Luke 14:7-14
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.”
This sure doesn’t sound much like a parable. At least not the story parables we’re used to. Instead, it sounds more like good advice, though I’m not sure Jesus’ original audience took it that way!
A little background may help. The first-century world of ancient Palestine was very much a stratified culture of honor and shame where there was a place for everyone and everyone was in his or her place. In this kind of society, status was everything, and the way you gained status was through a system of mutual patronage – you did persons favors who then owed you, and vice verse.
So when Jesus comes along and first gives advice about not overreaching yourself in terms of your social status, heads were probably nodding in agreement. It would be absolutely mortifying to have your host ask you to move to a lower place on the dining chart and incredibly empowering to be invited to a better seat. All of this made sense and would likely have been followed, if not from a sense of humility at least in recognition of the soundness of Jesus’ practical wisdom.
But when Jesus then goes on to advise his host – his host, mind you, in a time and place where respect for your host is everything! – not to invite those persons to dinner who could repay him in any way but instead to invite the undesirables of the world, well then his advice suddenly seems a bit crazy or, worse, offensive. In a world where the exchange of mutual obligations was not just expected but actually common sense, who in their right mind would squander their status and privilege on those who can offer nothing in return? It’s absurd, foolish, even ludicrous.
Which is probably how you know it’s of God.
Jesus comes to Jerusalem not just to challenge the kingdom of the world, not to reform it, not to make it better. He comes to overthrow it, to put before us an entirely different way of being, a whole new way of relating to each other, and so pretty much everything thing he says about caring for each other with no regard for status or repayment makes absolutely no sense in light of the values of that day.
Or ours.
Let’s be honest. While the honor and shame dimensions of our culture aren’t quite as explicit, we’re still pretty conscious of our social status. And while we’d never admit to inviting persons to lunch or dinner from a sense of what they can do for us, we still keep track of what we owe and who owes us. So now, just as then, the thought of spending all that what we have on and for people who can do absolutely nothing for us seems not just unimaginable, but more than a little bit crazy.
And so after laying the logic of God’s kingdom along side the logic of the world, Jesus then embodies what he teaches by giving us all that he has. That is, after all, one way of looking at the cross: to see it as his conscious surrendering of his claim to power, authority, and even justice by climbing up on the cross to show us just how much God loves us, just how far God will go to reach us.
In this view, the purpose of the cross is not to satisfy God’s divine blood lust and demand for retribution but stead to lay claim to us and invite us, perhaps even drag us, into a different way of being and doing – a way of being and doing based on mutual love rather than mutual obligation and in the recognition that the only things of value you can keep are those you give away.
It’s a crazy gesture, of course, even offensive. One might even call it a parable.
Prayer: Dear God, so often the things you ask us seem beyond our imagination, so instruct, encourage, and embolden us to reach out to each other in mutual love through the example of your Son. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
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