Party Etiquette and Humility – September 1, 2019 Sermon

This sermon for Labor Day weekend is a little shorter than usual, as we had our missionary Mary Beth Oyebade here with us on Saturday evening to share about her and her husband Bayo’s work in Nigeria. For a different take on these same Scripture texts, check out my sermon on hospitality from three years ago.

The readings for this 12th Sunday after Pentecost in RCL Year C are Proverbs 25:6-7 (shortest lectionary reading?), Psalm 112, Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16, and Luke 14:1,-7-14. I found helpful this commentary on the Gospel reading by Mitzi Smith, Cory Driver’s lectionary blog at Living Lutheran, and Carolyn Brown’s comments in the book Forbid Them Not: Involving Children in Sunday Worship, Year C.

How many of you have ever been involved in planning a wedding reception?

I have twice. The first time was my own wedding. Before I got married, I had no idea how many details there are in a wedding reception. I figured we’d pick a place, ask what they had for food, tell them how many people, and that’d be about it.

If you’ve ever planned a big event, you know how naive I was!

There are so many details to think about, everything from how many food choices to offer, to where in the room the cake goes, all the way to who’s responsible for lighting the little floating candles in the centerpieces. (Ask me or Christin later how that turned out!) I realized the process was getting ridiculous when we had to decide whether or not to rent a specific serving utensil to cut the cake!

Two weeks ago my sister got married, and I learned about a whole new planning challenge. At our wedding, Christin and I had a buffet dinner, but at Lynn and Todd’s wedding, each guest had selected a specific meal, which meant that for the servers to distribute the correct meals, there needed to be an assigned seating chart.

It turns out, making a seating chart is hard! If this person is with those people, do they have anything in common to talk about? If the families with kids leave earlier, will someone else be left alone? Who’s likely to eat fastest – can we seat them on the dance floor so their table can be moved?

And most importantly, who gets to sit up front by the wedding party’s table, and who gets stuck in the back corner? Can you put the second cousins from our side closer than the second cousins from his family, or will they be offended? The last thing anyone wants to do is dishonor a great-aunt, but there’s only so much room at each table!

Today’s gospel reading finds Jesus at a big dinner, and obviously, the host has not gone to the effort of preparing a formal seating chart. But everyone knows where the best seats are. Even more in that culture than in ours, honor and social status are important. Where you sit is a big deal.

So when Jesus notices all the guests are trying to get the best seat, he takes it as a teachable moment. He tells his followers, when you go to a wedding feast, or as the Proverbs reading says, to a king’s court, don’t put yourself in the highest place, because if someone shows up after you who outranks you, you’ll be embarrassed by being asked to move down. Better to put yourself in the lower place and perhaps be asked to move up higher.

This is good advice. Smart guy, that Jesus.

But he doesn’t stop with some advice about being humble. He turns to the person who invited him over, and says, “When you throw a party, don’t invite people who might return the favor. Don’t use it as an opportunity for networking, or gaining status. Instead, invite the people who are usually left out. Invite the people on the margins, the people no one wants to associate with, the people who can’t repay you.”

The lesson Jesus is teaching is about more than dinner etiquette or social standing—it’s about the kingdom of God. Over and over God’s kingdom is described as a great banquet, and what Jesus is describing is what God does.

God invites the people who don’t have anything to offer in return. God invites the poor, the broken, the sinners, the very young and the elderly, and the socially awkward. God invites the people who only talk about themselves, and the messy, and the despairing, and the beggars. God even invites people like you and me!

If we want our world to be more like heaven, maybe we should try doing the same. Imagine you’re hosting a small party at your home, maybe a barbecue for Labor Day.

Who would you invite? What would your criteria be? Maybe it would be people from work, or friends from school. Maybe you’d invite people you grew up with, or perhaps family members. It doesn’t take much effort to think of the first five people you’d invite.

On the other side, I’m willing to bet you can also think of at least two people you definitely wouldn’t invite. Who are the last people you want to wander in to your barbecue?

Obviously I won’t ask who they are, but those are the people I invite you to think about this week. Maybe there’s a way you can reach out to them, not necessarily to invite them to dinner, but to at least take a step towards repairing a relationship, or establishing one.

Certainly you can pray for them, and perhaps that’s your homework for this week. I like to say Jesus is better at loving people than we are, so go to Jesus. Pray for those two people who are the last ones you’d invite to a party.

I’m pretty sure Jesus did not bring up seating charts and honor because he wanted to give his followers a way to cheat the system and obtain honor by humbling themselves so they’d get lifted up. I think he actually wants us to be humble. He actually wants his followers to put others ahead of themselves, and let God worry about the honoring. He actually wants us to care about those who don’t get invited. Those are the people who are important to God.

In a world where you can become a VIP—a “very important person”—at a concert by paying a little extra for your ticket, or where people donate to get their name listed in a newsletter or on a plaque, Jesus calls for something different.

As Hebrews tells us, Christians are called to show hospitality even to strangers. We’re called to pay attention to people the world ignores, people who are in prison, people who are suffering.

The humility Jesus calls us to does not mean letting others run over you; it means deliberately using our blessings, our privilege, our position to lift up others.

As Hebrews says, “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”

And may the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen