September 1, 2019 “Manners” – Luke 14:1, 7-14

Luke 14:1, 7-14
“Manners”
September 1, 2019 – Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

In 1930 legendary baseball player Babe Ruth was offered a contract that paid him $80,000 a year. A reporter asked Ruth if he deserved to have a better salary than President Hoover. Babe Ruth answered, “’Why not? I had a better year than he did.”

Our Gospel text from Luke today shows us how Jesus addressed the sort of feeling Babe Ruth had, that most of us have, that we deserve whatever we can get… and more. The inclusion of verse 1 sets the stage for us. Guests gathered round a table in the home of a prominent Pharisee one Sabbath. We skipped a bit about Jesus healing someone again on the Sabbath, like we read last week. Then in verse 7 Jesus noticed how the guests took their seats. They “chose the places of honor.”

Each one thought he (all men) deserved a good seat. Low couches were arranged in a U-shape around a table. The host sat in the middle of the U, the center of the main couch. The higher your social status, the closer your position to that focal point of honor. It was like being seated at the head table at a banquet or wedding today. Or standing next to an important politician at some rally or event. Or sitting in the front row or going backstage at a concert. Or sideline seats at a football game. Or First Class on an airplane.

You can reserve seats now at the movie theatre. Beth and I go sometimes on the Monday senior discount and choose spots in the middle, about two thirds of the way up. We think that’s the best viewing location. We’re going to sit there if we possibly can.

Jesus had something to say about grabbing the best seats. In the next three verses the Lord gives the guests a bit of advice about etiquette, manners. “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down in the place of honor…” Like what we also read from Proverbs 25 today, it’s a practical word for saving face. If someone more important than you shows up later, you will have to give up that good seat.

I watched that happen a couple weeks ago when we flew home from Chicago. As people boarded, a flight attendant came to a man seated on the aisle in one of those nice bulkhead seats, with lots of leg room. She told him he would have to move back a row. Someone was coming in a wheelchair and needed that seat. He might have saved some trouble by sitting farther back to start. But most of us don’t think that way.

Jesus was not just offering a lesson in good manners. He was not teaching us how to avoid social embarrassment. There’s a word here at the end of verse 7 which indicates a deeper meaning to what He said. It says, “he told them a parable.” We think of parables as little stories. But not all parables are stories. “Parable” literally means to “put beside.” A parable is a comparison, a metaphor, an example from everyday life put beside spiritual reality. Parables teach spiritual truth by comparing it to some facet of the mundane world. It’s often a story, but a parable can be an action, an object or even as it is here, a rule about social manners as the basis for comparison.

Jesus compared the way we select our seats with proper behavior in spiritual life. He wants us not just to avoid humiliation before other human beings, but to avoid the ultimate humiliation of embarrassment before God. Jesus is concerned with the root of spiritual humiliation, the evil of pride.

The sin of pride is often difficult to grasp. Many emotions go by the term “pride.” Not all of them are bad. “Pride” in your work means satisfaction in doing something well. Writing a good report or keeping a clean house or growing beautiful roses are things to be proud of. There’s nothing wrong with that.

It is also not bad to take pride in one’s country or one’s family or even one’s church. If we humbly admit the faults in those groups while rejoicing in what’s good about them, pride is just fine. Focused outward, on the accomplishments of a larger group, joy in being part of something greater than oneself can be a good thing.

The apostle Paul says, “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.” Pride in what God has done is always good. But the kind of pride which Jesus warns us about is that which Proverbs 3:34 and James 4:6 say God opposes. It is the pride of superiority, the ugly feeling that one is better and more deserving than others. Whether it declares, “I’m the best!” like Dog in the story I read to the children or “My country is best,” or “My family is best,” or “My church is best,” pride that puts me or us above everyone else is ugly and wrong. Jesus’ parable here tells us His answer to that sort of pride. Step aside and take a back seat.

The antidote to pride Jesus suggested is the habit of regularly giving up one’s place for the sake of others. He asks us to follow His own example. Philippians 2:6 says Jesus “did not consider equality with God something to be grasped.” Even though He was in fact God, Jesus Christ did not grab for His seat at God’s right hand. He gave it up to be one of us.

This may all sound pretty depressing. Sit in the cheap seats. Put yourself last. Let others go ahead of you. Ordinarily in this world, there’s not much joy in that. If you select a seat at the back of the plane next to the restroom, that’s where you will stay, getting a sour whiff every time that door opens during the flight.

Yet remember that guy who had to move back for the handicapped passenger? A few minutes later, I saw the flight attendant return to him and say she had seat for him in First Class. I’m sure he was a frequent flyer with elite status and had just been upgraded. But for whatever reason that farther back seat was only temporary. That’s how Jesus’ parable says it will be for those who take His advice about social and spiritual life.

Start out low and you will be moved up. That’s good manners and it is good spiritual life. Let go of your pride and the good seat because you will receive something better. Paul goes on in Philippians 2 to say that after Jesus gave up His seat in heaven, “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name.” Verse 11 says that will be true for all who follow Jesus and do as He did, “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Still, it’s not easy in this world, not at all pleasant to put others first. I once had a friend who told me he was writing a novel about a star baseball player who had the opposite of Babe Ruth’s attitude. He believed he didn’t deserve and wouldn’t accept a salary higher than that of the President of the United States. In my friend’s story, it made him miserable. Other players hated him for lowering salaries for the rest of them. Managers thought he must not be any good if he didn’t value himself any higher. Despite major league talent, he played out his career in the minor leagues.

That’s how it’s going to be for us much of the time as Christians if we take Jesus seriously here. We’re not expecting to get better seats in the next few minutes or even next year. We’re not looking for the world to suddenly start loving us. We are waiting, as we read last week, for a world to come, where Jesus Himself will lift us up and sit us down in the best seats His house has to offer.

After a lesson in manners for the guests, Jesus turned his attention to the host in verse 12. Again He notes the normal rules of etiquette. When you invite guests to a meal, you choose people you like, friends or family, or business associates who can invite you to their own homes or do you some other favor in return. Jesus said not to do that. “Do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors.”

Instead, Jesus said to invite four other classes of people listed in verse 13, “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” This is a parable again. So you don’t need to take those categories exactly literally. Jesus is saying what the beginning of verse 14 says, invite people who cannot repay you. Give a seat at your table to those who are not going to be able to benefit you in any way, people who may not even be good company.

These are parables. Jesus is not saying we always have to take the worst seat in the house or quit having friends over for dinner. But He is saying that our social manners reflect the kind of people we want to be. If our thoughts when dealing with other people are always focused on ourselves and our own advantage, we’ve missed the lesson of these parables. We are not to seek this world’s rewards, but God’s rewards.

Most of us like to get paid for our efforts, sooner rather than later. It’s difficult to keep at it when gratification is delayed, like those federal employees who labored on during the government shut down. It’s hard to believe in a paycheck way off in the future when you face the day to day worries and expenses of life. But that’s exactly what our Lord asks us to do. TSA and Secret Service agents kept at it faithfully, trusting in human beings to finally make it right. We trust in Someone greater to make everything right.

Jesus said at the end of verse 14, “for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” That is our faith and hope. When Jesus gave up His seat in heaven and accepted death on the Cross, God the Father made it right and raised Him from the dead. His promise right here is that we too will be raised up again. In a few moments we will repeat those words of the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in the resurrection of the body.”

In that faith in God’s reward, let us show those around us something different from what they expect. Some people are disgusted with Christians because they see us trying to grab good seats, whether it’s at the dinner table or in politics. Let’s talk together more about what it means to step back, to humble ourselves, to wait on the honor the Lord wants to give us instead of the honors we might grab in this world.

We are already starting to suffer through another season of listening to candidates each tell us, again like Dog in the children’s story, “I’m the best.” If we really believe what Jesus said there in in the Pharisee’s home, is that a good way to choose our leaders? What if instead of paying so much attention to posturing politicians, we focused on those who have no position in this world, on those Jesus named as candidates for sitting at our tables, the poor, the sick, the disabled, and perhaps the homeless, the oppressed, or the abused?

Years ago in Norwalk, Connecticut a bride got jilted just before her wedding. Kathleen Gooley’s groom backed out, and she was stuck with a bill for a huge reception dinner. She and one of her bridesmaids had it anyway. They reorganized to serve a catered meal to 150 people without homes. On the day she was to have been married, buses arrived and unloaded men, women and children who sat down to tables decorated with flowers, balloons and the opening course of salad and a fruit cup. Hors d’oeuvres like shrimp puffs, chicken wings and egg rolls followed. The main course was stuffed chicken breast and string beans almondine. Cake, ice cream and coffee followed for dessert.

One of the men who came, a fifty year old recovering addict who was sleeping in a Norwalk shelter, said to Kathleen, “You’re blessing us with your day. We will never be able to repay you.” Which means she got it exactly right. As Jesus explained in verse 14: “And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

We read together Psalm 112 today. Those who are “gracious, merciful and righteous,” those who “have distributed freely, …given to the poor,” will be “exalted in honor.” Our lesson from Hebrews 13 told us to show hospitality to strangers, with a hint at a reward because some of them might be angels. It’s a constant theme in Scripture. Good manners in God’s household means letting others go first, blessing those who cannot always bless us.

That’s exactly why we have this Table we’re about to gather around now. Jesus put us before Himself. He gave up His place with God for a time, so that we could have a place with God forever. Let us come now and humbly take our low places around Jesus’ Table, waiting patiently for Him to raise us up.

Amen.