FINDINGS IV By Harry T. Cook
Proper 17 - C - September 1, 2013
Luke 14: 1, 7-14
By Harry T. Cook
8/26/13
Luke 14: 1, 7-14
On the occasion Jesus was on his way to the house of a leader of the Pharisee party for the Shabbat meal he was being watched closely. He was himself watching and saw how other guests chose places of honor. So he told them this parable: "When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit yourself down in a place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited, and the host who invited the both of you may come to you and say, 'Give place to this person,' and then in disgrace you would have to get back in line and take the lowest place. But if you went to the lowest place first, the host might come to you and say 'Move up higher,' and then you would appear as honored among the other people at the table (proving that) those who exalt themselves are very likely to be humbled while those who humble themselves have nowhere to go but up." He said also to the host, "When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or relatives or wealthy neighbors, in case they might invite you in return, thus repaying your hospitality. When you put on this kind of thing, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the sightless. They cannot repay you, but in that you will be blessed in the resurrection of the righteous." (Translated and paraphrased by Harry T. Cook.)
* * * * *
Emily Post and Ann Landers would probably have agreed with the advice to play humble at a dinner party in hopes that you would be seated by the host somewhere above rather than below the salt. But each would balk at the other piece of advice: Don't invite the well-off who can return the favor; invite those who for obvious reasons couldn't. Life in the Hamptons, on Park Avenue and Rittenhouse Square, in the leafy suburbs of the Grosse Pointes and Bloomfield Hills, on suburban Chicago's North Shore and elsewhere among the grandees of society would never be the same again if that counsel were to be heeded.
Thus in this passage we revisit the lines from Luke chapter 1 and the Magnificat: "He hath put down the mighty from their seats and hath exalted the humble and meek," and in the revisitation of them are reminded that the gospels' social analysis is largely egalitarian.
We have before us an entirely Lukan passage with no observable parallels in Q or Mark. So we are able to ask what peculiar Lukan agenda these nine verses were meant to serve in Luke's greater scheme. The RCL omits vv. 2-6 because, one presumes, they represent an unlikely interruption in a highly formal affair. Table hospitality in the Mediterranean world was serious business, highly symbolic and every bit as well orchestrated as in contemporary upper classes. In fact Luke located several important episodes at the dinner table (see 5:29ff, 7:36ff, 10:30ff, 11:37ff, 22:14ff and 24:30ff.)
We are told that people were watching Jesus very closely as he approached his host's table. If you are as I am, viz. of humble origins, and have been at dining occasions well above your social station, you know how it is to have all eyes critically on you as you nervously ponder the array of cutlery before you and wonder which implement to pick up and when. (And why in the hell do have they "place plates" that are removed and never used for actual food?)
Whilst Jesus was being checked out (and this is event is not included in the appointed reading), a person with dropsy, i.e. one with large, unsightly swellings, appears. One wonders how a person thus afflicted could have gained admission to such an event. (Perhaps in the same way "the woman of the city who was a sinner" got into that other dinner party.) As Luke has depicted him on other occasions, Jesus was quickly diverted by the suffering man, but not so quickly as to miss an opportunity to take on the lawyers and Pharisees present. Jesus is depicted as asking them if it lawful to cure people on Shabbat.
Answer came there not. Their silence in Luke's imagination may been a result of being flabbergasted by Jesus' effrontery or of knowing the moral answer was different than the legal one and so remaining mute in their embarrassment and unwillingness to speak heresy.
Not content to offend over the soup course, Luke's Jesus proceeds to assail the guests (and host!) over the entr�e. He has uninvited counsel for both. To the guest: don't seat yourself too high at the table because it's an assumption perhaps unwarranted by social conditions, making the climber liable to embarrassment if and when he or she is seated in a lower place. What the guest who came not to dine but to preen should do is play Uriah Heep and conspicuously take a lesser chair in hopes that such a gesture would bring social advancement.
It is a tad worrisome that the parable could well be taken as a lesson in social climbing strategy rather than as a mockery of such society games when the Who's Who concerns pale beside the specter of human suffering.
Now on to the host in question and to others who may soon be hosts themselves: Don't make up your guest lists from the social directory. Need and resource must converge. Moreover, those who have been marginalized unfairly must be brought to the center because they are human beings who happen to be in great need.
Pity the parson with the country club just up the lane from the church. He or she must now go into the pulpit bearing a radically egalitarian message, if the sermon is to be based on the gospel. Or he or she could take to text Genesis 27:11 KJV (you can look it up) and avoid the issue altogether. Should the rector tackle the gospel in an intellectually responsible way, the next dinner party at the rectory had better include a habitu� from the soup kitchen down in the city as well as the CEO of a big corporation who pays the largest pledge in the parish. In fact, the two should be seated together, the former just above the invisible line on which the salt sits and the latter just below it.
You want revolution? That'll give you revolution.
|
Copyright 2013 Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.
|
W hat a Friend They Had in Jesus: The Theological Visions of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Hymn Writers
Have you ever found yourself humming a favorite childhood hymn, only to realize you could no longer embrace its message? Harry Cook explores how hymns reflect the religious beliefs of their times. He revisits the texts of popular hymns, posing such questions as: How true are they to the biblical texts that seem to have inspired them? What aspects of nineteenth- and twentieth-century piety have persisted into the twenty-first century through the singing of those hymns? And, how does one manage the conflict between the emotional appeal and the theological content of such hymns?
Available at:
* * * * *
What reviewers said:
"Important and heart-warming ... Cook's keen insights into the most familiar of old-time gospel hymns ... help you do theology like a grownup."
--Robin Meyers, author of Saving Jesus from the Church
"A compelling look at centuries of Christian theology and practice, at how particular hymns have shaped American faith and religious thought."
--Richard Webster, Director of Music and Organist at Trinity Church, Boston
"A call to integrity in worship ... This exciting, penetrating and provocative study explores the theology we sing, which re-enforces the dated and pre-modern theology from which the Christian faith seeks to escape."
--John Shelby Spong, author of Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World
|
|
