COME FRIEND, SIT UP HIGHER

A Sermon for The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 2, 2007
by Pastor Laura Gentry

Luke 14:1, 7-14
On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely.
When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. "When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, `Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, `Friend, move up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted."
He said also to the one who had invited him, "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, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." (NRSV)

Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

In the scene from today’s Gospel reading, Jesus has been invited to dinner at the home of a very well-known Pharisee. As he enters the house, people are watching him. He has stirred up all kinds of controversy before, what is he going to do next, they wonder. In the verses that our lectionary skips, Jesus poses a question to these watchers. He says, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” No one says a word. We already know what Jesus thinks about this issue. Last week, we read about how he healed a woman on the Sabbath—choosing people over rules. But Jesus wants them to recognize this also, so he singles out a man with dropsy (a retention of fluid) and heals him on the spot. This is an offense to the host, for he has performed an illegal healing on the Sabbath—in the distinguished Pharisee’s home, no less! People must be gasping in disbelief. The tension is so thick, you can cut it with a knife. But Jesus doesn’t stop here.

For just then, it is dinner-time and the other guests scurry to find their seats. In the Hebrew culture, the seating chart was extremely important—where a person sat, demonstrated his place in the hierarchical societal structure. Pharisees were especially noted for their careful attention to banquet rules, since they were concerned about purity. So the Pharisees gathered here proceed to seek out the best possible places for themselves, to show their great status and ritual purity. Therefore, Jesus-the-rude-houseguest opens up his mouth again and offers two pieces of unsolicited advice.

He begins with criticizing the guests for how they have jockeyed for positions of prominence at the table, instead of humbling themselves. He talks about how they should behave when they are invited to a wedding banquet (and the fact that he uses wedding as an example clues us into the fact that he is talking about the kingdom of heaven, which is often likened to a wedding banquet). He tells them, “Do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, `Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, `Come, Friend, sit up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted."

Jesus’ advice is to follow Solomon’s wisdom in the Proverbs: don’t get pushy, don’t recognize yourself, wait for the host to recognize you. So Jesus is saying that the humble will be honored, while the honored will be humbled—this kind of inversion of honor is a constant motif in the Gospels. Recall, if you will, the words that Jesus’ mother used when she learned that she would bear the son of God: “My soul doth magnify the Lord, for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden. He has knocked the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of low degree.” Jesus is all about exalting the humble and humbling the exalted—inverting the power structure.

This is a heavy concept in a very hierarchical society. Jesus comment has disgraced all of the guests, because they hadn’t been humble in choosing their places. This kind of humility—of voluntarily choosing the lower place, does not come easy for the Pharisees to whom Jesus is speaking, nor does it come easy for us. How often do we humble ourselves instead of being puffed up and trying to gain status for our own selves? It’s not a natural human response, but it is one that Jesus is trying to teach us.

Then, Jesus goes on to criticize the host himself for his exclusive guest list. In the Pharisees’ perpetual quest for ritual purity, they had formed “eating clubs,” where they could feel at home because only ritually pure people were allowed to attend. This way, they could sit comfortably at table and reflect upon the Scriptures. There was also the tradition in these “clubs,” that they would invite one another back and forth for dinner. If a person were to get invited to the home of a prominent Pharisee, it would boost his social status, so people were careful to invite honorable guests to their gatherings, in hopes that these guests would return the favor. Some religious groups celebrated these meals as an anticipation of the great banquet to come in heaven, but they specifically prohibited “the lame, the blind, and the crippled” from attending, because they were not considered ritually pure.

Jesus crashes down upon this kind of exclusivism and power-seeking. He says: "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, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." The poor, crippled, lame and blind have no power or money and they could never repay a dinner invitation, plus they are considered unholy because of their physical conditions. No Pharisee would dream of inviting them to dinner! Yet it is these very people, the excluded ones, that Jesus means to include. In fact, he tells them that if they do so, God will personally repay them in heaven. That’s how strongly God feels about the marginalized of society.

You see, Jesus is emphasizing that true honor and power come from God alone, and will not be given in this life. And the only way to get it is to not seek it for yourself—but instead to seek the honor and power for those who have none. He makes it clear that humbling yourself means thinking about other people—serving them, that's what it means. The counsel that you should humble yourself occurs ten times in the Gospels, as much as loving your neighbor. If you want to insure your salvation, stop thinking about your salvation, and start thinking about somebody else, it is only then that God will tell you, “Come, Friend, sit up higher!”

Let me give you an example of this power of this kind of humility. Harvard Professor Robert Coles, wrote a book about Dorothy Day. In it, there is this anecdote. Dorothy Day, as you know, is that famous Catholic social worker, the founder of the Catholic Worker. When Coles was a medical student at Harvard, he volunteered to work at the Catholic Worker. He was a Harvard graduate. He was in medical school. He was going to be a psychiatrist. In this society, that is about as high a status as you can get. He knew that. He was really proud of it. He was also proud that as this person with all these credentials, he was volunteering to help the poor—he was sure it would cause others to notice him.

He arrived at the premises of the Catholic Worker. He asked to see Dorothy Day. He went right to the top. The person said that she was in the kitchen. So, he went into the kitchen, saw her sitting at a table, talking to someone. He had enough medical training to recognize that the man that she was talking to was addicted to some dangerous substance. He was disheveled. He was obviously a homeless street person. She was sitting at table with him, listening intently to what he had to say.

Here was Dorothy Day, sitting at table with this street person, giving him her full attention. She had not even noticed Coles come in the room. She was doing just as Jesus instructs in this parable—she was exalting the humble man and was humbling Coles, the distinguished man. Embarrassed about not being noticed, Coles stood beside the door and waited for quite a while for her to finish. When she finally finished the conversation and stood up, she noticed Coles. She asked, "Do you want to speak to one of us?"

He was astounded. Dorothy Day was famous! This man with her was a nobody. He was a derelict. "You wanted to speak to one of us?" Coles had never seen anything like this before. Humility that can identify with another person so completely as to remove all distinctions between them. It cut through all of the boundaries, all the categories that society sets up to separate us from one another. There were just two people, brother and sister, the sister concerned about the brother.

This experience changed his life. Coles said he learned more in that one moment than he did in four years at Harvard. He saw in one moment what it means to humble yourself as our Lord did, "who did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but humbled himself, and took on the form of a servant."

Jesus words in today’s Gospel text are hard to take: “For he who exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” Yet, that is exactly what he has given us. May we take this scripture to heart and focus on the marginalized people of our own community—the poor, the disabled, the addicts, the “different”—anyone that society looks down upon for any reason. Christ calls us to include them, to befriend them, to serve them—even though it might be frowned upon by our friends and neighbors. If we say to these people with our words and actions, “Come, Friend, sit up higher!” then Christ promises we will hear that statement echoed in heaven, when God says to all those of humble heart, “Come, Friend, sit up higher!” Amen.

Now, may the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

© 2007 Laura E. Gentry