Time for a Feast 3 - Dinner with a Pharisee
Scripture - Luke 14:1-14
Dan Joseph
Imagine if
you will, your Fantasy Dinner Party. You can invite 5 people to share dinner
with you; they can be from any walk of life, any era. Who would you
invite?
Your favourite sports personality, a well-known wit or stand up
comedian, a politician or your favourite singer?
I’ve played this game on
a few occasions with friends and invariably someone always ends up suggesting
someone you’ve never heard of. Who we invite to dinner can be a tricky thing, I
would invite her, but her husband’s a bore; I would invite him but he always
falls asleep, usually in the trifle – and those two, well they always seem to be
on the verge of an argument.
The folk we invite to dinner can be a social
minefield, especially if you’re the sort of person who uses such occasions to
impress someone. The host we hear about in our reading today is rich and
powerful; he’s an influential religious leader – a Pharisee. Ironically he
really can choose his Fantasy Dinner Party, whoever is up and coming, the social
movers and shakers – they all get an invite from him.
So Jesus, who for
all his criticism of the Pharisees, is still a name that’s heard on anyone’s
lips, if they’d been printing Heat magazine he’d have been in it. How could this
social climbing host not invite Jesus? Maybe he figured he’d be able to catch
him out, score a little victory among his friends; take this upstart preacher
down a peg or two. I think that there was a plan behind the invitation. A plan
that would make his party even more memorable.
But Jesus was as ever, not
a typical dinner guest – and his conversation would be anything but dull. During
his ministry from town to town he was invited to eat in many homes, some poor,
some wealthy. He always had something to say worth listening to.
At any
dinner party, there’s always the seating plan to consider, well among this group
of socialites there was definitely a pecking order in place. The closer you were
seated to the host the more important your status was. But there wouldn’t have
been any nametags on seats, as the guests arrived they would have been vying for
a good seat. It’s easy to image them all there, all of them wanting to be at the
head table, wanting to be in the spotlight near the guests of honour, and
everyone else who wasn’t at the top table, would be smiling and pretending it
didn’t matter.
But the
thing was that the guests weren’t actually that free to sit where they chose –
it was up to the host, the master of ceremonies choosing who gets the best seat
in the house; it was all about beefing up the host’s social status.
One
of the other guests was clearly not well, some translations say he was suffering
from ‘dropsy’, now given that it was the Sabbath meal, and given the Pharisee’s
obsession with the Law’s do’s and don’ts of ritual cleanliness, he
wouldn’t have been seen as being ‘ceremonially unclean’ otherwise he wouldn’t
have been allowed anywhere near the dinner party.
Chances are he would
have been one of the friends of the host, why else invite him to such a showy
event, if he’s not well? Dropsy is an unhealthy accumulation of fluids in
the body due to a problem with the heart or kidneys. It manifests itself in the
bloating of the face and can also cause swelling in the arms and legs. Those
suffering would have been in discomfort.
His place on the guest list is
however, I think quite strategic, if he’s going to take this Jesus down a peg or
two, then this unwell friend might be the means to achieve it. The meal
was taking place on the Jewish day of rest and worship, the Sabbath, and no work
could be done on that day, the food they were eating must have been prepared the
day before. The law was very strict – breaking the Sabbath was big news. It can
be hard for us to imagine, we have a day of rest on Sunday, but we are used to
the shops being open, we expect public transport to run – we expect hospitals to
still be open. But in Jesus’ time this really wasn’t the case, the scripture
itself may have been quite generic about ‘do no work and have a day of rest’,
but the rabbinical law that interpreted it gave very severe instructions – you
did not work on the Sabbath.
So seated opposite Jesus at the dinner table
is this man with failing health, and naturally Jesus can’t help but feel
compassion for him. Jesus ignores the cultural rulings on what can and cannot be
done on the Sabbath and heals him.
If the man was placed there as a trap
for Jesus then it was sprung.
Now it speaks volumes about the character
of the Pharisees because the first thing they do is to chide Jesus about
breaking the Sabbath – healing was classed as work. There they are sitting
down with this man who may well be a friend of theirs, who would have been in
ill health for some time, who would have been in discomfort – and he’s just been
healed, in front of their eyes. They’ve just been witness to the power of God at
work, if it were one of my friends I’d have been overjoyed, but what do they do?
They quote regulations at him.
Jesus quickly puts them in their place,
suggesting that they would all have found a way to rescue a child if he had
fallen into a pit on the Sabbath. When presented with a need to do good, to act
out of mercy, right thinking people will just do it, they don’t think about
their reasons for doing good or try to analyse it - they just do
it.
What type of people wouldn’t be glad to see someone they know being
healed, released from their pain? Jesus has, I think weighed their
character and their sin correctly. Their obsession with social status and their
self-importance in being seen to observe regulations is more important to them
than human compassion. It’s a very cold philosophy.
Jesus uses the
example of the seating plan to teach them a lesson. He suggests that one day
they might turn up at a great wedding, and as usual would vie for a position on
the top table even though they may not be family. And so, how humiliating would
it be to have the Bride and Groom point out that the seat is already taken by
someone else, someone closer, someone more loved, and so, humiliated, the guest
has to shuffle off in front of all the guests to the least important seat in the
dinning room (you know, the one right in the corner, in the draft by the kitchen
door, with the wobbly table leg).
It’s not the only time that Jesus talks
about the humble being lifted up and the proud being humbled.
Being
humble. I often think that we have a strange view of what humble means; does it
mean to do yourself down, to think of yourself as not being special? One of the
best definitions I’ve ever heard is ‘Humility is not thinking less of
yourself. It is thinking of yourself less."
Through Jesus we are
offered an invitation to dine with God, to be invited into his presence. Though
this story, Jesus is not only teaching the Pharisees a lesson about the dangers
of self –importance, he’s reminding us that through the love of God we can still
feel and know we are special and still be humble.
We know we are special
because EVERY seat that God lays out for us, every invitation is to a good seat,
because it is God who invites us to it. The lord who created us as the unique
and special people we all are, knows all of us as family, with him there is no
top table to be worrying about.
Through the
events of this dinner party, Jesus challenges us to just get on with doing the
right thing, to celebrate when things go well, to show love and compassion for
those who are in a bad place, rather than putting all our energies into blowing
our own trumpets.
This is how Jesus encourages us all to live, and as the
people were religious leaders, I think this is how he was encouraging them to
run their churches. This is a lesson that we still can learn from
today.
Every invitation into God’s house needs to be into a good seat,
every single one of us has a part to play in making that invitation real. Some
of us practise and prepare, some of us just get on with it and welcome people,
reaching out a welcoming handshake and a smile, so that people know they are in
the right place. Our churches must be inviting to all people, to know that if
they venture in one Sunday that they will not be the one left sitting at the
table in the corner, in the draft, they won’t feel isolated.
Out there is
a city that is crying out for a saviour, people who want their lives to change
and people who have lots to offer but don’t know how or where they could use
their gifts. When those folk come through our door, I pray that they will
continue to feel that warm welcome we offer. To know that we will welcome them
as special people because God has made us all honoured guests.
Amen.
(Dan Joseph)