Sermons

“Jesus Manners”

Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16; Luke 14:1, 7-14 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – August 28, 2016

Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words, that we might be renewed in our commitment to following Jesus and refreshed for the journey. We pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever,” we read in Hebrews. Okay, well, as long as part of what is always true is that Jesus is complicated, challenging and mysterious, I suppose that’s fine. Because even the short passage we just heard from Luke has Jesus making such a sharp turn, it could give you whiplash. This guy! Is he here to give advice about how to win friends and influence people, or is he here to up-end all the social conventions that hold society together? Who can tell?

I always get a little confused when Jesus suddenly seems like he’s giving shrewd advice about how to get ahead in society. These moments crop up from time to time in the gospels, but they don’t fit very well into my preferred understanding of Jesus. He’s supposed to be all about the just and equitable kingdom of heaven, so why would he be wasting time helping people increase their social status in an unjust, hierarchical system? But here he is, in verses 7-10, giving people strategies for avoiding embarrassment and, even better, manipulating a social situation to make themselves look better. It almost sounds like he’s encouraging false modesty. What is going on here? Who is this guy? And come to think of it, where was he sitting?

It’s really not very clear what Jesus’ status would have been at this sabbath day dinner at the Pharisee’s house. When he was telling “them” the parable, does that mean he was commanding the attention of the whole room? Or was he just talking to the people around him at the table? Had he even sat down yet, or was he shrewdly waiting to see how much the host would decide to honor him? I have so many questions!

Lo, and behold, within just one more verse, the Jesus I know and love is on his way back, with a summary of his advice that sounds much more like him (or my version of him, anyway) and less like a cable tv motivational speaker: “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” So maybe it wasn’t the strongest metaphor for making his point, but it was right in front of him, so he went with it. I guess that makes sense. But seriously, where he goes next can make your head spin. He’s just been talking about how to navigate the complexities of a banquet – the kind of event that you know people worried about what to wear and who they would end up sitting by – and suddenly he’s taken it to the streets and is talking about eternal rewards.

At this point, he’s talking directly to the Pharisee who is hosting him for dinner. And he’s basically saying, ‘You shouldn’t have done the thing you did. You should have done something else instead.’ You know, the way you do when you’ve been invited to dinner and you want to ingratiate yourself to your host. Seriously, this guy! But at least that’s kind of what we expect from Jesus, right? That he’s going around speaking truth to those in powerful positions. ‘You’ve got all the wrong guests here,’ he says. You should have invited a bunch of poor people, people who are crippled and blind, who wouldn’t have the resources to reciprocate your hospitality.’ He doesn’t exactly sum this one up as neatly as the last one, but the main idea seems to be that whatever you do that you can’t be repaid for, you’ll be rewarded for in heaven. That sounds pretty Jesus-y. But how did we get here from ‘improving your status at a party’ advice?

Could it be that Jesus defines manners differently than we do? Do you suppose maybe he’s drawn us in by latching on to our obsession with being popular and getting the right kind of attention at a party, and then switched things up on us to help us understand what is really important? What if the point is that rather than being offended by someone who sat in the wrong seat at a banquet, Jesus wants us to be upset that there are people who aren’t going to eat today. What if his point is that there’s something wrong with only being polite to “polite society” while ignoring those outside? He knows how we are. He knows how concerned we are about being in the “in” group. He knows that it occupies so much of our attention that we forget about the people who’ve always been “out”. But he wants us to join him in breaking down the false barriers between manners appropriate for a dinner party and guidelines for running a soup kitchen. “Jesus Manners” cover all situations, and don’t treat any one situation in isolation from the others.

‘You want to know how to get ahead at a banquet?’ Jesus asks. ‘Well, on what scale? Because I can tell you how to avoid embarrassment here at your little party. Or I can tell you how to be first in the kingdom of heaven, and it’s by putting yourself last in line for the buffet, with all the beggars and thieves ahead of you.’ Jesus manners call us to think about our situations more broadly, to realize that what matters more than the seating chart is the inclusivity of the guest list. We’re called to set a place for everyone at the table.

Before we finish up with Jesus’ table manners lesson, I want to note one other connection between our gospel reading and the passage we heard from Hebrews. (There’s a lot in there we won’t deal with today.) It opens up with the line “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” This is, of course, a reference to Abraham and Sarah, who fed the three strangers who showed up at their tent and prophesied about their future heirs. But is it not also about Jesus himself, when paired with Luke 14 like this? Certainly, we have no evidence that Jesus was crippled or blind. But he did claim to have no place to lay his head. How was he going to invite this Pharisee over for dinner, to reciprocate for the invitation he was enjoying that sabbath day? He was breaking down all the categories at that banquet, being both the guest of honor and the guest with no opportunity for repayment. Perhaps this is why he was so easily able to move between offering shrewd social advice and critiquing unjust society in the same conversation.

We know there was one dinner party he actually hosted himself. Who was at the table? Friends and followers, yes, but also betrayers and deniers and cowards. And he fed them all. None of them had a way to repay him. And it seems likely that even then they were jockeying for position, eager to be the one to sit at Jesus’ right hand. But eventually, they got the point. May we continue to pass on the table manners they learned from Jesus, that the main thing is to make sure everyone has a place at the table. Alleluia and Amen!