The Best Seat at the Table
Growing in Friendship and Hospitality • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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1 One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched. 2 There in front of him was a man suffering from abnormal swelling of his body. 3 Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in the law, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?” 4 But they remained silent. So taking hold of the man, he healed him and sent him on his way. 5 Then he asked them, “If one of you has a child or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?” 6 And they had nothing to say. 7 When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table, he told them this parable: 8 “When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. 9 If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this person your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. 10 But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all the other guests. 11 For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” 12 Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. 13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
Once again Jesus uses a meal to teach something about how people are invited to relate to one another in the Kingdom of God. We might call it a Kingdom values meal. Jesus actually did a lot of that as we have been seeing in this sermon series through Luke’s stories of Meals with Jesus.
Many times in sermons that you’ve heard from me or Pastor Jun you’ve heard us describe how Jesus makes it possible for us to experience a new way of being human…a way of living that empowers us to live as human beings who truly display God’s intention for humanity. And in some sense that is what Jesus is doing here....embodying and teaching the kind of Kingdom values that result in a new way of being human.
And all of this happens around a meal.
[Picture in your minds eye a large banquet that you might be invited to..... a large banquet connected to your work or profession (construction industry, doctors and pharmaceutical companies, political gathering, wedding,.....)
Now as you picture those in your minds eye, what for you is the best seat at the table?
Wedding? seating by the honored guests, sitting closest to the buffet, or closest to the bar!
Share examples: Scholarship awards banquet at CTS, Weddings: assigned seating? Once we ended up a table “the table of people who don’t know anybody!”; other times sit at the table with one of the parents… unassigned seating....more challenging - share story of being told 3 or 4 times that seats were saved for others.]
Live into this story....even though culturally there is still some distance for us from this story...
It’s into this setting that Jesus opens up teaching on a new way of being human.
Two stories that happen on the same occasion.... actually there’s a 3rd story that is told in vv. 15 to 24, but we’re saving that one for the end of the sermon series.
First is a miracle story, the next is a table etiquette story.
But before we get to them, lets notcie how Luke sets up the occasion.
1 One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched.
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prominent Pharisee - elite, C-suite Pharisee.... wealthy, well-known.
carefully watched. Why? a) a set up or trap?; or b) because Jesus is becoming more and more poplular
(paratēréō. In Greek this word has such senses as “to observe,” “to keep under observation,” “to lurk,” “to lie in wait,” “to pay heed,” “to note,” “to be on the lookout,” “to preserve,” “to watch over,” and “to keep.”)
Man with “dropsy”… edema.....
unclean, judged, marginalized, excluded.
In one of the commentaries that I consulted I found, a compelling case is made that the illness of dropsy is not simply a coincidence. Dropsy is the equivalent of what we would call edema…fluid retention, bodily swelling. “One ancient writer by the name of Diogenes compared money lovers to dropsies: as dropsies though filled with fluid crave drink, so money-lovers, though loaded with money, crave more of it, yet both to their demise.”[1] (Green commentary on Luke. p. 547)
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perhaps this is a commentary on the Pharisees.... remember, prominent, wealthy, craved money, status, honour....
43 “Woe to you Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and respectful greetings in the marketplaces.
After sharing a parable about a shrewd manager and ending with this statement: “You cannot serve both God and Mammon.(Money)” we read in Luke 16:14
14 The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus.
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perhaps this miracle is a teaching moment or even an invitation to these “dropsie Pharisees” to reach out to Jesus and be healed.
If we are going to understand what is being addressed in our story then there are two cultural practices that were very common in Jesus’ day that we need to be familiar with (Joel Green talks about this in his commentary on Luke’s Gospel):
The first practice has to do with SOCIAL STATUS.
SOCIAL STATUS
SOCIAL STATUS
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life was structured by social stratification or social status
your place in society was very much defined by how others perceived you
as an example, where you were assigned to sit or allowed to sit and a banquet, relative to the host was a kind of public advertising of your status (today, size of home, type of car, for the uber rich, the size of your yacht! all these communicate status)
Meals became occasions where social hierarchy was publically reinforced. True for guests but also for hosts....for a host to have important people close to him at his table also publically reinforced his status.
The second practice has to do with RECIPROCITY
RECIPROCITY
RECIPROCITY
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Joel Green notes that the ethic of reciprocity was central to the political stability of the culture of Jesus’ day.
“you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours”
a system of gift and obligation. Right from the top of society to the bottom.
gifts are never free but have strings attached.
there are at least 3 reasons why those in positions of power or privilege would not invite the poor to their meals:
endanger the social status of the host
wasted invitation
embarrass the poor
Jesus’ parable speaks into that first cultural dynamic having to do with social status.
[Briefly retell parable..... seating....honor-shame culture..... person doesn’t want to dishonor themselves by sitting too far away from host....but they also don’t want to embarrass themselves by being asked to move.]
Don’t behave in ways that are for the purpose of exalting yourself or honoring yourself. Rather humble yourself and in the eyes of God you will be lifted up. Those who exalt themselves will be brought down.
Think of ELIZABETH.....MARY.....Jesus announced “good news for the poor”
In the Kingdom of God social status is turned upside down..... those who are poor, blind, lame, on the margins…they are the ones who are valued.
The Tuesday night prayer meeting at Brooklyn Tabernacle felt like skydiving into a tornado, exhausting and exhilarating all at once. I'd read about the meeting in Pastor Jim Cymbala's book Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, but nothing prepared me for the event itself: 3,500 God-hungry people storming heaven for two hours.
Afterward, my friend and I went out to dinner with the Cymbalas. In the course of the meal, Jim turned to me and said, "Mark, do you know what the number one sin of the church in America is?" I wasn't sure, and the question was rhetorical anyhow. "It's not the plague of internet pornography that is consuming our men. It's not that the divorce rate in the church is roughly the same as society at large."
Jim named two or three other candidates for the worst sin, all of which he dismissed. "The number one sin of the church in America," he said, "is that its pastors and leaders are not on their knees crying out to God, 'Bring us the drug-addicted, bring us the prostitutes, bring us the destitute, bring us the gang leaders, bring us those with AIDS, bring us the people nobody else wants, whom only you can heal, and let us love them in your name until they are whole.'"
I had no response. I was undone. He had laid me bare, found me out, and exposed my fraudulence. I was the chief of sinners. I had never prayed, not once, for God to bring such people to my church. So I went home and repented. I stopped sinning. I began to cry out for "those nobody wants."
Condensed from our sister publication Leadership Journal, © 2009 Christianity Today International. For more articles like this, visit Leadershipjournal.net.
Mark Buchanan, "Messy, Costly, Dirty Ministry," Leadershipjournal.net (5-15-09)
11 For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
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After the parable Jesus offers another teaching and this time he speaks directly into that second cultural dynamic....the one we called RECIPROCITY
Jesus describes two groups of people:
the first group is your insider or inner circle group....their in your same social strata or maybe a little bit higher.... they’re the ones who can repay you for your gifts....
“friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors”
the second group are the outsiders.....and it’s important to notice that for many religious folks in Jesus day the list of people that Jesus names....the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind…are precisely those people who are excluded from God’s family...
Jesus says, invite them.
The system of reciprcity in Jesus’ day was a societal structure or custom that by definition excluded a very significant segment of society.
Jesus is saying treat these people as part of your family.....give gifts without strings attached… break down the social distance between rich and poor and between insider and outsider...
Finish with Thanksgiving dinner story....
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2018/11/19/this-man-hosts-free-thanksgiving-dinner-all-who-rsvp-its-his-rd-year/
For his first Thanksgiving alone in 1985, Scott Macaulay was thinking that he would have to heat up a frozen turkey dinner and turn on a football game to stifle the silence in his apartment. With his parents recently divorced and “nobody talking to anybody,” he said, “I was looking at a pretty rotten Thanksgiving. And I absolutely hate to eat alone.”
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Then Macaulay had an idea: What if he took out an ad in the local paper and invited 12 strangers to join him for Thanksgiving dinner? It seemed like a manageable number to host at the First Baptist Church he attended—and, yeah, it was a little crazy, but it had to be better than being lonely.
Since those 12 strangers gathered around his table for turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie 33 years ago, Macaulay has made his free feast an annual event. Through the years, he has fed plenty of widows, widowers, homeless people, and college kids who can’t make it home.
In this small town of about 27,000 people just 10 miles northwest of Boston, Macaulay feeds 60-100 people every year.
One year an elderly woman paid $200 for an ambulance to drive her to the church from her nursing home. She arrived decked out in fancy clothes and said she hadn’t been out in seven years. She cried when dinner was over. Infants have spent their first Thanksgiving with Macaulay, and more than a few elderly people have sat down for their last.
Another year, Macaulay took a plate out to a woman who was living in her car and was too ashamed of her plight to come inside until almost everyone had gone home.
“She came in to get some leftovers,” recalled Macaulay. “And she sang ‘Amazing Grace’ with this incredible voice. What a year that was”
Because Thanksgiving wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without giving thanks, Macaulay always asks people to write what they’re thankful for on a slip of paper and leave their thoughts in a basket. He saves the submissions and reads them throughout the year, long after the table has been cleared and the dishes washed.
“Sometimes, they’re grateful they no longer have cancer or that they finally found a job or have a place to live,” he said. “One year, a guy wrote that he was thankful his son was speaking to him again. That one was a tear-jerker.”
Geoff Shanklin, 65, lives alone and has attended every dinner since the tradition began. He said, “He really enjoys passing it on to lonely people in Melrose. For people like me with nowhere to go, Scott is family.”
Scott Macaulay has embraced and embodied the new way of being human that Jesus opens up for us. He’s welcomed the poor, the lonely, the overlooked and welcomed them to the Table.
And that my friends is precisely what our Lord has done for us. Humbled by our sin, our pride, and our idolatry, Jesus has come into our lives and put to death our sinfulness so that we could be resurrected with him to new life. Resurrected to new life and assigned a place at the Table…a table where everyone is seated next to the HOST.... Take the bread which is my Body, take the cup which is my Blood.
Lord, we might ask ourselves this morning, are there ways you are calling us to exalt the humble, to welcome the stranger or the lowly or the outsider....
Scott Macauley