Sermon 8-31-25

Sermon 8-31-25 12 Pentecost C Luke 14:1, 7-14

How many of you folks have been to the White House to have dinner with the president? As the locals here say, “Me neither”.

Oh, I could have. All I had to do was fork over thirty or forty thousand bucks for me and that much for Elizabeth. I own a tux and you know she dresses to the tee.

It's called “Quid Pro Quo”, that's Latin for: something given or received for something else. I give them a big pile of money and they give me the honor.

There are a couple of hard social rules, written in stone, as they say, that the Mediterranean people lived, and live by, that are exemplified in today's readings. I've talked about them before.

Honor and shame are the core values in their world and in the Bible as well. Honor is a claim to worth that is publicly acknowledged. Everyone knows your station in life. Shame, is a claim to worth that is publicly denied. Like I said, everyone knows your station in life, except, maybe you.

Another accepted social belief is that there is a finite amount of everything, except children and crops. They are gifts from God and He hands them out according to His will. But with everything else, and I mean everything, it's a zero sum game. In order for me to acquire something, somebody else has to lose that exact amount.

Even with honor. For me to gain more honor, someone else has to be shamed. Any volunteers?

Our gospel reading starts with: “On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching Him closely”.

Most meals in antiquity were attended by people of the same social rank. They were a very powerful means of communication. Meals affirmed and gave legitimacy to a person's role and status in the community.

The fact that a leader of the Pharisees invited Jesus indicates that they accepted Jesus as a social equal.

They had no choice. By this time in His ministry He had a huge following. But, as it says, “they were watching Him closely”. The Pharisees wanted to catch Him make a faux pas, a slip or blunder in etiquette, manners or conduct. They wanted nothing more than to embarrass Jesus.

The apparently “honorable” invitation is actually hypocritical.

Jesus has come along and turned their entire world upside-down. They hated Him. Every day, in every town, He makes them look like fools. He wins every debate, and uses their very playbook, what we call the Old Testament, in His winning arguments. And He does it with an “in your face” attitude.

Pick up your bulletin insert, look at the top of the back page. It says, “GOSPEL: Luke, chapter 14, verses 1 and 7 through 14. There are five verses in there that we did not read today.

They take place on the same day, in the same room as the rest of our reading.

“And behold, there was a man before Him who had dropsy.” That's a swelling of the legs from water build up.

“And Jesus spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?” But they were silent. Then He took him and healed him, and let him go. And He said to them, “Which of you having an ass or an ox that has fallen into a well, will not immediately pull him out on a sabbath day?” And they could not reply to this.”

Behavior at these meals is very important.

And this is not the kind of behavior that is going to make for a festive evening meal. You can bet the host is getting “the look” from his wife and the rest of the guests.

Jesus notices that the guests are jockeying for the seats of honor at the meal, so He immediately launches into a parable for the benefit of the guests, based on Proverbs, chapter 25 verses 6 and 7, and Sirach chapter 3, verses 17 through 20.

Simple rules of social etiquette that had been written in the Hebrew Bible for

hundreds of years but, seem to have been forgotten. “Do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host”.

After insulting all the guests, Jesus sets His sights on the host himself.

Like I said before, meals in this time and place were attended by people of the same social rank. The rules of the zero-sum-game were in full force. Accepting a favor or gift required returning a favor or gift. An invitation to a meal or banquet was no exception.

It was not uncommon to decline an invitation, especially if a prospective guest realized that returning the favor was more than they could, or would want to handle. When you get home, read the next ten verses of this chapter, verses 15 through 24. They're about declining invitations to a banquet.

This tit-for-tat social rule is the basic rule of behavior that guided every host in drawing up a guest list. Inviting people to your meal who cannot return the favor was viewed as cultural suicide. And Jesus' advice to his host about who to invite is very rude, insulting and shocking. Par for the course.

Such guests: the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind are clearly people of a lower social status than the host. There is no way people like that could return the favor of being invited to an event like this.

Associating with such people would bring dishonor; shame to one's own social status. But, Jesus is trying to paint a picture of, and shed light on what true honor really is. He is turning things upside-down.

Jesus is saying that God determines what true honor is, and will reward that honor at the resurrection.

We like to think that God's first language is English. I think He is probably fluent in Latin as well, and will be more than happy to Quid Pro Quo for those who are unable return a favor. Amen.