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 honour, he told them a parable. ‘When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honour, 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 honoured in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. 11For 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 neighbours, 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.’
For me there are few things worse than the feeling that you are being watched.
I remember when I used to work for a living, in one of my jobs I dealt with incoming calls from people. Everything you did was recorded. Your calls were recorded and checked over regularly. The calls had to be completed within a certain ‘target time’. If you left your desk you had to ‘log out’ of the telephony system and put a code in to say where you were going and when you came back. Everything was timed to the minute if not the second. If you took too many unscheduled breaks, it would flag up on a manager’s computer and they would ask you for the reason. The feeling of being watched was absolutely palpable all the time. Even saying these words right now I can still feel the feelings of anxiety it engendered. One could argue, that I was free to act as I chose, these mechanisms just recorded that. but really?
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.
They were watching him closely to see if he would put a foot wrong, would he do something controversial, would he (in their eyes) do the right thing or the wrong thing.
That was the society of the Pharisees, eagerly trying to show themselves to be right with God in their social actions and their keeping of the laws and making sure that they kept pure. So, in their minds, they were right to be watching Jesus, a man somebody who ‘associated with sinners’ touched untouchables with love, cared for the ‘lowest of the low.’ He didn’t bother with the social conventions of the Pharisees. He was interested in the poor and the sick and the lonely, he came alongside them and helped them; rather than the Pharisees who would have probably cursed them for their illness, saying that it was ‘God’s will’ or ‘because of their sins’ or some such nonsense.
But Jesus is not under their control; and he uses this very practical social situation to, frankly embarrass them, showing them how their actions demonstrate what is in their hearts, and explaining how their hearts should be.
‘When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honour, 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 honoured in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. 11For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’
The lesson is clear, do not assume that you are better than others. Do not assume that others are not just as worthy as you to take the highest place, the place of honour at a wedding banquet.
But what’s behind this? After all, this whole parable could be turned around in the mind of a pharisee to day ‘ah, so in order to ‘get along in the world’ I need to make sure I look humble, so I will take the lowest chair so that I may then later be exalted.
This is obviously not what he is saying. Jesus is all about the changing of the heart, not outward appearances. He uses these very practical social examples, not so that one can be an ‘actor’ and appear to do what is right (that’s what the pharisees always did, after all) rather, he wants a change in the heart of the people, he wants them to change their ways. To do things the opposite way, in other words, to repent.
On Tuesday morning I took a service where Jesus was speaking to the Pharisees once again. And the lesson is exactly the same
‘“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practised without neglecting the others. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!
‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean.”
Clean the inside of the cup, in other words, clean up your heart. Change the way that you are, repent, turn around. The outward appearances mean nothing, unless the inner heart, the inside of the cup, has been cleaned.
What Jesus is saying isn’t new. He stands in a long Jewish tradition; in the Old Testament prophets the command is the same. In Isaiah chapter one the oracle speaks judgement over the people because they don’t care about the state of their hearts.
Hear the word of the Lord,
you rulers of Sodom;
listen to the instruction of our God,
you people of Gomorrah!
“The multitude of your sacrifices—
what are they to me?” says the Lord.
“I have more than enough of burnt offerings,
of rams and the fat of fattened animals;
I have no pleasure
in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.
When you come to appear before me,
who has asked this of you,
this trampling of my courts?
Stop bringing meaningless offerings!
Your incense is detestable to me.
New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—
I cannot bear your worthless assemblies.
Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals
I hate with all my being.
They have become a burden to me;
I am weary of bearing them.
When you spread out your hands in prayer,
I hide my eyes from you;
even when you offer many prayers,
I am not listening.
Your hands are full of blood!
Wash and make yourselves clean.
Take your evil deeds out of my sight;
stop doing wrong.
Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow.
And again in another prophet, Ezekiel who gets quite literally to the heart of the matter. The people have hearts of Stone, but God says through the oracle – Ezekiel 36:26-27.
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
No matter what the age, the message from the Lord is the same. Humility, treat others as brothers and sisters, have a heart of flesh, one of empathy, love and cherishing others, not a heart of stone which hides behind legalism and piety. And crucially, looking at the quote from Ezekiel, God moves the heart.
This doesn’t mean that he forces our hearts to be a certain way, if we do good things simply because we feel forced to, then that is not true faith and true religion. That is what happened when I was working, being watched all the time to make sure I was doing the right thing. No that’s not it; needs to come from within, the Spirit of God himself living within us.
One of my professors once wrote, ‘true religion is the attempt of live in beauty.’ The word ‘attempt’ there is what’s important, it is a true and free act of the will to say, I am going to be humble and good and kind and generous to others. And we need to choose to do it every day, if we’re ever going to experience what it means to live the life of faith.
The heart of flesh that God creates in us is something that we participate in fully. We decide, to follow God’s ways freely. If we do that, then we are truly living the life of faith, then we are ‘moving in God’s Spirit’
Why? It’s not because we are commanded to, but because we know deep down that this is what it means to live a life in all of its fulness, it’s the life that we all want to lead. It’s the reason why we admire those who can do it, those who are true servants in the community, because they already do what we know we need to be doing.
We are all called to share in the dependence on God’s love. To wilfully not see oneself as better than others, to voluntarily say from the bottom of our hearts, truly, that ‘we are all brothers and sisters,’ equally loved, and equally cherished, to say that to ourselves, every day, and act accordingly.
May we all make that choice
.
Amen