The Rev. Austin K. Rios
28th August 2022: Proper 17
In this long summer season after Pentecost, we’ve been making our way through pivotal scenes in Luke’s Gospel.
You may remember that Luke’s Gospel begins with a series of formalized prayers that arise from Zechariah, John the Baptist’s father, Simeon, who met the newborn baby Jesus in the temple, and most famously, from Mary herself.
If you want to read these prayers, or pray them at any time, you can find them on pages 91-93 of the Book of Common Prayer—they are part of the Canticles we use in Morning and Evening Prayer and Compline.
I call attention to these prayers today because they are early hymns that give thematic shape to the Gospel.
Mary’s Magnificat, especially, is a lens through which the rest of Luke’s Gospel can be viewed[1].
Last week, we heard about Jesus healing the woman who had been bent low for 18 years on the Sabbath—a miracle that literally “lifted up the lowly” woman to more freely praise God even though it angered the leader of the synagogue.
This reversal of accepted societal norms, which forms the backbone of Mary’s Magnificat, is so much a part of the promise of Jesus, and integral to the way he pursues his mission.
Today we find Jesus eating a sabbath meal in the house of a leader of the Pharisees.
Even though this part isn’t in our reading for today, Jesus heals a man with dropsy at the meal, which continues the debate about whether healing on the sabbath is allowed or not.
Those gathered at the meal are “watching him closely” and when he notices “how the guests chose the places of honor” he tells them a parable.
In the parable that follows, Jesus connects the reversal of societal norms that first arose in Mary’s Magnificat, and which he proclaims as a sign of God’s reign, with the customs of wedding banquets and meals.
At issue in the parable is the difference between the way the world sees honor, rank, and privilege, and the way Jesus does.
The guests at this particular sabbath meal are jockeying for the most advantageous position—the place of honor—that will allow them to move up the social ladder.
If you’ve ever been to a formal meal in a diplomatic setting or attended the kind of wedding that is as much about political and social advancement as it is about the couple, then you are no stranger to this dynamic.
Jesus tells everyone at this sabbath meal to do the opposite of what social climbing demands—he tells them to choose the lowest and least advantageous place, and to humble themselves instead of seeking to exalt themselves.
Jesus goes on to say that ALL meals are an opportunity to reinforce the ethics of God’s reign rather than bolstering the prevailing wisdom about social hierarchies.
Instead of only inviting those who can repay you with an invitation to their own banquet, Jesus instructs us to invite “the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind”—those who cannot repay the favor in turn.
This strategy will not help us climb the social ladders of our day, but Jesus assures us that it will make us rich toward God and be “repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
The words of Mary’s Magnificat illuminate this particular teaching of Jesus’ once again— “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”
Jesus’ invitation to reverse these societal norms isn’t just about disruption for disruption’s sake.
At its core it is about learning to see people as God sees them rather than always perceiving them through the world’s tinted optics of power.
God’s reign encompasses those the world would rather forget, those the world would rather relegate to the position of servant instead of seeing them as friends, those who are poor in privilege and power but who are valued and beloved children of God.
And Jesus knows that who we eat with matters.
When we break bread with only those who can repay us in social favors, or only those who think like us, talk like us, or live like us, then we become impoverished according to God’s ethics.
But when we see our banquets and even our everyday meals as opportunities to live into the alterative vision of God’s reign, then any losses we suffer by society’s metrics are counted as gains toward the life that leads to resurrection.
One of the main reasons we gather here each week, to hear the word of God and digest it together, to share God’s peace and pray together, and to gather as unique yet equal members of Christ’s body, is so that we can put this meal wisdom into practice.
We are all invited to the banquet of the Lord, regardless of how the world considers us, and we are all fed from the same source, regardless of our ability to repay the favor the Lord bestows upon us.
And once we begin to understand just how much this alternative wisdom and grace is transforming us, then we gain the courage and strength to put it into practice in more and more parts of our life.
While St. Paul’s needs your financial offerings and pledges to make this particular banquet of our Lord a rich feast, I believe that the heart of why we should be generous in our giving is really about living into Jesus’ teaching today.
We give freely and abundantly without expectation of return, and in so doing, we learn just how much God provides for us and how much richness arises through God’s way of perceiving the world.
Even though Covid limited us for a while, in both St. Paul’s and the Joel Nafuma Refugee Center, we do our best to make shared meals the center of our common life.
From coffee hours before and after the service that are enjoyed by those on the street who may get no other invitation or sustenance that day, to Wednesday within the Walls dinners, to parish wide meals after services, fundraising meals in the JNRC, and this Eucharistic feast—how we eat together reveals how we perceive each other.
Our goal as a church is to model our common life after the ethics Jesus proclaims today, and to both feed those who are hungry and tired of the world’s way of power and form our members to model this new way of being and seeing in their everyday lives.
Focus on your personal practices around meals this week and look for opportunities to break bread with those beyond your usual social circles.
We are all children of the same God, no matter how the world sees us or names us.
May you experience grace and acceptance in the banquet of the Lord today, may you like Mary and her child be filled with good things and raised up, and may you be empowered –through the meals you share— to both raise up the lowly and reconnect the scattered children of God.