Saint Luke 14: 1, 7-14
It may have been one of the most poorly timed and misdirected pick-up lines ever when a full-of-himself hedge-fund manager, tried to impress a future date with: “Go out with me and I promise you that you will never again have to turn right when you get on an airplane.”
What he was referring to is that when you board some of the larger jets the first-class cabin is always to your left where coach, where most of us sit, is to your right.
His problem was that the person he was trying to impress was the travel editor for a leisure and lifestyle website who, as a perk of her job, regularly flies either business or first class.
She pointed out that there is a difference.
Everyone ... in Business Class is smiling. The air must be better. This is a Happyland; nice people constantly making me feel so good, asking me ‘how are you’, ‘what can I get for you,’ ‘is everything Ok’ ... and bringing me food, magazines, and champagne at the tap of a button.
Then, in the column, she reminded her readers of the wonderful Seinfeld episode where Jerry and this then girlfriend {There were so many!} get upgraded to first class while Elaine is passed over and has to fly coach.
She salivates as the aromas of the meals being served waft back toward her seat while all she has is a warm Coke and waffle cookies, so she sneaks into the first-class cabin and tries to hide herself under a blanket but gets caught. At this point she begs:
“Oh, no, please, don’t send me back there. Please, I’ll do anything. It’s so nice up here. It’s so comfortable up here. I don’t want to go back there. Please don’t send me back there…”1
One day, in a much more modest setting, a first century dinner party, Jesus observed the same behaviour as some folks he was dining with tried to upgrade their seats all on their own. They were trying to sneak into the first-class section.
So, while his hosts were watching him, Jesus was watching their guests trying to slip their way into best places at the banquet.
While most of us may have poked our friends in the ribs and whispered under our breath, “Get a load of that guy.” Jesus said out-loud what everybody else was thinking. This has led Dr. William H. Willimon to observe that the Pharisees “must have been gluttons for punishment because they kept inviting Jesus to their homes for dinner.”2
To understand how important mealtimes were in ancient culture. They were a vital and maybe even the central part of the honor-shame society that the people of Jesus’ time lived in. At whose house you were eating and in which particular spot you were sitting mattered a [great] deal. In an honor-shame society, everything someone did was to accrue honor for you and your family’s name and avoid shame. Honor only meant something if it was publicly recognized; that is, if other people saw you do something honorable or witnessed honor conferred upon you. Likewise, shame was so damaging precisely because everyone else agreed that you were of less value. It wasn’t just something you felt in your own heart.
It was kind of like an ongoing popularity contest on a large scale, except everyone believed that there was a limited amount of honor. (Like first class seats on an airplane) That meant you and I were essentially competing over the same honor. (Think about the long waitlist where 16 people are trying to use their miles to get one of the eight first class seats.) If I did something that increased my standing in the community then everyone else’s honor went down just a little.3
To put it in the simplest terms possible: If I we’re both on the waiting list and I get the last first-class seat then you are in coach.
Anybody who thinks this practice has died out really needs to get out of the house more. You have probably seen this for yourself.
A person comes into a room without assigned seating with the clear desire to be in the front row. They want to get as close as possible to the honoured guest. Maybe the desire is to go home and say to their friends: “You know who I was chatting with last night?” As if they and the guest-of-honor were best friends.
Or it can happen in a conversation when one person bestows honour upon honour upon themselves that they have not really earned nor deserve.
At a social event for one of the cruises I was on a fellow passenger was trying to impress me. When he found out that I was interested in music, he took great pains to tell me that he studied at the Julliard School of Music in New York. I’m a Chicagoan, I was interested but not impressed.
He continued by telling me that he has sung at some of the great opera houses throughout the world and even performed here in Chicago many years back at the Lyric. Even though we were in the middle of the Caribbean I felt that snow was beginning to fall.
So, I asked, “Where you there at the same time Ardis Krainik was the General Director?”
“Oh yes.” he replied. “He was really difficult to work for.” The snowstorm had turned into a blizzard but fortunately I had a shovel.
Knowing now what I had expected long before I said simply. “He? Ardis Krainik was a woman!”
Looking to be seen as a first class act this poor guy had relegated himself, in my mind, to the last row in coach where the seats don’t even recline.
However, the late Dr. Fred B. Craddock advises with his usual brilliance that Jesus warning can have the opposite effect.
The human ego is quite clever and, upon hearing that taking a low seat may not only avoid embarrassment but lead to elevation to the head table may convert the instruction about humility into a new strategy for self-exaltation. Taking the low seat because one is humble is one thing; taking the low seat as a way to move up is another. The entire message becomes a cartoon if there is a mad, competitive rush for the lowest place with ears cocked toward the host, waiting for the call to ascend.4
What is Jesus’ solution to the conundrum? Should I sit in the front or in the back? Or should I opt for the middle where nobody cares if I dribble soup on my shirt?
Jesus says this whole problem will disappear if we just invite everybody in.
It’s a crazy idea! It’s a radical idea! Let everyone who wants to come in, in. Tear down the curtain between the classes. Let the only limitation be the size of the room and if that becomes too small rent another, and another, and another.
Don’t just follow the words of Proverbs: “Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence or stand in the place of the great; for it is better to be told, ‘Come up here,’ than to be put lower in the presence of a noble”5 Follow the words of the prophet Isaiah: “Hear, everyone who thirsts; come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”6
Go out into the streets, Jesus says, and "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...”7
Make those people who are worried about who they are sitting with and where they are sitting sit dine with everybody and anybody who wants a little lunch. Maybe they won’t come. Maybe they will choose to stay home and pout or complain about the quality of the feast, or that they have to eat with the riffraff from the wrong side of the tracks. That’s their problem not yours, Jesus says, because they will be missing something.
Unfortunately, the today’s Gospel reading ends one verse too soon. It leaves out the punchline! For Saint Luke goes on to tell us that Jesus’ little admonitions triggered a response from one of the guests: ‘How fortunate is the one who gets to eat dinner in God’s kingdom!’”8
That’s us! We’re the fortunate ones who have been invited to the feast! We’re the ones who Jesus has called to gather around his table! We are not onlookers anymore because we all have been invited to dine with God in God’s rule and reign.
We’re not the gate agents who don’t really care what kind of ticket you have all they want to do is load you on the plane and get it off the ground reasonably on time. We’re not disinterested bystanders in the little dust up between Jesus and his hosts. We’ve been invited to the feast! We are the fortunate ones! We are the ones who are the recipients of God’s great grace.
What we do with our good fortune is up to us.
I think I might have seen this played out in some small way while worshipping one Sunday at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
The cathedral is, as one might expect from the Episcopalians, a first-class operation. It has a history of great preaching, magnificent music, and liturgical pageantry that even on an ordinary summer’s Sunday would put most church’s worship on festivals to shame. In other words: They process in everybody and anything that is not nailed down.
They also have a strong commitment to social justice and social outreach that feeds the poor, lobbies for the oppressed, and seeks to serve the least, the lost, and the lonely.
All the pageantry paled to something that happened at coffee hour following church when I caught a small glimpse of their care for everybody in person.
Because of its climate and culture, it is estimated that San Francisco has between “8,000 to 19,000" homeless people. With “estimates that up to 20,000 residents will become homeless throughout the year,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle.9
About a dozen or so had congregated on the cathedral’s plaza before worship. One man in particular looked especially disheveled.
After worship there was a coffee hour on the plaza for the people who had attended. The usual was offered: coffee, tea, coffee cake, cookies, and juice for the children.
When things were winding down the bedraggled man slowly approached one of the tables as if he were working his way to the front row at a royal banquet or trying to sneak into first class.
He started to reach for a piece of the well picked-over coffee cake when the well-dressed, well-coiffed woman serving said to him. “Oh! No! No! No!” I gasped and the man pulled back.
The woman continued. “No! No! No!” she said again. “Those have been out far too long. They’re a little stale. You don’t want those. Let me get you some that are fresh.”
She reached behind her and grabbed another full tray of treats. She unwrapped the cellophane and placed the tray right in front of the surprised man while, like a flight attendant, asking if he would like coffee, tea, or juice
“Take as many as you like.” She said. “We always have plenty. Enough for everybody!”
He filled his hands and even put some in his pockets for later. The woman smiled and I must admit I felt a tear run down my cheek.
When the well-healed serve the downtrodden. When the outcasts and the insiders feast together. When it doesn’t matter who you know. When a homeless man is treated as well, and maybe even better, than the wealthiest person in the congregation. When all are welcomed, it is then, Jesus says, everyone in God’s good kingdom will be going first class.
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