects, those guests whose presence will either cement your social standing or facilitate your social climbing. Instead, invite those who have no means to reciprocate, no means to repay a social debt. It is worth noting that, if this host has indeed chosen not to set out a seating plan, he is already well on the journey of renouncing worldly values in favour of the kingdom of heaven.

But Jesus’ instruction to him is not simply, ‘use your table as a means of social justice, not social status.’ The Pharisees were deeply committed to living according to the Torah. They were already deeply committed to social justice. Jesus has no doubt that his host is a righteous man, and will share in the resurrection of the righteous: nonetheless, Jesus invites him into a deeper-still experience of God’s reordered society. It is entirely possible to pursue social justice without compassion; to do what is right because it is right, while still lacking what Jesus elsewhere calls the perfection of compassion. Jesus is not rebuking his host—as he rebuked his fellow-guests—but inviting him to move beyond being good to being perfect*.

The only way to be exalted in the kingdom of heaven is at the freely given recommendation of the poor, who are the disguised messengers of God. In view of this status conferred upon them, we are wise to honour the humble, we are wise to hear the exhortation written to the Hebrews, those geographically-dispersed, culturally-Jewish converts to Christianity: do not neglect searching out the strangers in your community, ensuring that their needs are met; remember those in prison and those being tortured; honour the sanctity of your neighbours’ marriages; do not neglect doing good and sharing what you have. And yet, the moment we do these things without compassion, out of duty but lacking love, in hope of gain, Jesus takes us aside and points us to the lower place, which is a higher place.

Whenever we welcome Jesus to our table, we discover, sooner or later, that he is in fact the one who has welcomed us into the home of the Father, to our Father’s table. And if we are genuinely desirous of pleasing God, he will draw us aside and re-orientate us to love. To love of those who are not there—and to the love that does not draw back from the poverty and woundedness of those who are there with us, but reaches out to make each one whole.

We may, indeed, have known people who live such lives; and we do well to imitate their faith until, after much rehearsal and many performances, it may become second nature to us also.

Today, where are you in the story? Are you one of the guests, whose fault Jesus graciously exposes, in order to set you free from sin? Are you the host, whose desire to please God Jesus rewards with the invitation to experience and enjoy greater freedom yet? Are you the poor, the crippled, lame and blind, called to the banquet, to taste very God? Wherever you are in the story today, this story is for you; and it is good news. So come to the table, eat and drink.

*As Ronald Rolheiser points out in Sacred Fire, the Greek notion of perfection is one of flawless ideal which is unobtainable in reality, whereas the Hebrew understanding of perfection is robust compassion, to which we are called. Generally, we recoil from Jesus’ words because we have the Greek notion in mind—though, if we are honest, we might recoil further still if we held the Hebrew understanding instead.