Lessons while at table

 

Luke 14:7-14 reads:⁷ When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. ⁸ ‘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; ⁹ 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. ¹⁰ 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. ¹¹ For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’
 
¹² 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. ¹³ But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. ¹⁴ And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.’
 
I could spend a lot of time commenting on the concept of “Table” as it appears in scripture.  The Bible uses the term over 150 times.  The beginning and ending of such a survey is what we now call The Lord’s Table.  By any estimation the table is a significant place.
 
So, Jesus has some practical advice regarding table behavior here.  We are free to take it at face value.  “This is how you act when someone invites you to their table.”  “This is how you conduct yourselves when you invite others to your own meal.”
 
At another level, Jesus extends rabbinical instruction for the living of our lives.   There are a couple of wrinkles in all this that I am trying to work out.  For instance, in the opening verse Luke states that Jesus “told them a parable.”  But literarily, there is no parable.  There is no “Who among you…” or “There was a certain man…”  the lack of proper identification does not negate the importance of these instructions.  But there is no way to construe these sayings as constituting parables.  I have found no reference work or listing of the parables of Jesus that includes this passage. 
 
In Luke 8:4-15 the gospel writer records the so-called Parable of the Sower.  When his disciples ask for the meaning, Jesus interprets it as an allegory: the seed has a particular meaning, as do the various kinds of soil and the weeds and the birds.  A parable makes a single point.  An allegory has multiple symbols within its narrative.  This is to say that upon occasion scripture may give a label such as “parable” (which sometimes merely indicates “story”) when the form is that of another kind of literature. 
 
So, to seek out the single thrust of a piece of illustrative material can sidetrack us in instances such as the text before us.
 
Another point with which I contend here is Jesus’ counsel in the first section.  He seems to be upholding humility: But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place…  That seems to be consistent instruction for those whom Jesus teaches elsewhere to be servants of one another or to carry no provisions for the road when his disciples embark on a missionary journey. 
 
But, look at what happens when Jesus finishes the thought: “…, 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.  There is not much humility or servitude in that.  The motive for the instruction to go to the foot of the table is so that the host might extend an invitation to ascend to a position of greater honor.  There are some who interpret this to say that disciples should spend their lives humbling themselves and moving to the figurative foot of the table so that their exaltation might be their inclusion in heaven.  There may be some helpful advice there, but to offer it in this manner is a bit of a stretch.  If the point of all this is genuine humility, I would expect the person who sought the place of least honor to refuse the encouragement of the host.  “No, no, I am fine here.  Let your more important guests sit in the places of honor.”
 
I am not criticizing Luke – or Jesus!  I am confessing that I am grappling with this text, seeking to come to a satisfactory conclusion regarding the instruction.
 
I’ll have more to say later.
 
The Peace of the Lord be with you.

A teachable moment

Most of us can remember all too well a lesson learned from the School of Hard Knocks.  We touched a hot stove or went sliding across an icy parking lot and we came to understand the need for caution in certain situations.  There are some things we don’t learn no matter how much correcting we receive.  Until we have the experience of discomfort the learning does not fully take root.  We may not enjoy it.  We might not like it.  But the barked shins and skinned knees of our lives teach us how to live.  Learning can come even out of a setting of the unpleasant.

Jesus understood that.  Jesus told a lot of parables and many of them have positive and uplifting details.  We read of the Lost Sheep or the Mustard Seed and these parables provide comfort as they proclaim the mercy of God.  But Jesus also looked at the world around him and said that there are Kingdom lessons that we can learn even from less-than-ideal circumstances.  Consider the parable of the Treasure in the Field.  A man is walking through a field that is not his own when he discovers a treasure.  So, he goes and buys the field from its owner, never disclosing the fortune it contains to its owner.  The lesson that we learn, of course, is that we should pursue the Kingdom of God with all the resources that are at our disposal.  All analogies fall apart under scrutiny, so we understand that the Kingdom of God is not something that we can hoard or take away from someone else by deceit.  The purchaser’s behavior may be less than ethical.  But his resolve is something that can teach us.

Recently both in worship and in Pickwick Church’s Men’s Bible Study we considered Luke 16:1-15, the parable of The Dishonest Steward.  In it the principal character is an administrator of a rich man’s estate.  He embezzles money and his master finds him out.  In an effort to recruit allies for himself he has each of his master’s debtors fraudulently alter their accounts so as to reduce their debt and ingratiate himself to the debtors.  In so securing cronies for his post-employment life, he actually receives praise from his defrauded master.  It is not that the rich man is happy that the steward robbed him.  But he has a grudging respect for the cunning of the steward.  It is as if he says, “Well played,” even in defeat. 

Jesus does not recommend the steward as a model for business practices.  But he does observe that the practitioners of worldly business pursue their goals with much more energy than he sees in religious people as they pursue the Kingdom of God.  The people of the world who long for worldly treasure frequently throw the entirety of their being into their pursuit.  Jesus tells disciples that our working for the things of the Kingdom shouldn’t cause us to act timidly or with restraint.  If we find worth in Kingdom stuff then It is appropriate that we throw all of our vigor into the achieving of our goal.

Jesus would never encourage us to be dishonest in any endeavor.  But he teaches that we have a lot of tools at our disposal – righteous, moral tools – and he encourages us to use every single one in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.