Current Sermon: “Table Manners”
By the Reverend Jonathan Evans
22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 29, 2010
Scripture Reading:
The way you have a dinner says a lot about a social situation, relationships, social power, how well you know this person.
What do they talk about? Is it polite or informal conversation? Is it about something personal or about the weather?
How are the guests invited? With a spur of the minute phone call or written invitations, email perhaps?
When they come, are they served food or invited to help cut the carrots? Do you use paper plates or pull out the fine china? Do you light a candle or are you ordering pizza and watching the game together on the television? Do you get stressed out before they come or are you happy to have some much needed company?
Not just in today’s story, is Jesus around the dinner table. He eats with tax collectors and sinners. He eats again with a Pharisee and a woman comes with a bottle of ointment and anoints his feet. He ate again and didn’t wash his hands, offending the Pharisee.
In this passage this morning from Luke, the social norms of dinner from the first century are put on display. It’s the Sabbath and Jesus is invited to the house of a Pharisee.
What’s clear, at least in Luke, is that Jesus sees the table as a key and strategic place of teaching.
Jesus first looks around and sees “how the guests chose the places of honor." He then tells a parable as you heard. The message is clear: Go first to the most humble place at the table, "For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted" (14:11).
We might like to think that these first century issues around table manners have nothing to do with us. They were quite clear and obvious back then. In the ancient world, who had privilege and high status was quite clear – they’d get better food, more wine, extra care from a servant.
What if however, in our world, in our culture, in our location, we do the same thing but it’s just not quite that clear and obvious? Would if it is obvious to others?
Where do we assume the first place at the table? Do we assume privileges in our lives?
Do we do this in our work? Well I have seniority in this position…
In our church? Well I’ve been a member for so many years… or I’ve served here and here and there and done that?
Among our friends? Hey, I’m your best friend!...
In our families? I am your first born and only daughter…
In Jesus’ time in Greco-Roman culture, to seek humility was a foreign concept but it being humble is something that’s noted quite well with the followers of Jesus.
At the beginning of Luke, Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord, 47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 48 for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Later in Luke, it’s said again: all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted." 15 People were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them; and when the disciples saw it, they sternly ordered them not to do it. 16 But Jesus called for them and said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.
It’s hard to find a being more humble than an infant.
In Philippians 2:3 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.
In 1 Peter 5:5 And all of you must clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another, for "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble."
How much more it might mean for us? Jesus says take the humblest place first. God will see us in a different light, don’t assume anything, go humble.
Not are we only to assume humble places in the tables of our lives, but we are to invite the most humble and honor them.
Jesus not only says assume humility at the dinner table, he looks at the host of the dinner table and tells him who to invite: the cripple, the poor, the lame.
He’s looking directly at the one system that sets it up that people with privilege and means and status are invited.
He says don’t invite your friends and family because they’ll repay you. This system is the backbone of life – I’ll do this for you and you’ll do this for me.
Much of my wife’s family lives in Italy. One of her cousins, Francesco, spent some time in the States studying. He loved it because he do things like move into an apartment and have cable put in the next day with just a phone call. When he goes back to Italy, he’d have to wait forever to get cable if he just called them. Instead, he calls his friend who calls his grandmother who talks to her neighbor to get the cable guy to put it in. This is a system of reciprocity – I’ll do for you and you’ll do for me.
We don’t do it quite like the Italians, but we are human and we’re often do things because in some way it will benefit us.
We invite people to dinner because we want their friendship or maybe business. We invite family because they’re family and you need family.
But who are we to invite that doesn’t benefit us at all?
What about in other parts of our lives?
Where are we called to invite those who don’t benefit us? Maybe even involve a risk?
Where in our family lives? Social lives? Work lives? Church lives?
Cause, as Jesus says, these are the folks who will be at the resurrection. Those are the folks that we want to be with.
Table manners today we find out mean much more than just a humble way of being in our lives but also beyond to radical inclusion of others.
The story from Luke about Jesus charges us to look around this week, to pray about and examine ourselves and those we live with and around. How/where do we humble ourselves and assume humility? Who are those to be invited to all the tables in our lives?
Amen.