All Angels

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

September 29, 2013; The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(John 1:47-51)  A When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, "Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!" Nathanael asked him, "Where did you get to know me?" Jesus answered, "I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you." Nathanael replied, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!" Jesus answered, "Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these." And he said to him, "Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man."

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oday we have the good fortune that the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels falls on a Sunday, and we’ve chosen to celebrate that rather than our ordinary Proper 21 readings for the 19th Sunday after Pentecost.  I want to start with a couple of stories, one full of coincidence that some might call divine, the other a simple visitation that pushes the envelope a bit further.

Earlier this month parishioner Michelle Trumbo went to the University Medical Center for a rare and dangerous surgery.  She had a brain aneurism.  These things are silent killers and disablers, and 90% of people who experience one die or suffer brain damage.  Michelle was one of the lucky 10%.  By good fortune they found her aneurism before it could act out, and we happen to have one of the planet’s foremost surgeons for these things at our state university’s hospital.  Some might claim a touch of divine presence in those circumstances. 

But while he was visiting Michelle in the hospital, her dad Don Hornsby suffered a heart attack.  It was one of the big ones; they call them the “Widow Maker” – 99% blockage.  The doctors said had it happened anywhere other than in a hospital where he could be treated immediately, he would have died.  Tests afterward show no heart damage.  Luck or something else?  You decide.  But Michelle wrote this in a phone text:  “The gratitude we have for the experience and the outcome is hard to put into words.  It sounds crazy to wish it for others, but I would.  It’s given me joy in abundance.”

Story number two.  Almost twenty years ago before she was a priest, Suzanne was in recovery right after surgery.  She heard the sound of an anxious nurse leaving the room crying, “Doctor, Doctor, come quick!  This lady is in trouble.”  Suzanne suddenly became aware that she felt like a fish on land trying to breathe.  Her mouth was opening, but nothing was happening, no air was coming in.  She was alone in the room, and she couldn’t breathe.  But a voice, very close and intimate, spoke to her, clearly into her good ear. (I particularly like that detail; so incarnational – you see, Suzanne is deaf in one ear.)  The intimate voice said with gentle authority, “You are safe.  All is well.”  Suzanne describes the sense of well being that she experienced then as greater than any earthly sense of peace she has ever known.  Absolute, indescribable well being.  Utterly real.  A quality of being alive that was fuller than anything she has experienced before or sense.  That voice was even more real than the signals from her body that she couldn’t breathe.  Suzanne learned later that without the doctor’s quick intervention, she would have died.

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he word “angel” means simply “messenger.”  Today we celebrate the messengers of God.  Some messengers seem supernatural.  Some seem so very ordinary. 

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 believe that there is much more than the merely material.  That there is something rather than nothing implies a source.  And consciousness comes from consciousness.  I believe that there is a fulfillment for our implanted desire for truth, beauty and goodness.  And we get hints of the fullness from time to time.  Those who practice contemplation and prayer visit this transcendent territory from time to time.  We even taste it in ordinary moments when we give our whole selves in creativity or kindness or love.

It is an amazing and thing for me to look around at each of you and to wonder.  How marvelous each person is!  How mysterious!  What is going on inside each of you? 

Right now you have within your being the consciousness of the whole history of your life – all of your thoughts, your feelings, your experiences.  You bring all of that with you as you listen to my words and as you look around at this evocative room.  We all are hearing the same words, and we all sit in this same room, but every person’s thoughts and feelings are uniquely theirs and ultimately incommunicable. 

We could never document what is going on is this room right now in this moment.  It is incomprehensible.  If I were to interview each of you in depth about your experience of this sermon, none of you would be able adequately to make me understand the fullness of your individual reaction and your particular experience.  As hard as you might try, none of you could communicate to me the totality of what is going in within you.  And every one of those interviews would be unique, different, and infinite. 

Yet we all participate in the hearing of the one word; we all share in the breaking of the one bread, the drinking from the one cup.  There is among us a unity, grounded not only in our shared humanity, but also in our experience of so much more:  the ineffable qualities of joy and love and bliss; the mystery of knowing and of wonder; the physicality of taste and touch and sound and sight and smell.  All of it stirred into a fascinating energy of thought and feeling that passes in an instant, opening to the next infinite moment of possibility and sensation.

All of that is going on within each mysterious life in this room right now as we do this one thing together.  And if we are aware and open, we realize that as worshippers gathered to share the sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood, we are opening to the infinite possibilities of divine communion. 

Annie Dillard writes, “On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions.  Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke?  …The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.  It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets.  Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.  For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. ” [i]

Or, as Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote:

Earth’s crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God,

But only he who sees takes off his shoes;

The rest sit round and pluck blackberries. [ii]

I’ve heard too many compelling stories about something greater than my imagination breaking into our earthly experience and opening us to Something More.  As Hamlet said to Horatio:  There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt in your philosophy.[iii]  I delight in these intimations of immortality, and I try to keep one spiritual antenna up for their possibilities whenever I can be so conscious.

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 am also a believer in the Incarnation.  I believe in a God who becomes fully human.  I believe in the revelation of the divine in “the trivial round, the common task,” as we sang three weeks ago from John Keble’s fine hymn.  These mundane things, he says, “furnish all we ought to ask.” [iv]

There is something in me that likes the plain and literal understanding of an angel as a simple messenger, a messenger from God.  In that context, every common act of kindness or consideration is the touch of an angel.  Every encouraging word or compassionate gesture is the beating of an angel’s wings.  We are all messengers of God.  We are all angels.  Every human being is a Word of God to the world, and we all have our parts to sing in the great angelic hymn of the universe. 

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o today, leave from this holy and wondrous place empowered as an angel of light, ready to be the subtle, almost invisible messenger of God, doing your duty with the diligence and kindness of the heavenly beings.  As Keble’s hymn invites us:  “If on our daily course our mind be set to hallow all we find, new treasures still, of countless price, God will provide for sacrifice.” 

Raise your spiritual antennae outward.  Any act of kindness toward you – a word of encouragement, a glance of care – could be the angelic visitation of another one of God’s messengers.  Hear Keble again:  “Old friends, old scenes, will lovelier be, as more of heaven in each we see; some softening gleam of love and prayer shall dawn on every cross and care.”

And finally, if I can borrow from one more hymn.  For it seems to me that in many ways the angels of God are much like the saints of God that we sing-a-song-of in that old familiar favorite hymn.  For if an angel is simply God’s messenger, then each of us can most certainly be a divine messenger each time we offer a touch of grace or truth or love or sacrifice.  We sing a song of the saints of God whom you can meet “in schools, or in lanes, or at sea, in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea.”  And we sing that “the saints of God are just folk like me, and I mean to be one too.” 

Well, so are the angels.  The angels, the messengers of God, are here in this room, sitting next to you and around you, bringing heaven to earth in every act and word of kindness and of grace.  You are an angel too.  You are a messenger of God.  Let the light of God shine through you in simple acts of grace and duty, and you incarnate God’s light and presence within creation. 

And keep your antenna up.  You never know when some other kind of angel may come to whisper in your good ear, “You are safe.  All is well.”

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[i] Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk, Harper & Row, 1982.

[ii] Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh, in The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse, Nicholson & Lee, eds., 1917

[iii] William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.5.166-7

[iv] John Keble, The Hymnal 1982, Hymn 10

Lost Sheep

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

September 15, 2013; 17 Pentecost, Proper 19, Year C

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Luke 15:1-10)  All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them."

So he told them this parable: "Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, `Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.' Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

"Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, `Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.' Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

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his gospel reading starts off ugly.  But it ends pretty beautifully.

“All the tax collectors were coming near to listen to Jesus.  And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’”

You need to know that sitting at a meal in Jesus’ day was not something casual.  To share a table with someone was a public event, and it carried profound significance.  Eating with someone created a public endorsement of the other and an obligation of lifelong friendship.  Friendships in an honor culture established your place in the community. 

In his community, Jesus’ sharing meals with sinners and tax collectors would be more scandalous than your priest becoming best friends with our local meth dealers.  The good people, the respectable Pharisees and scribes, were offended and spoke up about it. 

So Jesus returned the insult.  But you need to know something else to catch the bite in his response.  In Jesus’ day, shepherds were despised and mistrusted, assumed to be stupid or crooked.  My friend Paul McCracken writes:  “Only children could be shepherds without social taint.  An adult shepherd was considered to be either so inept or addled that he could not perform any other occupation, or to be so dishonest that he could not be trusted in any other role.”[i]

So Jesus turns to the respectable Pharisees and scribes and says, “Which of you, having a hundred sheep…”  Which of you crooks…  Which of you idiots…  You can bet the peasants in earshot enjoyed the barb. 

And they would have understood that this story about the hundred sheep was a story about some children-shepherds watching flocks for their fathers or older brothers, probably one child for every twenty to twenty-five sheep.  When one sheep went missing, one child went to look for it while the others watched the flock. 

And it probably wasn’t too hard to find the sheep.  They are social creatures.  When a sheep realizes it’s wandered away, it will panic.  The lost sheep’s muscles will lock-up rigidly and it will bleat loudly and pitiably.  A shepherd can find it pretty quickly, but so can a predator, so the shepherd must be quick. 

When the shepherd finds the sheep, it is usually comforted enough to stop bleating, but away from the security of the flock, the sheep will remain frozen, unable to follow.  So the shepherd must carry it back, a pretty heavy load for a small child.  When they rejoin the flock, there is rejoicing among animals and shepherds alike.[ii] 

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ne obvious and traditional interpretation of this parable has to be about God’s intention to seek and restore everyone who might be lost, including tax collectors and sinners.  God’s loving intention is so complete and so universal that God will find a way to bring all of the sheep into the divine flock.  God rejects the opinion of the Pharisees and scribes that only some who are worthy are to be saved.  No.  One hundred percent is the only result acceptable to God.  God eats with sinners.  Get over it Pharisees.

The parable of the lost coin makes a similar point.  God intends to lose nothing of value, no matter how long or difficult the search.  So take that with you today.

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ut I want to offer another interpretation. 

Think of the various elements of your life as the whole flock.  Life is good when everything is tended to, flowing together, properly nourished and protected.  But every once in a while, you lose something – some part of yourself; some quality in your life.  And you need to go on a bit of a search to bring it back, to restore you to wholeness.

I was talking with someone the other day who is living with a certain level of frustration and dissatisfaction.  He says he ought to be happy and satisfied.  He’s got a great family that he loves, and they’re all doing just fine.  He has the job he has worked toward for many years, and he is very well paid.  But he has a lot of responsibility, and he works long hours.  It’s hard to get away from it all.  He loves his work, but sometimes it’s too much.  He’s always inside – at meetings or on the phone or computer.  Even at home he’s having to keep in touch with work and troubleshoot. 

We talked a while, and he began to reminisce.  He recalled how he used to enjoy time outdoors, especially in nature.  He and his wife used to hike, to camp occasionally.  Now, he’s rarely outside, and if he is, it’s usually doing some chore like mowing. 

There’s something about nature that breathes life into him, he says.  It gives him energy to be outside, among the trees or in the open air.  So he made a plan.  He’s going to carve out some time to get back into nature.  He’s going to plan some things – a hike, a picnic, a quick visit to a favorite overlook.  Some of it by himself; some with family.  He’s going to find that lost sheep, and bring nature back into his life, to see if some wholeness doesn’t return to him.

There’s a businessman I know who says yoga takes his stress away.  He got involved in a deal that consumed him for a while, and he couldn’t go to his yoga class.  “I felt it,” he said.  “I got all tense and out of sorts.  I got out of the habit and quit going.  I could feel the spiral, and I started gaining weight.”  So he went after his lost sheep, returned to his yoga class, and now he feels more like himself.

The other day I got fed up with having too many balls in the air, so I cleaned up my desk.  And I felt so much better.  I hadn’t done anything on the checklist; I had made no progress in one sense.  Yet I was more relaxed, more focused, and then more efficient and present. 

We are social beings, and everything is connected with everything else.  When one part of your life is stuck and frozen and bleating, out in the wilderness feeling threatened by the predators, the whole flock is shaken. 

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hat are the lost sheep in your life?  What have you let wander away that needs to be refound?  For some people, it’s prayer.  For others, it’s exercise.  For some, it’s rest.  Just getting enough sleep can make a huge difference.  Diet, music.  Attention to detail; getting organized.  Taking a retreat.  Reconciling with a friend after a misunderstanding.  Making amends for something you regret.  Quitting a bad habit.  Paying attention to those you most value.  Reconnecting with family or an old friend. 

We all have some lost sheep.  And it takes some energy to go out on the search and to bring them home.  But the effort is worthwhile. 

Notice one more thing.  The celebration.  In Jesus’ stories, when the sheep was restored, the shepherds celebrated; when the lost coin was found, the neighbors rejoiced with her.  Share your progress.  When you restore some balance, when you find something that was lost, let yourself celebrate and share the joy. 

God’s intention is that love will fill the universe, including your whole life.  That there will be no sheep lost, nothing of value lost.  God is with you on the sheep search.  The Good Shepherd will search with you and illumine the way.  And whenever you find what you had lost, every time there is joy in the presence of the angels of God.  So go out there this week, and make some angels happy.

That’s a beautiful ending to a story that started out pretty ugly.

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[i] Paul McCracken, Jerusalem Institute for Biblical Studies, Sunday’s Lectionary Text, September 10, 2013, www.jibe-edu.org

[ii] Ibid

Rubbish

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

September 8, 2013; 16 Pentecost, Proper 18, Year C

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Luke 14:25-33)  Now large crowds were traveling with Jesus; and he turned and said to them, "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, `This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.' Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions." 

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n today’s sermon, first I want to address the three circles of concern that Jesus attacks.  Then I’m going to talk about Paul’s letter to Philemon.  Finally, I want to connect the two and hope it makes sense. 

First.  In today’s gospel Jesus challenges some basic presumptions.  What is our most important concern?  For many of us, our family is our fundamental reference point, a core sense of our identity, and very possibly, our highest priority.  Jesus says here, and elsewhere, making your family your primary focus and your reason for living, is not enough. 

So, what might be more important?  Life itself?  Survival?  No, says Jesus.  There is something greater.  He says that only if you lose your life will you gain it.

Then Jesus closes with a warning to count the cost.  You have to be willing to give up everything to be his disciple. 

Jesus is attacking three circles of concern, three circles of power.  Family, possessions, and life itself.  These are three spheres where we try to make ourselves happy.  Three good things that can become blocks to fulfillment.  Three value systems that will sabotage us if we put our trust in them.  Three gifts that can become idols.  Family, possessions, and life itself. 

The implications:  (1) If family becomes our central focus, if family becomes our greatest concern -- things will become at best unbalanced and unhealthy, at worst, downright toxic and dysfunctional, full of dependencies and abuse.  We can become slaves to our families. 

(2)  There is something even greater than survival.  Trying to protect your life is not enough, he says.  And Jesus points to the cross. 

(3)  Then finally, Jesus closes with a line that if we used as our primary public church-advertising slogan, it might scare everybody away:  “none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.”  Welcome to St. Paul’s.

Jesus’ warning is this.  These are our false gods:  family, survival, possessions.  Family often defines our sense of identity and supplies our need for affection and esteem.  Survival includes our often exaggerated needs for security, our desire to control the future to make sure we feel safe.  Possessions are often the measure of our power and value; sometimes our identity and even our sense of security is grounded in what we think we can possess and control. 

You’ve heard these terms before from this pulpit:  esteem, security and control.  The false self is built up by our programs for happiness.  We think we can become happy if we just get enough affection and esteem; enough safety and security; enough power and control.  These are the energy systems of the false self.  Jesus says, Hate this stuff.  Dismantle this stuff.

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ow let me see if I can make a connection with Paul’s letter to Philemon.  First the back-story.  Paul and Philemon are old friends.  Apparently Paul brought Philemon into the Church and is something of a spiritual father to him. 

Philemon is a person of some status in the Church.  He hosts his own house the Christian Church that meets in his community.  Philemon is a person of some status in the Roman world.  He is a slaveholder.  That means he is wealthy and powerful. 

The Roman economic and social system depended upon a stable labor source through slaves, and the whole social order could be shaken by any hint of a challenge to that system, a challenge that might put revolutionary ideas into the heads of the vast numbers of slaves.  The famous Pax Romana – the Peace of Rome – would not broach a challenge to such a core legal and economic structure of the Empire. 

Many slaves worked in brutal, dangerous labor.  But many others were skilled professionals – teachers, accountants and physicians. 

Onesimus was the slave of Philemon, and Onesimus was a runaway.  That was serious.  Scholars point to evidence that the entire Roman system was obsessed with finding and publically punishing runaway slaves.[i]  The stakes were perilous for anyone found to be colluding with a runaway.

But Paul inherited a tradition of Christian community that was vastly different from the Roman norms.  In Paul’s church, all people were equal as God’s children, clothed with Christ in baptism.  Paul publically challenged the common social and religious hierarchies saying, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile; there is neither slave nor free; nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”[ii]

We don’t know how it happened, but Paul took Onesimus the runaway slave into his friendship.  And then he wrote back to Philemon, writing as master to a disciple, saying, “Though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your duty, yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love.” 

Wow!  That’s a paradigm shift in the Roman world.  Then Paul declares his own standing.  He names himself “a prisoner of Christ Jesus.”  Paul is writing from jail.  Onesimus has come to Paul in jail, and served Paul during his imprisonment.  How risky for both of them!

Now, Paul is writing this letter appealing on the basis of love, telling the slave-owner what Paul expects from his disciple Philemon as Paul returns the runaway slave Onesimus.  “Welcome him as you would welcome me.”  “No longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother.”  Paul calls Onesimus the slave, “my child.”  He tells Philemon, “If you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me.”

Paul promises to repay any debt Onesimus might owe Philemon.  Paul even grabs the pen and starts writing himself, “Charge that to my account.  I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand:  I will repay it.”  Then he reminds Philemon of his own debt to Paul.  “I say nothing about your owing me even your own self.”  Paul is telling Philemon that Philemon is Paul’s own slave in Christ.  What a bold statement from someone in a Roman jail who could easily be charged with aiding a runaway slave.  Finally, Paul closes strongly:  “Confident in your obedience, I am writing to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say.”

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mazing!  How does he do that?

Paul is able to do that because he has completely inverted the way he looks at the world.  His entire sense of being – his identity – is completely defined by his understanding of himself as living “in Christ.”  He was given absolute status and ultimate standing when Christ accepted him and justified him, as Paul says, completely as a gift of loving acceptance.  Nothing compares with that identity.  Not family, not Roman citizenship, neither bondage or freedom, not even life or death can touch his sense of esteem, security and power given to him freely and abundantly in Christ.

Then, from that strong foundation, he looks at the world and all its clamor – slaves and slave-holders, rich and poor, strong and weak, reputable and disreputable, citizen and prisoner, Roman and Jew – and he says all of that is just rubbish.[iii]  In the mystery of God, we are all one.  And while we were still in our disobedience, Christ died for all.[iv] 

So Christ’s death is Paul’s own death.  I died to all that rubbish, he says.  It doesn’t matter to me anymore.  All that matters is this – I am God’s own, adopted by Christ when I was a failure, filled with the Spirit and incorporated into the divine life.  And I look around and see that everyone and everything is filled with this same divine life and energy.  All is in Christ.  Nothing else matters. 

So, let’s go back to Jesus and this challenging gospel today.  Don’t let status or family, or attachments and affections, or insecurities or security blankets – don’t let anything get in the way of being who you are – God’s own beloved child – and of living freely in that identity. 

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ou are God’s own, adopted by Christ before you knew, now filled with the Spirit and incorporated into the divine life.  Therefore, look around and see that everyone and everything is filled with this same divine life and energy.  All is in Christ.  Nothing else matters.  So give it all up.  Everything.  And receive life and family and opportunity and things as gifts, gifts to be used in service to love, because love is all that matters. 

And though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your duty, yet I too would rather appeal to you on the basis of love.  Let God love you completely.  Then, love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.  Everything else is just rubbish.

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[i] Wikipedia article Slavery in Ancient Rome

[ii] Galatians 3:28

[iii] Philippians chapter 3

[iv] Romans 5:8

Table Places and Honor

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

September 1, 2013; 15 Pentecost, Proper 17, Year C

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(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 honor, he told them a parable.

"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; 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 honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For 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 neighbors, 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."

__________

One of the reasons it can be hard for us to interpret the New Testament is that our culture is fundamentally different from the first century Mediterranean world.  Understanding something about their presuppositions adds particular interest to today’s gospel.

Jesus lived in an honor culture.  For people in his world, honor was what money is to us today.  In Jesus’ world, one’s worth was measured corporately, by the amount of honor you carry. 

In our culture we have credit ratings.  You can’t get a loan to buy a house without good credit.  Right? 

In an honor culture, your good name and your reputation of ultimate value.  No one will freely associate with you in a covenant relationship unless your honor is good – unless you have a good name and a good family reputation.  In an honor culture, your honor would be measured almost as accurately we measure credit scores today. 

Your honor rating is the alignment of two things:  what you think you are worth and what society acknowledges you are worth.  And it’s not about money.  It’s about honor.

An honorable person is one who is sensitive to one’s own reputation – who accurately understands the opinions of others and lives consistently within the status and honor that the community grants.  A shameless person doesn’t understand the rules of what is honorable and what is not.  A very shameful person is one who aspires to a certain status and finds that status is denied them by public opinion. 

Everyone at the Pharisee’s dinner party understood Jesus’ illustration about the person who misjudged his status and sat in a seat of honor that was above his status.  That is a conventional story about honor and shame with a conventional lesson that would have been comfortable to anyone present.  The Book of Proverbs is full of similar advice.

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o let’s dig a little deeper.  Let me tell you about a typical seating chart at a first century banquet.  Imagine a U-shaped table, low to the floor so that everyone could recline, typically toward one’s left, in order to use the right hand to reach for the food and drink.  Imagine looking toward the table with the open end of the “U” facing you.  To your left, the first table position was filled by the person responsible for going back and forth to the kitchen to resupply the tables.  Next to him, at position number two, was the host.  To the host’s immediate left reclined the guest of honor.  And the other guests sat around the table in declining order of prestige.  Someone in the middle of the “U” at position seven would be a person of more honor than someone at the opposite end of the table, say at position eleven. 

A wise person could look around a room and find his appropriate place, correctly evaluating his rank.  A fool, a shameless person, might place himself at position four, and when the real occupant of that place comes in, the fool would find the other places filled, and would have been bumped to the end of the table, suddenly earning his shameful standing by aspiring to something he didn’t deserve.

Now a brief aside for another story.  When next we read John’s account of the Last Supper, have this order of seating in your imagination.  I think you’ll see that the guest of honor that evening, seated to the left of the host Jesus, was Judas Iscariot.  After all he was the treasurer of the apostles and maybe the chair of preparations.  Judas may have been Jesus’ closest and most trusted, honored companion among the twelve.  Come back for more during Holy Week.

But back to today.  Jesus’ advice about being slow to grab a seat of honor was conventional advice.  His words would have been received positively at this meal at the Pharisee’s home.  But what Jesus said next would have sounded scandalous. 

Everybody knew that throwing a banquet was an affair of honor.  A host must be careful to invite people of comparable rank, people whom he might owe an invitation to, or those who might invite him back to a table of comparable honor. 

Everybody knew the order of seating could become a field of challenge:  Who is more honorable than whom?  How will the host and the guests acknowledge each person’s reputation and social worth?  Furthermore:  Will the table enhance the worth and honor of those present, or will they be demeaned by sitting with inferiors?  To place honorable persons with dishonorable persons would bring shame to the host?  He would have miscalculated and insulted his most honored guests.  He would have lost face, and honor.  It’s a tough game.

J

esus’ words to the host were like a wet backhand across the face.  "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.”  [Despite that being the whole conventional system.]  “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."

Jesus’ words are an indictment and a challenge to the whole social order.

You see, “the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind” are those that the Pharisees taught were not to be included in the congregation of the faithful.  The Pharisees believed that all Israel was a holy people, a nation of priests.  And therefore all people were bound by the 613 individual laws of the Torah of Moses.  And in the Torah, in Leviticus 21, the scripture says that no one “who has a blemish shall draw near, [or] one who is blind or lame, or one who has a mutilated face or a limb too long, or one who has a broken foot or a broken hand, or a hunchback, or a dwarf, or a man with a blemish in his eyes or an itching disease or scabs or crushed testicles” – these are excluded from the holy people, the nation of priests.[i]  And the poor?  They are like these others – unfortunate, but also dishonorable. 

The conventional belief presumed that these afflicted ones deserved their fate.  Maybe you remember the question from John 9, when people asked Jesus his opinion, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”  Jesus did not accept the question.  He changed the rules.  Jesus refused to victimize the victims.

J

esus scandalized his society by his open table fellowship, by his welcome and his free touching and healing of those believed to be cursed.  He completely sabotaged the honor system, welcoming sinners and outcasts, declaring blessing upon those thought to be judged and punished by God.  He announced “blessed are the poor, the meek, the hungry, those who weep and mourn, the hated and ostracized.”  And then he flipped the tables and said, “Woe to you who are rich and well fed and laughing now.” (Matthew 5 & Luke 6)

At Jesus’ table, the wealthy, like Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, are expected to sit down as equals with fishermen and tax collectors and Mary Magdalene at a table where he calls them all “friends.”  He told his disciples, You know how those honor tables are; it shall not be so among you.  No, the greatest among you must become like the least, and the leader, like a servant.  (Lk. 22:24f)

Can anyone doubt what Jesus would say to us today about our social system and its hierarchies of money and power?  We may not be an honor culture, but in our way of acknowledging worth, we aren’t so different from the first century.  We just use money instead of honor.

And if we are not to earn Jesus’ condemnation as hypocrites, we are going to have to create social structures and individual behaviors that favor “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind” and all of those who fall between the cracks in our systems of power and prestige. 

T

his table is our model.  That’s one of the reasons we say in our invitation to communion, “Whoever you are, or wherever you are in your pilgrimage of faith, you are welcome in this place, you are welcome at God’s table.”  We’ve all got a challenge before us to follow Jesus’ lead of radical hospitality and generosity. 

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[i] thanks again to Paul McCracken for his Lectionary Notes, this from August 27, 2013, and to my friend Charles Page