Luke 14:1-14
Proper 17 (22) - Year C
Protocol for state dinners is very prescribed. Who sits next to or across from whom and where they are in relation to the principles has a whole manual that covers the ins and outs of such an event.
We actually do that informally in any setting. Watch a cadre of young ones at a movie theater figuring out who is going in first, who tags along last, who makes the decision about where to sit, and who has the most others trying to jockey to sit next to them.
Family tables are similar. Who sits where says a lot about the family dynamics and expectation of serving and being served.
As the New Interpreter's Study Bible indicates: "The sharing of food is a barometer of social relations. With whom does one eat?"
You might want to check out your own eating locations for the next week and reflect on what you find to be true for you.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/august2004.html
What sort of a meal do you think was prepared for a Pharisee's Sabbath? Who did the preparing and when? How did the guests arrive on the Sabbath? Were they breaking any of the Sabbath rules with this meal?
All that to the side (which could be the basis of a wonderful attack or negative ad against the Pharisees), we are asked to focus on the question of who is getting "invited". This is a significant question in any congregation that is in the midst of "unchurched" people and is not growing.
Dynamic humility actively seeks opportunity for evidencing hospitality. It is not even a matter of not getting invited out to a meal in return. Do we even note that there are folks not eating, not even scrambling around for scraps. Do we in any way identify with them. Dynamic humility forges a connection, super-glues dissimilar materials together, and takes a meal to where folks are, not having them come to our preferred time frame for meeting.
Oh, my, what could be more difficult than being called to a dynamic humility?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/august2004.html
Jesus went to a house where folks already knew where G*D was and no longer needed to ask.
While there he spoke of humility. Asking where G*D might be today, this moment, is a very humbling question. It means we can't answer too quickly, lest an echo of our voice be heard as the presence of G*D. It means we can't demand a quick response, lest our desires masquerade as G*D's voice. It means we don't claim a point of knowing before we have participated in a larger picture than our small piece of information can fill.
Whether visiting or being visited, ask about where G*D is right now. It distracts those who are busy looking to judge primarily on the intertwined bases of their own power position and current experience.
- - -
when I came to visit
I had an agenda
longer than a santa list
it didn't matter
what you so graciously prepared
my own hungers
filled the horizon
when I invited you
I had an agenda
lovingly made for your benefit
it didn't matter
that it didn't connect
with anything real in your life
it's my home after all
when I stopped visiting
a clearer eye appeared
between my current two
bringing a vision of honor
beyond my power
and my experience
bringing blessing bounty
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive.html
What a gift - silence. In its presence all is possible, renewal and healing are approachable through new avenues.
To be bound up in our joints is to not be able to move. It is like the childhood game of Statue, at some moment we take a shape and are frozen. A word in the midst of our silence is needed.
Jesus question about the lawfulness of healing or curing implies that the law can be construed, if not literally quoted, to restrain the bringing of new life. In the face of such laws sometimes the best one can get is silence so that a good can be done.
It must be noted that acting in the midst of silence runs similar dangers as being in a closet. Sometimes a glimmer of intended integrity can occur, but it is always in the context of a danger of someone coming out of a trance or later remembering and seeking revenge.
In other contexts, a meal, that same silence holds dangers even for those who are privileged. Determining the etiquette of space not always self-evident. It is all to easy to usurp someone's space and you will pay for it, then or later. Jesus' comment about assuming a lower place is the equivalent of acting in the midst of silence. There is freedom in both silent space and lower place - freedom to act, freedom to model better living, freedom to expand love.
At a non-traditional wedding yesterday, I was privileged to read a translation of 1 Corinthians 13 by one of the partners. It began:
If I speak in human language or in that of the messengers, but do not have love (the love that is passionately committed to the well-being of the other), I am a resounding piece of copper or a clanging cymbal.
They felt it important to say more than the standard "love" and assume everyone present would know what they meant - the love they wanted to participate in and that Jesus demonstrates in this pericope is "the love that is committed to the well-being of the other."
You may want to write that down so that every time you hear someone talking generically about love, you can remember the kind of love in which you are looking to participate in your space, your place.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/08/luke-141-14.html