There is a short introduction to our passage that has been added on by the lectionary. Indeed, we start with verse 1 of Chapter 14 and then we skip a few verses, where Jesus heals a man with dropsy on the Sabbath Day, to get directly to the dinner invitation and Jesus’s teaching on this occasion. What the lectionary wants to make sure we have is a little bit of context: We need to know that Jesus gave today’s teaching at the leader of the Pharisees’ house, and also that they were all “watching him closely”, and so we understand the invitation wasn’t really a friendly invitation, rather a test or maybe even a trap.
The thing is we have a weird way of reading the Gospel, passage after passage every Sunday, not always is the right order, skipping sections and then going back in time, and it makes it hard to keep up with the unfolding of the narrative…But we have to realize that all four Gospels are build on a tension. Jesus does just teaches and heals and does all sort of miracles and then one unfortunate day is arrested and put to death. Rather, opposition grows as Jesus pursues his ministry, his enemies try to find reasons to accuse him and an opportunity to take him down. They are collecting evidence, if you will, and that’s what they do in this passage. The Pharisees aren’t watching Jesus closely because they want to learn more about what he is about or follow his example. Quite the opposite, they watch him closely because they’re suspicious, they’re spying on him in the open, they want to catch him out. See for example earlier in Luke (11:53–54) when it says: ” (…) the scribes and the Pharisees began to press Jesus hard and to provoke him to speak about many things, lying in wait for him, to catch him in something he might say.” This is quite predatory indeed.
But enough with that. What I really like about our passage today is that verse 1 “They were watching him closely”, because we skip a few verses, finds itself right before verse 7 where it reads that “Jesus noticed” (the guest’s behavior). One could say that well, it’s fair enough: You’re watching me, I am watching you. But the verbs Luke uses in those two sentences aren’t the same: For the pharisees, he uses a verb that means to look with scrutiny, with possible ill intent, hostility or suspicion, and Luke uses another verb to say how Jesus watched people that indicates an attentive awareness, without the negative connotation. We translate in English: “Jesus noticed”. Jesusdidn’t reciprocate the Pharisees’ judgmental attitude. Yet he “noticed“, he paid attention tothe way everybody behaved at the party, first the guests, to whom he first addresses his teaching, asking them to leave the seats of honor, and then the host himself, suggesting that he should invite people not for the sake of socializing or promoting himself, but for inclusion, charity and fellowship. In both cases, it is quite evidently a call to humility.
Now before we get to that, the story, I think it’s indeed important to talk about the way Jesus looked at people. Maybe you have grown up with this idea of a God watching people. One day you read in your catechism that God was “omniscient”, and the Sunday school teacher explained that God knew everything because God was watching children all the time, and since then, well things haven’t been the same with God, right? Because the implication was: Since God is watching, you’d better behave. And even as adults, although we should know better, I think we still live with this weight of the divine stare. Job, in his great suffering, expresses that very well. This is what he says to God: “Will you not look away from me for a while, let me alone until I swallow my spittle? If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of humanity? Why have you made me your target? Why have I become a burden to you?” (Job 7: 19-20). As we become aware of our shortcomings, sins or just our plain weakness, we wish that God wouldn’t look at us all the time and the Jews knew about that. But here Luke makes a point to show us that God/Jesus does not look at people the way people look at other people, with judgment. Jesus is not like the Pharisees, he does not watch to trap, to catch, to accuse. Rather he notices, he’s interested, he’s paying attention, and if he sees something he does not like, he says something, not to condemn but to teach, to educate, to redeem, to save. I think it would be such a great corrective to what we have heard growing up. The verb Luke uses to describe the way the Pharisees looked at Jesus is rarely used in the Bible to describe God’s gaze. Rather, in the Bible, the first time God is named he is called “El Roi” by Hagar, which means “The one who sees” when God rescues her in the wilderness (Gen 16). God is always watching as a good dad or as a loving husband or as a kind friend, attentive to the little details of our lives, praising the good, making the bad more bearable, giving sensitive advice.
And so I think that’s also the way we have to understand our passage today. Jesus is attentive to people’s behavior not to accuse but to save, to show them a better way. Maybe there’s already a lesson for us here. We can’t avoid looking at people and noticing things. But do we look to condemn, to feel better about ourselves, or rather are we sensitive to people’s struggles and do we watch with loving attention and a desire to help?
Okay, so now what is our story about? Well, as we have first noticed, the point is kind of obvious. It’s pretty clearly about social advancement, and it’s really nothing out of the ordinary. People are invited at this dinner party Jesus is invited to, and as they arrive the guests choose the seats of honor, that is the closest seats to the host, and probably the closest to Jesus as well. They want to hear the conversation and participate, be asked for their opinion, they probably want others to notice their wit, their outfits, their good manners and feel important. And we may be quick to blame them but I guess we do as much most of the time in our society. It seems a natural thing to desire to “move up higher”, to use Jesus’s very words. More power, more money, more exposure, but also more room, more profits, more results, you name it. And generally we don’t think about it twice, not because we necessarily like it, because that’s just the way it is: We should always strive for the best, like those guests fighting to be honored by the host, and also like the host recruiting among friends, relatives and rich neighbors his little crowd of admirers. It’s like a “narcissistic circle”, or in simpler terms: Scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. And Jesus notices this is the way the world goes. And then he tells all those people, guests and host, that there’s a better way, God’s way. Instead of choosing the first seat, take the last, instead of inviting the rich, choose the poor. Because you’re free to do things differently, you don’t have to play the game.
I was wondering this week how it would look like not to play the game in our day and culture. Would it mean we should go hide in the woods like Henry Thoreau did? I think sometimes we can get mixed up between “not playing the game” and “not doing the work”. I believe we can refuse to play the game and yet get the work done, actually if we want to get the work done, we have to stop playing the game. If we want to make real changes in our society, we have to stop seeking for attention and self promotion, and starting lifting people up instead of stepping on them. In Jesus’s words, taking the last seat is not about withdrawing from human activity, quite the opposite it’s about making room for others.When Jesus takes the last place, he washes his disciples feet (John 13). Jesus invites us in a world where our our job or occupation, our vocation is not about taking as little space as possible for the sake of it, it’s about creating space for others. Instead of taking and using as much as we can, it’s about leaving enough resources for others and caring. Jesus asks people to take the last seat not so they can take a nap like the lazy student at school, but rather because if they stop playing the game, they’ll have more energy and focus to be able to do the work, and again this is a work of service to others and availability to God. There is this famous saying that the world does not need more successful people, but it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. And if it should be true in our society, all the more should it be the way we function in our churches. I had occasions this week to have conversations about what it means for a church to “move forward”. And the question is: Is it about getting more done, having more members, more pledges, a pretty building, new equipment? Is it even about having some great outreach mission or a fantastic music program people speak about in the local news? Or is “moving forward” for a church about moving towards the heart of God and the heart of our communities, getting to know each other better, listening, forgiving, sharing words and actions that heal, taking on a ministry, being a witness to the Gospel with our grand children and strangers we wait in line with at the store?
Finally, what I find fascinating about our story is that Jesus does not ask people to renounce their ambition. Like all the instincts we have, ambition is here for a reason and is not wrong in itself. But what Jesus asks is for us to redirectour ambition. He asks us to redirect our ambition, our need for attention, and even our longing to be honored towards God so we will be repaid at the Resurrection of the righteous. It’s fascinating to see how the Saints were both very humble and yet full of ambitious. Ste Teresa of Lisieux said she felt a vocation to be a prophet, a martyr, a missionary, a priest, but she was a 15 years old in a catholic country in the 19th century, so there weren’t that many options. She ended choosing to love God and her neighbor the best she knew how, “Love is my vocation” she said. She fulfilled her vocation in humble acts, always taking the last place to let others shine….But she didn’t do that to disappear, she did it because she said it was her “spiritual elevator”: Each time, she humbled herself, God would lift her up, not in people’s eyes but in God’s eyes. Because God notices, even when nobody else does.