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A sermon at Ketchikan Presbyterian Church

By George R. Pasley

Deuteronomy 15:1-11; Luke 14:1, 7-14 

Verse seven says this is a parable. But it doesn’t SOUND like a parable. It’s not a story, there are no characters and there’s no plot. It doesn’t even appear on many lists that have been compiled of the parables that Jesus told.

In fact, it starts out sounding like clever social advise. Don’t take the good seats, take the poor seats and make your host move you up.

But what is a parable?

It means to throw something down beside something else. You might notice that the word begins with PAR, the same as parallel. Farmers would “parable” hay to their horses, but lawyers and teachers would throw down stories to make a point, or to make a contrast.

In fact, this is the very simplest of all the parables that Jesus told. But it is in truth really a parable, because in it he compares the ways of human culture with the way of heaven’s culture. So let’s look at it and see what we can learn.

To begin with they are at a “prominent Pharisee’s” house. The common folk would not have been there. They had no time for parties, they had no money, they had no rank, no privilege, and none of what passed for honor in their time. Jesus used the term “wedding feast,” so let’s use that too. None of us were at Chelsea Clinton’s wedding, though there were probably plenty of people there who didn’t know her. Regardless of who knew her and who didn’t, they were all prominent people with connections and at least some money in their savings accounts.

A dinner at a prominent Pharisee’s house would have been something like that, even down to the seating arrangements. A modern lavish wedding feast probably has name cards at all the place settings, just to make sure that nobody sits at the wrong seat. They would not have had name cards at the Pharisee’s house but chances are everybody there probably knew where they sat because their social structure was very rigid. You knew where your place was, and it was determined by your social rank which was largely a matter of inheritance.

That’s the way things were in ancient Greece and Rome. Everybody had their place, and the best places were for the best people.

But there is a little bit more. This was at the home of a prominent Pharisee. We have a tendency to be hard on Pharisees, and maybe they deserve it. But let’s look at what was good about them. They were zealous for God, and gave careful consideration to what God might want in every possible situation. So they prided themselves on knowledge of the law- the more they knew, the more honor they had. In that little way the Jews were different from the Romans and Greeks.

So that was the situation in which Jesus threw down this parable.

Jesus told them to sit lower than what they knew- first, so as not to be embarrassed by being asked to move down. To prevent humiliation, humble yourself. But second, sit lower to make the possibility of being honored by being asked to move up. To be honored, humble yourself. 

Well, when Jesus told parables he told them a certain way. He caused scandals.

Prominent people in those days did not humble themselves. Furthermore, if you made the host move you up, you were embarrassing him.

Sometimes at the dinners that follow large funerals, I pick a table off to the side. Or at least I used to. Because twice I did that after coming here, and twice somebody came to me, almost at the point of being upset, and said, no, you’re the pastor, you sit over there. You eat among the first to be served.

Well, I don’t want to embarrass anybody, and they didn’t either- especially the host! To embarrass the host would be a scandal.

But there seems to be another problem. We tend to think of honor as something that is continually replenished by noble behavior, but that wasn’t their way of thinking. Honor was a matter of rank- you were either first, or you weren’t. In fact, the world translated as honor meant “first place at the table,” and we do have similarities in our culture- reality shows.

Our reality shows on television feature one winner. You either win, or you don’t. one survives, the others are cast out. One becomes the Biggest loser. One takes the last rose and receives the marriage proposal. Only one becomes the top chef.

So, here’s the problem in Jesus‘ parable: if the host is forced to ask you to move up, you have humiliated him- and in those days it was always a him. When you humiliate him, he spends honor that he can’t replace.

I know it sounds weird, but it would have been incredible to them. Why would they humiliate their host? And they wouldn’t.

But Jesus was not giving social advice. He was telling a parable, and the parables were always about God. So this is what the parable says about God- and about us.

It says that none of us have any honor when we approach God. We are sinners in need of forgiveness. Furthermore, it says that in order to give us a seat at the table God humiliates himself.

When we put it that way it sounds pretty bad. It should. We take what God has done for us in Jesus Christ for granted too often. Maybe we understand it best when we think of an old song, like, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?”

Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

To both Jews and Romans, it was a scandal, it was unthinkable. But God is like that, and the first Christians sang a song about a self-emptying Jesus, who “did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing.”

So in fact, this parable said something pretty incredible about God: it said God’s honor can not be exhausted. God can- and does- give and give and give, every time we humble ourselves.

But one more thing: since the parable was told “at the house of a prominent Pharisee,” It should have reminded them of their heritage and law, both found in Deuteronomy. They worshipped and served the God who rescued them from slavery in Egypt AND redeemed them from exile in Babylon, a God of radical forgiveness who had bequeathed that radical nature unto them.

But we need to say something about humility.

Sometimes we tell people they need to humble themselves, so that we can hold our positions of honor. As a result, people are held down in ways that God does not sanction.

The purpose of humbling ourselves before God is so that God can lift us up, and God seems to give first attention to those that have been humbled the most by life.

So the last part of the passage, the part that seems like more moral advice, is an invitation.

The invitation is this: we are invited to be like God, host at the wedding feast, who give honor and blessing from an inextinguishable supply. 

We are invited to give honor to those who have been humbled the most by life. When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.

Those words are prescriptive- they are practically Constituional for Christians. But they’re also suggestive- fuel for our generous muse- inviting us to seek out any who have been left out of the banquet and humbled by life, and invite them into the presence of the radically forgiving God.

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.