The Placement of The Guests

The Placement of The Guests

Luke 14:1,7-14
September 2, 2007

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.”

On Friday, I got the good news that the leaders in the Southwest Association of our
denomination have put together a work trip to Biloxi, Mississippi, to do some hands-on
labor through the Back Bay Mission, one the great historic missions of the United
Church of Christ. I want us to really consider participating in this chance to gather with
UCC members and friends from throughout our area, and probably the whole state, for
this December 30th-through January 5th trip. There will be some cost, and even if you
can’t swing a hammer all that well, like me, know that there will be other ways we can
participate and help out. I’ll get more information to you at some point, but if you have
any interest at all, even curiosity, make sure and get a hold of me and tell me so. I
know that Douglas and I will participating—but I have to admit that he’s much better
than I am with a hammer, to be honest.

When the clergy were talking about this possibility at our last few gatherings, I really
encouraged them to consider going to Biloxi rather than New Orleans, but not because
the damage caused by Katrina in Biloxi was greater—that wouldn’t have been true.
New Orleans is still woefully behind in its attempt to reconstruct itself, as we’ve seen in
the last few weeks on TV, and there is much left to do there…but there is also a lot
more people, a lot more workgroups from other denominations going there to do their
great work, as we have done in partnership with our UCC churches in New Orleans. I
have to admit that there were two reasons I wanted us to go Biloxi, and the first one was
fairly selfish: I had been there before, with a youth group from First Congregational
UCC in Houston, Texas, and so I have some deep affection for the place, and some
good memories of the area, before Hurricane Katrina came and destroyed so much of
what I remember about it, including the Back Bay facilities, at least from what I hear and
the pictures I have seen. But secondly, and certainly most importantly, there is
something amazing going on in Biloxi, something we need to attend to, and that is rapid
pace of redevelopment in favor of expensive condos, luxury homes over homes for the
poor and middle class, and the further expansion of the casinos in the area. It’s not
that there weren’t any of those things before Katrina, but now it seems that the only
thing being built or re-built are those things that most people in Biloxi can’t afford, and it
has begun to squeeze out the middle and lower classes of the town. Back Bay Mission
has committed to doing its work of rebuilding the town through its work camp program,
but also by becoming an advocate for the poor and middle class, who are becoming
increasingly being squeezed out of a city they once could afford to live in.
Back Bay has chosen to stay, despite the temptation to leave, despite the hard work of
the rebuilding their facilities, despite the hard work of their employees in trying to
rebuild their own lives—in fact, they lost something like half of their employees because
their spouses were no longer employable in the area. And they also decided to make
sure that everyone was going to be at the table when it comes to re-building their city,
all the people that developers don’t usually care about, like the poor, the developers
who saw the devastation of Biloxi as a chance to clear out the riff-raff, the poor, some
of the lower middle class, in order to rebuild the city as a playground for the rich, or
least the folks who are richer than most of us, and most of the people who have lived in
Biloxi for generations. When I heard that they planned to stay and do their historic
work, but also to now become advocates for those who normally wouldn’t be invited to
the table to talk about the rebuilding effort, who wouldn’t have the best places to sit at,
even if, by some strange fluke, they got invited to the party, so to speak—all I can say
that when I heard that, I was very proud of them.

And it is the placement at the table, and who is invited to the table, that seems to
concern the Christ this day, and in this story. I think he would have recognized the
conflict we find now in Biloxi, between the have and have-nots, and I think you know
how he would have arranged the seating around the table, if we are to believe what we
read in our Scripture passage today. Tables and invitations and seating issues—all of
them are familiar to us as Christians, if we have been paying attention to the Gospel
narratives, and even some of the Letters of our New Testament. In the ancient world,
the table was not only place you sat together with others to eat, but it was also the
moment when you got a very clear clue about where you stood in the great pecking
order of the day. If you got invited to the house of an important person, you were
somebody—if you weren’t, well, my friend, you were a nobody, at least that is how the
culture saw it. Table fellowship is so important in that ancient setting, and who you had
around your table said a lot about you—do you matter enough for the people that
matter to show up to your little shindig? What kind of people did you hand around
with—good, moral upright people, or the rabble of the world? These things mattered,
and that is why Jesus just kept getting in trouble for his table manners, and for the
people he wanted to be at the tables had sat at. So many stories, and then there is the
last story, around a final table, on the eve of Jesus’ death, where another meal was set
for those he loved, and even for the one who despised him, Judas, though I think Jesus
even loved greedy and confused Judas. What happens at the table matters to the
people of Jesus’ day—and that is why you find scenes around the table happening
over and over again, and why the story almost comes to close at another table, in an
upper room.

Here, at today’s table, in our story from the text, Jesus is schooling them on the
placement of the guests, something we rarely struggle with nowadays, except at
weddings, it seems. The symbolism of who sits where still matters in that setting, but
Jesus does his typical routine of turning things upside down, and gives a set of table
manners for those who don’t know their place, ironically enough, though they THINK
they know their place. It’s remarkable, really, that he takes a custom that honored the
most important folks in the room, at the table, and turns it into a lesson about humility.
You think you know where you are at in the pecking order, but you don’t, really, not
until everyone arrives, so its best to find the place furthest away from the place of
honor, the head of the table, and let someone else, the host, move you up to the
proper place you should be at. Aside from being a great lesson about humility, Jesus’
words are also good practical advice on social etiquette—you know, don’t set yourself
up for eating a slice of humble pie if someone with a little more cloud enters the room.
And, to be honest, I would say that it wouldn’t be much of a lesson if he didn’t follow it
up with these other words, words that challenged us to think about what it means
reverse the whole idea of who is to be included and excluded: “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.” Not only does Christ want to give us a lesson about
humility—he also wants us to re-think who is and who isn’t invited to the parties we’re
giving in our lives, who is and isn’t invited to the tables we set for others in our hearts.
Give to those who can’t give back to you, and love the ones who don’t have it in them
to love themselves, or anyone else for that matter. In the ancient world, the people that
Jesus lists here are the nobodies—they are not only the unfortunate ones, the ones
who got dealt a bad hand, but they were actually seen by many as being punished for
their personal sins or the sins of their family. Again, its not just about handing out
charity to those who “deserve” it—but in the ancient world, it was about feeding people
who probably didn’t deserve to be feed, because their circumstances hinted that some
sin, some impropriety in their past, had caused them to be poor, or lame, or blind.
Now, again, most of us have heard this command to change up our guest lists a few
times in our lives, and in our days in the pews, but I want point out something that you
may or may not have heard before and something really struck me when I was studying
this text. Jesus doesn’t just invite us to give charity to those who need our help, he
doesn’t say throw in a dollar when you are passing by someone who is need of a
helping hand. This isn’t pity from on high—this is a love that spreads a table and
invites the deserving and undeserving to eat with him—WITH him—note that difference,
because that “WITH” makes ALL the difference in this text. Every religion tells people
to be good to the poor, but rarely does a religion tell us to throw in our lot with the least
of these, the nobodies of this world. If the folks in the ancient world are right, and the
table guests reflect on us, who is sitting at our particular tables, and what does it say
about us? This Christ wants more from us than our pity towards those in need—he
wants us to throw our lot in with them, just as he did, in throwing in his lot with us,
thousands of years ago. We are not just asked to care—we are asked to stand next to,
to be with, to hold hands with the nobodies of this world because they are somebodies
to the only One whose judgment really matters in the great scheme of things.

I want us to return for a second to Biloxi, to Back Bay, and those kids from the previous
church I served in Houston. We did our work camp a few weeks before Katrina hit the
Gulf Coast, working with a couple of middle age folks who were attempting to repair an
old store that their parents had once run back in the 40’s & 50’s—it was now going to
be their home. The youth did such a great job in the heat of summer—it will be much
better for us this January and December than it was for them! They got to know the
folks they were helping…and the folks we were helping out got to know us, even
though, at times, they seemed dazed to have received the help from these strangers
from Houston. Some of our kids got attached to some kittens this couple had, and so
there were a lot of phone calls from Biloxi to Houston, to parents who were being
begged to let the kids take the kittens home! When we left, we had a shrimp boil, which
is a Back Bay tradition, and then weeks later, Katrina hits, and word comes out of Biloxi
that it has been devastated as well. We had an emergency meeting with our youth,
giving them info on what we knew—one, that the Back Bay housing complex we had just
been staying at had been essentially destroyed, and two, that the people we worked
were fine and the house we worked on didn’t receive much damage. It was good news,
but I’ll tell you what struck me the most about these kid’s panic and concern: I mean,
they cared, they really, really cared about Back Bay, and the people they came to
know, and the work they had done—they had thrown in their lot with these folks, and
the fate of the people who had been strangers to them weeks earlier now mattered to
them. They hadn’t done their good deed and gotten out of town, forgetting and
disconnecting from the experience of the summer. They stood with the people they
had come to know, and whom had invited them to their tables, and whom they had also
invited to table within their hearts. I was blessed, they were blessed, and the
resurrection Jesus speaks of, it happened, at least, it happened for me because I could
see Jesus’ words being lived out in their young lives, and nothing makes a minister who
works with youth more proud than that. You know, Christ wants us to not only care, but
to stand with the ones we care for and he wants us to invite the nobodies into our
hearts because he has done the same with so many of us, right, the nobodies in this
room? The table has been set, and the guests matter to him, as they should to us, and
in that caring, in the throwing in our lot with those around the table, we will be cared for,
we will do as the Christ has done, which is to be with us, and to stand with us, all the
way home. Amen.