When our daughter, Heather, was in the fourth grade, she and her best friend, Becca, loved the American Girl dolls. These dolls were the hottest item on the market at the time – and quite expensive.
Each one had its own back story and reflected an era in American history. Molly was a school girl living in the 1940’s while Kirsten’s family arrived as immigrants by way of Ellis Island. Both Heather and Becca owned one of the dolls. However, they had read the accompanying books about each doll and eagerly awaited their American Girl magazine and catalogue each month.
It was there that they read about the soon-to-be-released Felicity American Revolution doll and her grand opening in Williamsburg, Virginia. Heather and Becca desperately wanted to attend. However, even the cost of the entry tickets and the special invitation to Miss Manderly’s tea was out of our price range – in spite of our daughters best efforts to convince us otherwise.
Needless-to-say, both Becca’s mother and I were floored when a month or so later Heather presented us with a personal letter written to her from Ms. Pleasant Rowland, the President of Pleasant Company that made the dolls. Enclosed were entry tickets to the opening and the tea. It seems that Heather, always an independent thinker, did not take my no for the final answer. Instead, she wrote to Ms. Rowland, explained her situation, and asked for the tickets.
Not surprisingly, the four of us – two mothers and two daughters - had a memorable long weekend in Williamsburg – the girls sporting their custom decorated wide-brimmed (and in their eyes) highly fashionable floral hats, their new Felicity dolls in hand, the accompanying book hot off the press, and a variety of extras included in the package. In fact, I still have the half-finished cross stich sampler that Heather eagerly started that weekend.
Best of all, however, they got to attend Miss Manderly’s afternoon party, the climax of the opening. Miss Manderly taught them high tea etiquette as they daintily sipped their drinks out of china cups and ate tiny pastries and scones, just as Felicity might have done with her family.
Unique experiences happen over food. Meals bring us together in strange and often wonderful ways. Jesus intuitively knew that. So different from his mentor, John the Baptist, who survived on a diet of locusts and wild honey, Jesus loved to eat.
The Gospels – especially the Gospel of Luke - are filled with stories of the numerous occasions Jesus sat down and enjoyed a meal – often with folks most people would never so much as share a serving spoon with. So it was in the story we just read. Jesus was invited to dinner by one of the local Pharisees, these rigidly legal keepers of Jewish religious tradition. I suspect that Jesus arrived a bit early and so sat back to watch a common scenario unfold before him, one that illustrated the social matrix of 1st century Palestine.
From his vantage point on the sidelines, he witnessed the explicit social ranking that defined his Greco-Roman world. After all, Jewish Palestine was part of the Roman Empire and so was governed by Roman class structure. In fact, meals highlighted the social and economic disparities that characterized these ancient times.
There was a place at the table only for those who were deserving, and everyone at the table had his appropriate place, closer to or farther away from the host as tradition, power, and influence dictated. Birth, wealth, and citizenship determined one’s barely moveable social class.
As Methodist pastor Jo Anne Taylor wrote, the Roman social hierarchy was based on an “intricate system of benefactors and their clients. Favors were the currency of this system, and the more favors that were owed to you as a benefactor, the higher you could rank in society. That ranking was also affected by the number of favors you, as a client, owed.
Tied up in this system of favors owed and collected was a strong sense of honor and shame. It would be extremely embarrassing to owe someone a favor and be unable to repay that debt when the benefactor requested it. Such an embarrassment would certainly lower your social standing. At the same time, there was some stigma attached to calling in a debt that you knew could not be repaid.
Social advancement was everyone’s goal, and putting yourself forward by associating with those who were one rung above you on the social ladder, while making sure you were owed enough favors by others who were one rung below you, required constant maneuvering – and a good memory for who owed what to whom.”
In short, Jesus knew full well that the social customs of the time demanded that any Pharisee worth his salt would invite to a dinner only those who could be considered at least his equal. Jesus witnessed the guests trying to maneuver their way to the head table – switching place cards when no one was looking, calling in favors when they could, and simply talking up their own accomplishments - glad handing and profusely complimenting their host – and themselves.
Now, Jesus was never very good at being the mannerly guest. The Pharisees complained all the time about his choice of table partners – and did not warm to the prostitutes and other assorted low life that Jesus insisted upon dining with. So we should not be surprised that our rabbi used this table opportunity to call out both the guests and the host amidst the social climbing games they all were playing.
In short, once again, Jesus embarrassed himself and his dinner companions. Of course, he was known for cutting to the chase – and that was not always taken to kindly. It is a wonder that anyone ever invited him to share a meal or be a guest!
“When you’re invited to dinner, go and sit at the last place,” he declared so loudly enough that everyone could hear. “Then when the host comes he may very well say, ‘Friend, come up to the front.’ What I’m saying is, if you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up flat on your face. But if you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.”
However, Jesus did not stop there. He went after his host as well. How unmannerly is that!
“The next time you put on a dinner”, he said to the Pharisee hosting the dinner, “don’t just invite your friends and family and rich neighbors, the kind of people who will return the favor. Invite some people who never get invited out, the misfits from the wrong side of the tracks. You’ll be—and experience—a blessing. They won’t be able to return the favor, but the favor will be returned—oh, how it will be returned!—at the resurrection of God’s people.”
Simple 21st century table etiquette laced with a bit of apocalypticism in a 1st century context? Hardly! Jesus had no interest in being an early Emily Post or Miss Manners or even Miss Manderley, the Williamsburg tea lady. His criticism went much deeper, straight to the heart of the disparity between the culture in which he lived and God’s Kingdom, God dream for the world.
Jesus points out two aspects of mealtime behavior that simply would not fly at one of God’s banquets: that of the guests and that of the host. To the guests, he exhorts, "When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor…
Go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, 'Friend, move up higher.'" And then the clincher: "For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted."
As blogger Debi Thomas writes, “Our lection this week doesn't tell us how Jesus's listeners reacted. I don't know if they laughed, shook their heads in disbelief, questioned Jesus's sanity, argued back, or followed his advice. All I know is how I react as I read and re-read this story. I feel an uncomfortable combination of surprise, skepticism, and fear. As in: Really? Is Jesus serious? Does he have any idea what he's asking?”
After all, he is advocating that we who say we follow him think and act the opposite of the way the world around us thinks and acts. The world says that if you want to get to the top, you have to push, fight, claw, step on anyone in your way. As University Chaplain Luke Powery writes, “The apparent goal is to show that we are at the top of our game, our field, our school.” Decide what looks good on your resume or college application – and see that it somehow gets there without too much fudging. “Jesus, however, flips the script by saying one should aim to go as low as one can go. “
It is called humility, and there is something to be said for it – for putting your best foot forward while not stepping on or over someone else. Of course, I do not know how that would play out in your own life. I just know that we need to be thinking about what is good and right for the other person - regardless of whether or not they look the same, act the same, seem to be the same as we, regardless of where they are on the socio-economic ladder or the political spectrum. For instance, for those of us who tend more to political conservatism, that would mean in God’s Kingdom (which is what we say we strive for as Christians), we are no better than the immigrants at our Southern border or the rural poor here in Raymond who need a social safety net to get by.
Likewise, we who tend to be more progressive in our views need to remember (and this is hard one for me and I certainly do not always succeed), we need to remember that at our core we are no better than the current administration in Washington. We are no better than the ICE agents who raid workplaces in the South or the Border Patrol agents who man road blocks here in Maine to detain people suspected of entering our country illegally.
In short, no matter what our political proclivities and knowing that we will most likely never agree wholeheartedly with one another, until we can see each other through God’s eyes, until we can embrace our humanity and affirm what we hold in common before we define one another by our differences, until we can be curious about one another rather than judgmental, we will always be a nation polarized, insulated, and isolated from the rest of the world. That is humility, and there is something to be said for its role in God’s Kingdom, in God’s dream.
This humble posture, however, is not just for the guests in Jesus’ observations. He extends it to the host as well. “When you host a lunch or dinner, don’t invite your friends, your brothers and sisters, your relatives, or rich neighbors. If you do, they will invite you in return and that will be your reward. Instead, when you give a banquet, invite the poor, crippled, lame, and blind. And you will be blessed because they can’t repay you.” But in the end, God will.
As Jo Anne Taylor writes in her blog, “Treating others, such as the poor, the sick, the blind, the crippled in spirit, as if they were our equals still places barriers between “us” and “them.” Treating others as equals is only the first step toward becoming equal as joint-heirs in the family of God. And this is what Jesus came to accomplish. Jesus came to level the playing field between the haves and the have nots, between the wealthy and the poor, between the healthy and the sick.”
We are challenged to live our lives as an open table and humbly extend indiscriminate hospitality. Life in the dream of God is not a quid pro quo. Such keeping score does not fly because - how do you repay love? How do you reimburse mercy?
As one blogger I read this week noted, “The character of our guest list has everything to do with whether or not we are being Christ’s church. Any table where Jesus is present is a table where all are welcome. It is a foretaste of the heavenly banquet where God cares for all and all we can do is give thanks. We are ultimately all dependent upon God and interdependent upon each other. And that admission is an example of true humility.”
I was never one to depend on McDonald’s or Burger King or Pizza Hut when it came to dinner as our children were growing up. We always sat down together at the table, and there was never any fast food. Chef Boyardee maybe, but not fast food!
Sometimes there were five of us. Sometimes it was only me and one of the kids who had to eat quickly in order to get to a soccer game or drama rehearsal. No one ever ate alone, and we always said grace.
Whether two or three or five us were at the table, we held hands and sang the Johnny Appleseed song together. Doing so was important to me as a parent – and as a pastor. Grace is important – on many levels. You see, as Luke Powery observed, “The table is not only where one may say grace; it is the space where one extends grace.” In a way, for the Gospel writer of Luke, nothing was more serious than the dining room table because, you see, who is at the table of our lives says something about who is in and who is out. It says something about us too – and about how seriously we take humility.
And if we take it seriously, if we choose to be a part of God’s dream and welcome the world at our table? Well, it is hard then to ignore our common humanity as we share the Blue Plate Special or point out spinach on our tablemate’s teeth – as we truly embrace the radical hospitality and consequent humility that is at the core of Jesus’ message.
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