A Lesson About Dinner Parties

Luke 14:1, 7-14

I want to invite you to take a moment to think about the tables you have sat at throughout your life. The one from your childhood. The one in your current home. The one in your friend’s home. The one at your favorite restaurant. The one at the biggest dinner party you have ever been to. The one you sit at for holiday meals. I remember going to my grandma’s house for holiday meals. Our family was too big to fit around her dining room table, so we ended up using several tables. Of course the adults got to sit at the dining room table and the kids ended up at the kid’s table. Well, most of the time I am still considered a kid there, because we still don’t all fit around the dining room table. Sitting at the dining room table is a place of honor, a place for the eldest in the family. Until there is room at the dining room table the “kids” still sit at the other tables waiting for the day when they will be invited to move up to the table of honor.

Oh, the wisdom shared around the table! Throughout Jesus’ ministry, we see again and again how in much the same way that he never passes up an opportunity to share a meal with others, he rarely misses the chance to use a table as an occasion to teach. Whether it’s welcoming a woman who anoints him to the table, or using the table as a way to talk about the kingdom of God, or employing the elements of a meal to describe who he himself is: the table, for Jesus, is always about right relationship, about how we are to live in community and communion with one another.

As we read the gospels, it becomes clear that Jesus had no “proper” standards at all about whom he ate with. His utterly indiscriminate table fellowship, in a society with strict rules of precedence and protocol for dining, caused plenty of critical comment. People noticed and complained that he ate with sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes – all sorts of unsuitable people! Luke's Jesus always has a very open table for his dining. Everyone is welcome at Jesus' table – rich and poor, men and women, all ages, races, ethnicities, religions, and sexual orientations. In today’s gospel Jesus appears to be eating with suitable people, but are they really suitable?!

At this dinner party the guests each stroll in thinking they are the greatest, smartest, richest, most important person at this dinner party. They are each vying for the best seat in the house. When Jesus sees how these so-called suitable dinner guests are acting he decides to tell them a parable. Jesus often uses parables to teach listeners a life lesson. Usually this lesson is a bit cryptic, but today his teaching is very real. He doesn’t say, “When a person is invited…” He says, “When YOU are invited…” This life lesson is really about the here and now. This life lesson is for the guests and host of this dinner party.

Jesus directs his attention to the gathering guests, jockeying for the best seat at the table. Jesus warns them to be humble and to not assume a higher place so that they might be lifted up. In that day they did not have place cards at the table. There was a mad rush to get to the best seats. Their seats were a bit different than the chairs we think of today. They typically reclined at the table. So, at a table there were three places to recline on each side. On one side there would be seats one, two, and three. Seat two would be the seat of honor. On another side there would be seats four, five, and six. Seat five would be the seat of honor. The other two sides of the table would be numbered in similar fashion. So, there would be a total of twelve seats and four seats of honor. When the cook said, “Soup’s on,” there was a mad dash of guests trying to land their seat of honor.

Jesus does not think this is an appropriate way to act. Instead, when we receive an invitation to share in the table of another, Jesus says we should come with no expectations, no intent to grasp at a seat of honor—from which, Jesus says, we might be ejected. When approaching the table, Jesus says, our stance, is to be one of humility, a posture that leaves room for surprise and for grace. The teaching point of Jesus’ parable today is, “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Being humble is about being content under God’s grace and not thinking you are bigger and better than you really are. Humility is about keeping yourself grounded, close to the humus of the earth. Humility is not boasting in your status and success. This can be very difficult in our society that finds status and success to be very important. We want to have a bigger home, a better job, a faster car, the newest technology, and the nicest clothes. As soon as the bigger, better, faster, newer, and nicest things are released we think we need to have them, too. This is not a new problem. The guests at the dinner party in our text struggled with this, too. They wanted to flaunt their status and success. They wanted to have the best seat in the house.

At the table that Luke tells of in this Sunday’s gospel lesson, Jesus turns his attention not only to the kind of guests we ought to be, but also to the kind of hosts we are to be – inviting those who owe us nothing. Turning to the host of the dinner party Jesus encourages him to not throw a party in hopes of getting something in return. Share your banquet of abundance with those who are living in scarcity. Don’t invite your successful neighbors, relatives, and friends, because they could repay you by inviting you to their house for another party. Invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. Invite those who cannot invite you to another dinner party.

Now I invite you to take a moment to think about this table. The one that we receive the bread and wine, the body and blood of Jesus Christ, from on this day. At God’s table all are welcome. The guest list is very diverse. The young and old. The rich and poor. Women and men. All ages. All ethnicities. All races. All religions. All gender orientations. God's heavenly banquet is open to all and if we attend and expect that everyone at this banquet will look like us, we will be very disappointed. If we come expecting a seat of honor, we will likely be sent to a lower seat. Come in humility and you will be exalted. Invite those on the margins of our society to come to your dinner party and you will be blessed. All are welcome for the table is ready. Amen.