“Table Manners”
Luke 14:1, 7-14
September 2, 2007
Reverend John Fleming
It’s not hard to imagine the scene. Let’s say that you have been invited to
someone’s house for dinner. This isn’t
dinner with good friends. This is not
steaks on the grill or pizza ordered from Pizza Hut. Your invitation comes in the mail and it
comes from someone you do not know well.
You are not the only one invited.
You are one or two among many.
The seats around the dining room table will be filled with people,
perhaps as many as ten or twelve people.
Steak may be on the menu, but pizza will not be served. You usually do not eat pizza on fine china.
Picture arriving at the dinner party in
your best clothes. You are
ushered into the living room and offered both a seat and something to
drink. I will let your imagination run wild on what the house looks like. When the time has come, when everyone has
arrived and you have met the other guests, the host and hostess let you know
that dinner is served.
Most of the time,
when you are invited to a meal like this, you are told where to sit. You find your seat and sit down. That is the case for our scene today. There is a place setting in front of
you. The cloth napkin is folded and is perfectly starched.
Now. Look down at the place setting. Notice what is there. Notice the dinner plate and the salad plate
and the bread plate. There is a cup for
coffee and a glass for your choice of tea or water. Look down.
Notice all of the silverware there.
There is, of course, a spoon and a knife. There are also three forks. One
is above the place setting. Two others
are lined up beside one another. I don’t
know how it is for you, but I am grateful that my wife, Susie, knows the rules
of etiquette. I look at her and she
gently points towards the right utensil.
Good manners dictate which fork you should use when. It is just so hard, sometimes, to know when
to use them.
Good manners. Judith Martin has written a book whose title
is Miss
Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior. The
book has eight hundred and sixty-four pages and it covers just about every
situation. There are pages there on what
to do about births and showers and announcements and naming of the child. There is proper etiquette for a baptism. There is counsel in the book on handshakes
and what it takes to live a virtuous life in a wicked city. Really, it is in there. I am not sure if
There is advice on proper etiquette for using your
telephone and the internet. There is
advice for what to do in the midst of a family crisis. There is counsel about how to house sit for
someone. There is etiquette advice for
how to dress at work and how to answer correspondence and what to do about
graduations and reunions and the proper way to break up with someone. There is advice on engagements and weddings
and receptions and of course, thank-you letters. It seems they have to be written in a timely
manner. There is advice on deaths and
funerals and bereavement.
There is even advice listed in the table of contents on
what to do about second marriages and its proper protocol. And there is counsel for table manner. This counsel has to do with methods and
dinner itself. There is even advice for
eating particular and ornery foods. As I
said, there are eight hundred and sixty-four pages full of advice on how to act
and behave properly.
Let us look at our gospel lesson for this morning. At first glance it looks like Jesus is
offering advice and counsel on what to do when you are asked to dinner and
where you should sit if there are not place cards at the table.
Luke tells us that on one occasion Jesus was going to the
house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal. Luke also tells us that they were watching
Jesus closely. As it turns out Jesus was
also watching closely. What Jesus
noticed was how the good and upstanding religious men of his day were jostling
and elbowing their way to the highest possible place. They did that so that when people saw them,
they would think well of them. A place
of honor was a powerful spot where
anyone could make a judgment of another.
Jesus’ etiquette advice comes out, “When
you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet…” Now that is important. Jesus is not at a wedding banquet. Something deeper is on his mind. Flip through Luke’s gospel and you will
notice that Jesus is often at a meal.
Jesus says important things at mealtime.
The prophet Isaiah said that when the Messiah comes he will spread a
great banquet table out and a wonderful meal will be served. In our communion ritual we say, “By the
Spirit make us one…until Christ comes again and we
feast at his heavenly banquet.”
So this is no ordinary meal. Jesus has something bigger in mind than
proper protocol. Jesus says, “When you are invited to a wedding banquet, do not
sit down at the place of honor, in case someone most distinguished than you has
been invited and your host comes and says, ‘Give this person your place’ and in
disgrace you go to take the lowest place…”
So Jesus is watching people as they
scramble for the seats of honor. He
tells them, “Don’t seek the highest place.
Go for the lowest place, way down from the head table.” In fact, Jesus counsels to avoid the head
table like the plague.
So what Jesus is offering here isn’t just etiquette,
though his point here is well taken. It
is good advice. Jesus is doing
more. He is making spiritual
observations about us. If we, as Christians, honestly put others before ourselves, that is
when honor happens. Jesus puts it
this way, “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble
themselves will be exalted.”
I guess a little humility does go a long way. Humility is an elusive virtue. You cannot manufacture humility. You cannot say, “I think I’ll be humble today.” Humility is something you learn and it is
something deep inside of you that spills out whether we want it to or not. Have you noticed this? Life has a way of humbling us. Life has a way of making us crippled and lame
and blind. Everyone gets humbled from
time to time. That is just the way it
is.
With his counsel to the dinner guests still hanging up
there in the air, Jesus then turns to the host of the dinner party and says,
“And when you give a dinner, don’t invite your friends. Don’t invite your brothers. Don’t invite your relatives and your rich
neighbors.” What Jesus is really saying
is, “Don’t invite those who can repay you.”
Don’t invite those who will invite you to their house next. Don’t invite those, who, after a great meal
at a wonderful restaurant will say, “I’ll buy next time.”
No, says Jesus.
Invite those who are poor and crippled and lame and blind. Invite them because they can never repay
you. Do this, says Jesus, and you will
be blessed.
Can you imagine that guest list? In Jesus’ day the poor and the crippled and
the lame and the blind weren’t considered to be blessed. They were the ones, it was believed, and God
had withheld His blessing from. Their
problems, their conditions, were the direct result of their sins.
According to the religious
leaders, they would be the last ones to enter the kingdom. But, as you know, Jesus here is talking about
a different kingdom. He is talking about
a kingdom not the way it is, but the way it can be.
Look and listen.
Jesus isn’t telling us to provide for the needs of the poor and the
disabled in our lesson. Jesus is not
asking us to write a check or to volunteer.
Jesus is saying, “Have them over for dinner, where the host and the
guest can sit down together.” Jesus
wants us to love the stranger, which is a pretty good definition of
hospitality. The hospitality that Jesus
demands doesn’t expect something in return!
And the Bible is clear.
Hospitality is a big thing!
Steven Ivory tells a story entitled The Food Was Fast, the Feeling Endures about
a time when he and his friend stopped for fast food. Neither of them like
fast food, but they were very hungry. So
they stopped at a place named Carl Jr’s. Obviously
it is a fast food restaurant. Steven tells that it did not occur
to either of them to eat inside the restaurant.
After all fast food has to be eaten fast, while it is still hot. The neighborhood looked to be a good one, so
he and his friend decided to pull the car over and eat their supper together.
Steven says that he was a couple of bites into his Superstar with cheese when, in the
distance, he noticed a man who appeared to be homeless. The man was walking towards them. Steven made sure the doors were locked and
the windows were rolled up. He then continued
his dinner and conversation.
Not surprising, the sight of two people eating food in a
parked car stopped the man in his tracks.
He knocked on the window and said, “I don’t mean no
disrespect…” The man could not have been
more than thirty years old. His beard
was long and he looked weary. The men in
the car knew the man was struggling.
Steven rolled down his window just a little and listened. It seems that the man did not want
money. He wanted something else. The man said, “I don’t mean no disrespect,
man, if you could, just break me off a piece of whatever you’re eating. Just a piece, please.”
Steven was taken aback.
He wasn’t expecting this request.
He said, “Come to think of it, I am pretty full.” He rolled his window down the rest of the way
and handed the man the rest of his Superstar
with cheese and his french fries. The man thanked him profusely. Steven Ivory wrote, “When he walked away and
began eating, I understood what had just happened. We could hear him down the block uttering the
words, ‘Thank-you, thank-you’ as if every bite was a new gift.” I guess it would have been better if they had
asked him to get in the car.
You will be blessed, says Jesus. Steven Ivory was. Try doing something like that. Try volunteering at a soup kitchen and when
your time of serving is over, go and sit with someone who came in to eat and
eat with them and see what happens. Try
helping someone who cannot repay you and notice that the blessing comes to both
of you. Let us pray.
(Special thanks to the
writers of Homiletics magazine for
the story told by Steven Ivory. You can
find the story in the September 2, 2001 edition of the magazine).