August 29, 2010

Geno Sisneros

Pentecost 14     Luke 14:1, 7-14

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Either Jesus is the worst dinner guest in the world or ... well actually there is no ‘or’; Jesus is the worst dinner guest in the world. Fancy inviting someone into your home for a meal, like the host did in today's Gospel reading and they repay your hospitality by criticising your other guests and then telling you what crappy company you keep. The word 'humility' doesn't exactly pop into your head does it?

Nevertheless, this story continues to inspire countless sermons about “charity” and “humility” and mostly because preachers have seen Jesus' condemnation of the guests scrambling for the best seats, and his criticism of the well-to-do guest list as a call to offer “authentic” hospitality. 

Perhaps we can even overlook Jesus' apparent lack of gratitude in the face of hospitality in light of the greater good that he is championing. After all, we know Jesus at times can be blunt and capricious anyway. Some see evidence of Jesus being “set up” by the Pharisees in this story as somehow contributing to his somewhat challenging behaviour. 

The unfortunate thing about our lectionary is that it cuts out the healing story in between the time Jesus is on his way to the Pharisee's house for a meal and the time he starts his rant about the seating arrangements. The lectionary clearly wants our focus today to be on the themes of charity and humility and not so much on healing, but in doing so we may miss an opportunity to engage the text in a deeper way.

The missing meat of the story is that a man ill with dropsy is standing in front of Jesus as he makes his way to the Pharisee's house on the Sabbath. After challenging the lawyers and the Pharisees about whether it is lawful to heal the man on the Sabbath, they remain silent. So Jesus heals the man anyway and carries on to the dinner. After all, in his challenge to them, Jesus isn't asking their permission to heal but he uses the opportunity to once more highlight their oppressive and hypocritical commitment to the law in the face of human need.

The historical Jesus scholar, Dominic Crossan, sees in the Gospels a connection of what he calls “the dyad of magic and meal, healing and eating, compassion and commensality, spiritual and material egalitarianism.” To understand how this dyad works, we need to know a little something about social rank and oppression in Jesus' first century culture, or as George W. Bush calls them, “the good ol' days.”

In those days you might not have wanted to be someone Jesus would invite to a party because it meant that you were not just a Nobody, it also meant that you were defective in some way, a stain on Israel's holiness. The common trait that Jesus' four-fold guest-list of “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind” shared is that they all represented shamefulness in a culture that coveted and prized honour through social rank. 

This social structure could be seen in all parts of the culture but featured prominently at elite social events like banquets. When you were invited to such a meal, your feet would first be washed by a servant before you took the place at the table that you believed represented your social ranking. Then your head might also be anointed with perfume. The mark of a good host was the skill of making sure that guests were at the correct positions at the table at all times. If someone more important than you showed up, or you were presumptuous enough to think your social standing was higher than it actually was, you would be shamed by having to move to a lower place at the table. There was also a difference in the quality of the food and wine at the lower places. The meal was followed by entertainment and/or philosophical discussion. 

For the most part, these events functioned as boundary markers that allowed the 'honourable somebodies' in while keeping the 'shameful nobodies' out. When someone invited you for a meal, there was the expectation that you would repay their “hospitality” by inviting them to your home to increase their social standing. But Jesus challenges these elites to reverse this social order and invite those shameful nobodies who can neither reciprocate nor further their social standing to the table. Actually, taking the risk that Jesus was telling them to take would in fact harm their social status.

There is a children's book called, Miss Spider's Tea Party by the “bug poet” David Kirk. It is about a lonely spider who one day is gazing up at the sky and becomes aware of all the other insect life around her. She decides to try and make some friends by having a tea party.

All who she invites decline her invitation because they are afraid of being eaten by her. The ants come to the table but then leave immediately because though they aren't afraid of miss spider they are too good for her table. Apparently in the insect social structure ants are the 'honourable somebodies' superior to the 'spider nobodies' so the ants turn up their noses and leave Miss Spider in tears.

After all hope for her tea party is lost, Miss Spider happens on to the lowliest of insects, another nobody, a small drenched moth. His little wings are too wet from the rain to fly and he's probably hungry and missing his family too. Miss Spider takes him in and dries him off. Once he's dry and she's given him something to eat, she tosses him gently into the air and away he goes. 

The Good News of Miss Spider's hospitality soon makes its way through the insect world spreading like wildfire. Before she knows it, sitting around her table are insects and bugs of every kind. All Miss Spider's guests are delighted to see that “she ate just flowers and drank just tea”.

In spite of the rest of the insect world responding to Miss Spider's invitation, the self-important ants still do not come to the table. The ants are so certain of their belief that they hold a place of honour in the world that it causes them to miss out on a greater honour still yet. The honour of becoming a nobody. 

The Pharisees, I mean the ants, are passing up the opportunity to take part in a miracle. That is the sacred dance that happens between magic and meal. It is in that transforming act that we can find our own otherness, our Miss Spider-ness. After all, is that not what being human is about, the dance between what is seen and unseen, “the dyad of magic and meal, healing and eating, compassion and commensality, spiritual and material egalitarianism”?

The Gospel stories of healings and meals are indeed connected. These stories are always pointing to right now, the time when the world could be as it should be. Jesus imbues us to open our table and be transformed by what we encounter there. This hospitality has no strings attached and it is not about charity, it is about becoming Nobody for the sake of the kingdom. 

In a few moments you will be invited to share in a meal, the Eucharistic supper. I pray that in that meal, you may know the place of honour that Christ has prepared for you as he bids you welcome to the Kingdom of Nobodies.