Proper 17C
August 28, 2022
Holy Spirit Vashon
Jeremiah 2.4-13
Ps 81.1, 10-16
Hebrews 13.1-8, 15-16
Luke 14.1, 7-14
Earlier this summer I attended the memorial service for the mother of someone in the congregation. I had never met her, but I am a big believer in attending the funerals anyway. At the reception, as folks were browsing the table of photos and mementos, I picked up a copy of the 1922 edition of Emily Post’s book http://Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home. I sat down and started to thumb through this book, now 100 years old, and my mouth began to drop open.
There are chapters such as: Salutations of Courtesy, The Clothes of a Gentleman, The Débutante, and One’s Position in the Community. You can find the http://entire book online and it’s a fascinating way to waste some time! So much of the overall “flavor” of the book was about your position or station in the community and how to move up the ladder of importance. Society, in the social sense of the word, was everything. Giving a formal dinner party was the supreme test of a hostess and involved her secretary, engraved invitations, seating charts, servants and other staff. Just imagine what she had to say about engagement parties and weddings! It’s quite a read; even in 1922 it was only applicable to the 1% http://You can pre-order“updated” Centennial Edition for $35!
There is still an Emily Post website, run by her great great granddaughter, and it’s just as fussy as the original book, but perhaps a bit more politically correct. Nonetheless, it focuses on manners and what is proper and has its own section on dinner party etiquette, heavily focused on who sits where. I found it fascinating, and perhaps a bit disturbing in light of today’s gospel reading, that you are to be seated on either side of the host or hostess based on how “important” you are. The first most important gentleman, second most important gentleman, etc. then their wives. I imagine something similar happens at White House state dinners. Not just anyone can sit next to the President or First Lady! No one is permitted without the proper credentials and social standing.
In a sermon on this text, the Rev. Katie Aumann said she’s pretty sure Jesus wouldn’t have made it on her wedding guest list because he always showed up with 12 additional men and all the women travelling with him who underwrote his ministry! That could be two extra tables! Emily Post certainly did not consult her bible when she wrote about position and dinner parties.
So now we hear of Jesus going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees for a meal “on the sabbath.” It was a big event, and they were watching him closely. We already know they are put out by his healing the bent over woman on the sabbath. We are tipped off that things are going to be tense. All the proper and important people were there.
Chairs were propped up against the tables to save their spots in just the right place so that their position was secured next to all the right people. Emily Post would be pleased. Everyone was in their best clothes with a cocktail in their hands, watching Jesus, waiting to see what he would do. Today’s Collect asks that the love of God’s name be grafted in our hearts. These guests wanted to be grafted onto the ladder of success; one rung above the outsiders. One rung above you.
That’s how it was supposed to be in the first century Mediterranean culture. If one was to be serious about keeping the traditional values of purity, you were to associate with people at the same place on the ladder, the same table, the same status in the social hierarchy as you were. There would be no tax collectors or widows at this table.
To invite the poor or crippled or lame or a blind beggar would have been blasphemous, and the host outraged. Jesus would have made no friends at this dinner party. Although we know now that was not his ultimate goal…
Luke knows all about meals and their importance. He has more mealtime scenes than all the other evangelists. The table is about right relationship, about how we are to live in community and communion with one another, says Jan Richardson. Luke uses this everyday occasion to do more than portray Jesus as the Emily Post of the Ancient Near East with good advice for social occasions.
When Luke says that Jesus noticed how the guests chose the places of honor and “told them a parable,” that is code for: Pay attention here. All is not as it seems. Parables may look like nice stories for teaching, but they are not always straightforward and contain the mysteries of the Kingdom of God. Jesus doesn’t teach about good manners and polite behavior in company. He illustrates the communal fellowship in the Kingdom of God; a kingdom which Israel had rejected and for which Jeremiah prophesied. Parables show us how life in God works; the stories are about giving life and sharing it abundantly.
Kate Huey has a helpful understanding of Jeremiah’s words. We hear God grieving when God says through the prophet: “What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthless things, and became worthless themselves?” Even after having been led out of Egypt and through the wilderness and desert to the land of plenty, Israel promptly forgot all of God’s goodness and the covenant they made and “went after things that do not profit.”
Two evils were committed: They had forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living water, and dug out cracked cisterns for themselves which can hold no water. There was no attempt to graft the Name of the Lord in their hearts. And they were headed into exile for it. We forsake the Lord every time we remove a place from the table or step on another on the way up some imaginary ladder of godliness. There is no ladder. There is just God.
There are always stories in the news about people who seem so flagrantly oblivious to the needs of the other, the under-served or oppressed. This week the news is all about the proposed college loan debt forgiveness. Those opposed to the generosity are indignant that they had to pay off their own debts and everyone else should, too; no matter how much you make or how long it would take. I read one article this week that the person had faithfully paid nearly $2000/month for 10 years and the debt was only $85 less than when he started; something like paying your mortgage interest before ever touching the principal.
Handwringing over generosity and a preferred seat at the head table ignores the life-giving message of parables. All of us have had some experience of what it feels like to be seated at the lowest place, whether that is being bullied as a kid or mounting debt or a health crisis. Yet when generosity, especially monetary generosity, or the seat at a higher place is offered, it is rejected as favoritism and being unfair – unless applied to you, of course…. Jeremiah would be all over that. Jesus IS all over that. The Kingdom of God is not about being fair, it’s about being good and giving life.
There was an article in the paper some time back by a pastor who bemoaned the apparent condition of many churchgoers who want their pastors to soothe and entertain them, leaving them comfortable and feeling good about themselves each Sunday, and don’t really want to be challenged to grow spiritually, or learn from Jesus when it is difficult. There ARE times when we really just want the sweet baby Jesus or the smiling Jesus with a lamb around his shoulders. Me, too.
But the truth of the Gospel is that it got Jesus killed because what he taught was so threatening to the status quo and tossed people off the upper rungs of the ladder to made room for uninvited guests at the head table. Patrick Willson says Christ’s calling disrupts the church’s desire to have everything in order and returns us to the messiness and grace of invitation and welcome. There are no qualifications for being grafted into this love. Our challenge is the inspection of our own lives and priorities and whether we interact with the world with open or closed hands and hearts.
One of the most profound changes in our liturgy happened almost 50 years ago when the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, our current book, established the sacrament of Holy Eucharist as the primary service every Sunday. Many of us grew up with Morning Prayer three times a month, and Eucharist once. It was a huge change for the church. This meal that we share, is the closest thing we have to a table where everyone is invited and welcome, where there are no seats of power or privilege, where we are all fed, strangers and angels. This is the feast where no one has to earn it or deserve it or be worthy by some definition that isn’t from Jesus. Proper etiquette in this case is to pull up another chair; there is always more room and your plus-ones or plus-12s are quite welcome. The bread and wine as a foretaste of the heavenly banquet are pure gift from a God who has not forgotten us, even if our cisterns are cracked.
Luke’s parable extols the virtues of humility and hospitality. The Kingdom of God – that ultimate experience of wholeness and joy and belonging – is God’s gift to offer and will come to those who do not presume their place in it. From Jeremiah to Jesus and our current day prophets Martin Luther King and William Barber, we’re indicted by our thirst from cisterns which hold no water and reminded that we are our best selves in humility and sacrificial service, and our place in the Kingdom depends on how we treat and live with one another. [Rev. Dr. Sam Matthews] The lowest folks we meet may be angels, after all.
After this summer with the noisy prophets, we all may be ready for the sweet baby Jesus –humble, lowly, poor babe in the manger, who will show us the reign of God through hisparticular welcome and inclusion of the those in the lowest place. The gift of the communion meal is a table where change can take place in the human heart – to bring forth in us a revised Emily Post chapter ondinner etiquette – the humility of invitation and welcome for all.
Gail Wheatley+