Sermon Archive
Readings for 2 September 2007
Proper 17
Year C
Ecclesiasticus 10:(7-11)12-18
[Arrogance is hateful to the Lord and to mortals,
and injustice is outrageous to both.
Sovereignty passes from nation to nation
on account of injustice and insolence and wealth.
How can dust and ashes be proud?
Even in life the human body decays.
A long illness baffles the physician;
the king of today will die tomorrow.
For when one is dead
he inherits maggots and vermin and worms.]
The beginning of human pride is to forsake the Lord;
the heart has withdrawn from its Maker.
For the beginning of pride is sin,
and the one who clings to it pours out abominations.
Therefore the Lord brings upon them unheard-of calamities,
and destroys them completely.
The Lord overthrows the thrones of rulers,
and enthrones the lowly in their place.
The Lord plucks up the roots of the nations,
and plants the humble in their place.
The Lord lays waste the lands of the nations,
and destroys them to the foundations of the earth.
He removes some of them and destroys them,
and erases the memory of them from the earth.
Pride was not created for human beings,
or violent anger for those born of women.
Hebrews 13:1-8
Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured. Let marriage be held in honor by all, and let the marriage bed be kept undefiled; for God will judge fornicators and adulterers. Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, "I will never leave you or forsake you." So we can say with confidence,
"The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?"
Remember your leaders, those who spoke the word of God to you; consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Luke 14:1,7-14
On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely.
When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. "When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, `Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at 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 the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted."
He said also to the one who had invited him, "When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."
Sermon
The Rev. Jack Zamboni
On one occasion, Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal …
In nomine…
Someone has said that in the [Gospel of] Luke, “Jesus is either going to a meal, at a meal or coming from a meal” 1 -- and, I would, talking about meals. If this is true of Luke’ Gospel, it is because meals had a central place in Jesus’ ministry.
We, of course, are familiar with the story of the Last Supper – we hear it each Sunday when we celebrate the Eucharist. But notice the name: the Last Supper. There were many more suppers, lunches and presumably breakfasts that went before – meals that were more than times to refuel the body. Jesus’ meals were experiences of and living sermons about the Kingdom of God whose nearness he proclaimed again and again.
He fed the hungry multitudes with bread and fish to show the extravagant generosity of God’s love. In the parable of the prodigal son, the father throws a bit party to celebrate that the lost had been found – a sign of God’s joy when one wandering sinner comes home. In other stories, Jesus made a wedding banquet an image of the Reign of God to come. Jesus himself ate with tax collectors, prostitutes, notorious sinners and social outcasts of all stripes to reveal that all-inclusive love of God which would draw people “from east and west, from north and south [to] eat in the kingdom of God.” (Luke 13:29)
He was often criticized for sharing meals with these “unrighteous” folk by the religiously observant people of his time. Yet Jesus ate with them, as well. Pious Pharisees, who often found his practice troubling, saw something remarkable in this young teacher. They invited him to dine with them and he accepted. But he often proved a disconcerting guest.
There was the time at the house of Simon the Pharisee when a woman who was known to be a notorious sinner wandered in poured precious ointment on Jesus’ feet, and washed them with her hair -- and her tears. Jesus answered his host’s unspoken question about this shocking behavior – as shocking then as now – by saying that the woman was extravagant in her show of love because she knew that in Jesus’ presence, her many sins were forgiven. (Luke 7:36-50). She got something about the grace of God’s Kingdom that Simon the pious Pharisee did not.
And then there is today’s dinner party story in which Jesus roundly critiques the etiquette of both guests and host. Luke tells us that Jesus “noticed how the guests chose the places of honor” at the table. This was no small thing. In Jesus’ day, where you sat was of real importance. It showed where you fit into the social pecking order and the honor in which you were held – and that mattered a lot. In the culture of Jesus’ day, “[h]onor was the most precious good, and the quest for it …conditioned all social interactions.”2 Of special importance was the honor ascribed to you by other people – like the dinner host who assigned seats to show whom he held in the greatest honor. It was a serious social game, and people played for keeps.
So watching the guests maneuver themselves into the seat of the highest honor they thought their host would let them get away with, Jesus gives some unusual advice: When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, `Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at 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 the table with you.
It seems that Jesus is giving his listeners a clever trick for winning the game of honor whose not so subtle dance he has been watching -- pretend you have less honor than you do, and your host will honor you in a very public way! What a cool idea!
Still, I can’t help but hear an undercurrent – and more – of irony in Jesus’ words. After all, he was always breaking the honor codes at the meals he hosts by eating with folks that no “honorable” person would associate with. Would Jesus of all people just be teaching what my son would call a better “gaming strategy”? I don’t think so.
Isn’t it more likely that he is trying to show up the whole honor system for what it is – a polite, if deadly serious game, of one-up-man-ship and social climbing that God has no interest in and less patience for?
That suspicion finds confirmation when Jesus next turns to – or turns on -- his host, and offers advice about whom he should invite to his next big party. When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind...[who] cannot repay you.
Now that’s a strange notion! Don’t invite your social peers or superiors who can reward you with good food and increased honor by inviting you to their next party. No, invite the outcasts, the social and religiously dishonored – the poor, the maimed, the blind, the lame -- that precise group of people, in fact, that the Old Testament Law specifically prohibited from serving as priests in Temple worship. To the host and all who hear, Jesus says, “Make your meals like the meals that I host; the meals that you who care about social and religious honor so often criticize. The honor that matters so much to you does not matter to God at all-- except that God wants to dismantle your honor system entirely! All of your concern about who is up and who is down; who is in and who is out; who is welcome and who is not; who sits at head of the table and who at the foot; all of that is precisely not what the Kingdom of God is about. You see, those social and religious distinctions you are so much in the habit of drawing drive wedges and build walls between the people whom my God wants to draw together into one family around one table sharing one meal together. That’s why I eat with the people I eat with. Those folks you dishonor are honored guests at God’s table. That universal, indiscriminate welcome is the only proper etiquette in the Kingdom of God.” 3
If all that is so, what does that mean for us today? It means at least this about our life as the Church of Jesus’ followers. The Church is called to be a training ground for Kingdom behavior, community which, with the help of God’s Spirit, practices living Kingdom etiquette. We do that in part for our own sake – so that when the fullness of the Kingdom comes, we’ll have some notion of how we’re supposed to behave. We do it also so that in our behavior, others may catch a glimpse of the extravagant indiscriminately welcoming love of God which Jesus showed in his teaching, life and death. So it is not an accident that the central thing we do each time we gather for worship is a meal – the Holy Eucharist And the invitation to that meal doesn’t depend on social standing, age, race, wealth, health, marital status, good looks, profession or any other marker to which people ascribe honor or dishonor in our society. This welcoming meal is a sign of God’s Kingdom.
But our living of Kingdom etiquette can’t stop here in Church. What we do outside of worship must be filled with the same welcoming spirit. That is why for all the years that the Interfaith Hospitality Network of Mercer County existed, we welcomed homeless families to sleep and eat in this building. This too, is why, I have sought to be unambiguous in welcoming gay and lesbian people into this parish– who, sadly, are still considered religiously dishonorable by many of the pious in our day.
It is also why the parish leadership continues to urge us all to be as welcoming as possible to guests who join us for worship and fellowship on Sunday mornings. Today’s reading from the Letter to the Hebrews repeats that theme: Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers. We’ve been getting batter at that – but sometimes, we find it a challenge, and in part because we get absorbed by another exhortation from Hebrews: Let mutual love continue. We can get so wrapped up in our mutual love – sitting with our closest friends at coffee hour, getting caught up on each others’ lives; providing support when we need it – that we ignore the stranger at the next table, often without even realizing it. If Jesus were to show up at our parties, he might have some choice words to say about where and with whom we choose to sit. When we treat our visitors as unwelcome guests, we dishonor them – and ourselves as well. We fail to practice good Kingdom etiquette.
As I’ve done before and will likely again, I could conclude with a bunch of practical advice on how we could all do this better. But today, I want say just this: Each of us, no matter what our history, are recipients of the welcoming, gracious love of God that calls the Kingdom community into being. Whether we’ve been in the Church all our lives, are mid-life returnees or brand new converts, the extravagant, indiscriminate love of God has welcomed us again and again to a meal and a community of love of which we are utterly undeserving.
Maybe recalling the welcome we have received might move us to do the same for others: to eat all our meals as Jesus did; welcoming all, dishonoring none; showing guests the extravagant, indiscriminate love of God that has welcomed us to the table of God’s Kingdom -- and welcomes everyone as honored guests.
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1 Robert J. Karris, Luke: Artist and Theologian, Luke’s Passion as Literature (New York: Paulist, 1985), p. 47 quoted by R. Alan Culpepper in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IX (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995) p. 283
2 Santiago Guijarro “Why does the Gospel of Mark begin as it does?” in Biblical Theology Bulletin, Vol. 33:1 Spring 2003 http://academic.shu.edu/btb/vol33/btb03.html
3 “Lessons in Kingdom Etiquette” R. Alan Culpepper, The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IX (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995) p. 283 ff.
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