"Honor"

Rev. Matthew Miller

FROM THE GOSPELS Luke 14:1, 7-14 Sermon – “Honor”

Earlier this month I signed up for a free online Playwriting class offered through the University of Glasgow. There’s an idea that I’ve been toying with for the better part of three years now, ever since I returned from sabbatical, that I thought this class might help with. I’m not ready to talk to you about what I’m working on mostly because aside from a title on a page that is otherwise blank, it’s still in my head. I’ll let you know when there’s something more substantive than that to share. I bring it up because of one of the lessons that I learned from this class. It came in answer to a very basic question, “How do I start?”  The course helpfully pointed out, “Often the first words of the first stage direction are a description of a location.” Establishing the setting, where the things that are about to unfold take place, is an important first step.  

The setting for this particular encounter in Luke’s gospel is quite specific. Jesus is going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the Sabbath. In one sentence we not only have the players, but the setting in which it all takes place. If he is going to someone’s house for a Sabbath meal, then that likely means that they are all coming from the synagogue where they have welcomed the Sabbath together with evening prayers. We can imagine that the invitation to a meal was extended to him there. We don’t have to imagine the last detail of the setting, we have been told, “they were watching him closely.”  Everything that follows is framed by this setting. The meal, the guests, the occasion, and the scrutiny Jesus is under. 

It seems that his reputation has preceded him. Perhaps they were watching him closely because he had already demonstrated a willingness to break from accepted sabbath-keeping rules. It all started when someone saw his disciples plucking heads of grain as they walked through a field, rubbed the grain in their hands and ate them. Hey Jesus, he was told, that’s not allowed on the Sabbath. He clapped back with a story about David taking and sharing the bread of presence with his friends, which was also not allowed. Then he made the bold claim that the Son of Man (a title he most commonly used for himself) is lord of the sabbath. He went on to demonstrate his lordship by healing a man with a withered hand, asking whether it’s allowed to save life or destroy it on the Sabbath. A few chapters later he raises the same question in the synagogue on the sabbath. A woman comes in who has been crippled for 18 years. He lays hands on her and she’s able to stand up straight. One of the leaders is indignant and suggests she should have come to be healed on one of the other six days of the week to be cured. Jesus points out that even stock animals are treated better on the sabbath than this woman would have been. Needless to say, things between Jesus and the religiously observant are a little tense. So, given that, once again, the setting is the sabbath, it’s understandable that they might be watching him closely. And sure enough, in the verses that we skipped over Jesus did not disappoint. They encountered a man with what used to be called dropsy, what we now call edema, swelling in the joints. This time Jesus looks them square in the eyes and asks if they think it’s okay to heal on the sabbath. To which they said nothing as Jesus took him aside and healed him. But that may not be the only reason they were watching him closely. After all, they are headed to dinner. Jesus’ reputation as a sabbath breaker might be eclipsed only by the concern surrounding his table manners. Not using the wrong fork or slurping his soup. It’s much more serious than that. No, the complaint is that this man welcomes sinners and eats with them. If his critics weren’t complaining about who he ate with, they seemed to take issue with how much he seemed to relish the simple joy of sitting down to a meal with people in general. So much so that at one point he’s accused of being a glutton and a drunkard. Perhaps they were watching him closely to see how someone who made a habit of eating with such disrespectable people behaved in the right kind of company. Perhaps they were watching him closely to see if he was the right kind of company. 

Now, remember the setting. This is a sabbath meal. But it’s being held in the home of one of the leaders of this very observant, very tradition-minded group of people; the kind of people whose response to a miraculous healing is to be critical because it doesn’t follow their understanding of the rules. But here they are shortly after welcoming the sabbath vying for the best seats at the table, the ones closest to their host to signify their importance; places of honor. Jesus’ words in response to this behavior is less the parable that Luke suggests and more a form of wisdom common to the proverbs. In truth what Jesus offers is hardly groundbreaking, or controversial. If anything, it’s a commentary on the gap between the scriptures this group claims to hold in highest esteem, and their behavior. Jesus talks about choosing a seat at a wedding banquet, which is a different kind of occasion than the sabbath meal they are sitting down to, making the contrast all the more stark.  It’s all in service to a recurring theme of Jesus’ teachings that upends the conventional status quo. Those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. It’s the same idea as the last being first and the first being last. Those who would save their lives will lose them, and those who lose their lives for the sake of the gospel will save them. Basically, everything human instinct and society teaches us from an early age is called into question by Jesus. We need to hear it over and over again because we can’t seem to help ourselves. Here’s a group of believers who have just been to church seeking their own glory. Never mind the fact that the whole point of remembering the sabbath and keeping it holy has to do with de-centering ourselves and remembering that we are NOT free agents; captains of our destiny and masters of our fate. Our lives are ultimately not the product of our own achievement, nor is their value determined by what others think of us and the honor we are or are not given by them. That is the world’s game and it is a fool’s errand. Sabbath is the invitation to rest in the promise that our lives are the work of God’s hand and that all our striving will be our unmaking if we do not stop and live into the simple but undeniable truth of our createdness that is not of our own doing. The sad irony is that people observing the sabbath should know better.  In fact, I can imagine someone listening to Jesus’ Miss Manners advice about which seat to sit in at a wedding feast and using it as a strategy for an upgrade. Thanks for the pro tip Jesus. All we need to do to get the honor we’re seeking, the honor quite frankly that we deserve, is to make the humility move and bingo! Which I think is why Jesus then turns the tables (pun intended) one more time and goes from talking about being a guest to being a host. Because it isn’t just dinner guests playing this game of seeking honor and validation. I know I’ve told the story of throwing a party in Junior High. That’s how I know I’m old. Because I can say, “back in my day we called middle school Jr. High.” But I digress. At the tender ago of twelve, or thirteen, I got it in my head that I wanted to throw a party. This was not the stuff of 80s teen comedies. I didn’t want to throw a rager. I wanted to throw party, because then people would know me as the guy throwing the party. And I would get to make the invitation list and everyone would want to be on it because no one wants to be left off the invitation list. And if I threw my party first, then all the people I’d want to invite me to their parties would remember to put me on their invitation list. Because that is the way the world works. I’m reminded of a bit from the TV show New Girl that has become a meme. One of the characters saying, “you gave me cookie, I got you cookie.”  Call it what you want. You scratch my back, I scratch yours. Tit for tat, quid pro quo. It’s the kind of transactional thinking that drives everything from business to politics to education and on and on. Jesus calls that whole way of thinking into question. And he does so precisely because the sabbath is supposed to stand in stark contrast to a life lived in that way. To remember it and keep it holy as God commands is to be reminded that all of creation and even time itself are not commodities to be bargained for. They are a gift. When we honor that, and by extension honor the giver of those gifts, then we don’t have to buy into the world’s game that would have us endlessly seeking validation, or the return invitation. That in turn sets us free to seek the blessing that comes from welcoming those who by the world’s standard have nothing to offer in return. Of course, when we stop seeing the world in terms of what’s in it for us, we start to see that the people Jesus names- the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind- are no less beloved of God than we are. When other people, regardless of their ability or disability can do nothing for us, we are finally free to know and honor them fully. We are free to love them the way God loves us and invites us to rest in that love.