A Heavenly Seating Chart

Luke 14: 1-14

            There is an idiom used to describe going from a bad situation to a worse one. We know it as jumping from the frying pan into the fire. We think of it as another Southernism, but actually it is hundreds of years older. An Italian fella named Abstemius wrote a collection of 100 fables in the fifteenth century. One of them was called The Mountain in Labour. In the fable some fish are thrown into a frying pan of boiling fat. One of them urges the others to save their lives by jumping out, so they do…right into a bed of burning coals.

           I suspect that’s about the way Jesus felt when he showed up for supper at the house of a Pharisee on the Sabbath. It was one thing to deal with all these religious rule-givers in the Temple and in the streets, but to come into the home of one of these lawyers? And on the Sabbath to boot! That’s going from bad to worse.

          Unlike those poor old fish, Jesus knew exactly what he was doing. He knew why he had been invited. He knew he was being watched. But then, Jesus was always being watched, wasn’t he. Jesus lived a very public life in his years of ministry. The times he is found alone in Scripture, he is usually engaged in prayer.

          A man at the Pharisee’s house has dropsy. This is suspicious. Why is a man with dropsy at the house of a Pharisee at the supper hour? His presence is suspicious enough that some scholars think he was planted there, designed to trick Jesus into “working” on the Sabbath. The Pharisees had more rules than Old Mother Hubbard had children. William Barclay gives us an example: Cooking food on the Sabbath was work, so it had to be prepared the previous day. Keeping the food hot was tricky, for most methods involved work. It could be put into “clothes, amidst fruits, pigeons’ feathers and flax tow,” but it could not be put into “oil dregs, manure, salt, chalk or sand.” There is much more, but you get the idea. No wonder Jesus got fed up with their rule making.

          It is into this atmosphere that Jesus asks the question. “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?” He got no answer, of course. He healed the guy and sent him on his way. Then Jesus gave us that famous saying that we all have used to explain ourselves. To paraphrase him, if your ox is in the ditch on the Sabbath, aren’t you going to pull him out? The Pharisees remained silent.

          Healing on the Sabbath was a major issue between Jesus and the religious leaders. It occurs seven different times in the Gospels, four in Luke. Here is Jesus in the house of a Pharisee, a ruling Pharisee no less, and the issue comes up again. What should this teach us? Is it about working on the Sabbath? Is it about keeping the Fourth Commandment? Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. It certainly could be. It probably is. But I think it is about something much more fundamental as well. Rules had been made hundreds of years before. Don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t covet, don’t be disloyal to your marriage vows and your spouse. Do love, obey and honor God. Do honor your parents. The rules were made to show us the difference between right and wrong, to keep us on the playing field and not let us run out of bounds.

          Over time, religious leaders had distorted the original intent of some simple rules. When Jesus came, he threatened that way of life. He had every intention of doing just that. The rules had become the reason. Rules are never meant to be reasons. They don’t know how. They bring order, but even order can be too much of a good thing. What Jesus brought was the reason. Isn’t it a shame that the religious leaders of the day couldn’t see the reason!

          If you step back a bit and just take a look at Chapter 14 of Luke’s gospel, it’s not hard to see that it is a lesson on discipleship. Discipleship is a simple idea. Follow in the footsteps of another. In this case it’s Jesus. Follow Jesus. To do so means to release all those selfish ambitions and desires. To do so means to be obedient. To do so means to replace pride with love.

          In this passage, Jesus takes direct aim at those who call themselves leaders and use that leadership to show off or climb the social ladder. If you’re going to impress the Son of God, you can start by going to the end of the line. He doesn’t like religious snobs. Honor for Jesus starts with humility. The way to the front lies at the back. G.K. Chesterton describes humility this way: “All men are ordinary men; the extraordinary men are those who know it.” The message is profound. “When your host comes…” says Jesus. “When your host comes…”  Luke does not call him God in deference to the Jewish custom of not using God’s name, but there is no doubt about the identity of the host to whom Jesus refers. Jesus is not talking about Pharisees or religious rulers or judges or even emperors and kings. Jesus is talking about his Father and our Father. When God comes, says Jesus, let him be pleased at your humility and your love. It will be its own reward.

          Then Luke tells us another story about Jesus. If you want to follow Jesus, you have to get upside down and inside out. Jesus doesn’t do business with the world the way the world wants to do business. Jesus tells a parable of a great banquet. Think big. Think about a family reunion or a wedding rehearsal dinner. Who do you invite? Family of course, and friends. You invite some folks who will invite you to something later. You hire the best to entertain the best way for those who are your best. Right? Wrong, says Jesus. Want a blessing? Don’t worry about who will return the favor. Think big, but think the way Jesus does. If you have a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind. Invite the invisible among us, the ones who can do you no good whatsoever in the here and now. In the world to come, in the resurrection of the just, as Jesus puts it, there you will be repaid. In other words, invite and entertain with generosity and an eye to those who need your generosity. Forget what it does for you and think of what it might do for someone else.

In Pharisaic religion, these disenfranchised people were excluded from full participation in religious life. Not so with Jesus. Jesus was all about accepting the unacceptable, eating with the unknown, loving the unloved among us. You can’t read this passage without eventually noticing that the attitude of the religious leaders was no better than that of pagans. Both were forms of religious snobbery and both were part of Jesus’ message that observing the Sabbath is a love act and not a ritual.

          My wife, Cindy, who sometimes acts as my sermon barometer, asks if this means that we can’t get together with friends and loved ones. I don’t think that was what Jesus meant. I think that he was reminding selfish people of their selfishness. I think he was reiterating the great commandment. He wants us to love our neighbor and to do so unselfishly. He wants us to know no strangers. He want us to do what he would do, to act with the welfare of the other person foremost rather than to invite someone for the purpose of social climbing and self-interest. In the world of Jesus, family gets extended by acts of love that forever bring more of us into the fold.

          Is there a message here for me and you? Of course. I am persuaded that there is not a single passage in the Bible that does not carry a message. Sometime that message remains veiled to us until the right time comes along. Sometimes it screams at us to change, to come, to see the light that is always there.

In this passage, Jesus speaks to you and me. He speaks to the Pharisee in me, the rule maker in you, the immature snobbery that all of us carry like a parasite. He speaks to the church, that body of people who represent him and carry his message until he returns. We are his church, but sometimes our selfishness and stubbornness surfaces over ritual, such as a change in the worship service. Sometimes it shows up in the form of some prejudice toward our neighbor. Sometimes it just smolders in our bellies as we become pregnant with self pride. It would be nice to puff up and make fun of those silly Pharisees, but it would not be accurate, not unless we include ourselves in that number as well.

          How do you practice the Sabbath? Do you keep it holy? Who will you invite to your banquet? How will you seat your guests? Does your seating chart include someone whom Jesus would have you invite? When Jesus comes, will he find you his humble servant? Practicing discipleship is humbling and never-ending. And it always starts at the end of the line.