When I was first ordained I was single for the next four years. That made me a problem at wedding receptions.
I was expected to attend and say the grace, so I had been schooled. Many times I only knew the couple and perhaps their parents. Where do you seat the young single cleric? Far too often I was seated at a table with a collection of folk no one knew what to do with. There would be an awkward contrast in our ages, our education, our social ease. Conversation was often a labor as we sought some common ground and as they worked through the set apart nature given clergy by the secular world. Too often we were all drowning in laboring effort or disinterest.
I was expected to attend and say the grace, so I had been schooled. Many times I only knew the couple and perhaps their parents. Where do you seat the young single cleric? Far too often I was seated at a table with a collection of folk no one knew what to do with. There would be an awkward contrast in our ages, our education, our social ease. Conversation was often a labor as we sought some common ground and as they worked through the set apart nature given clergy by the secular world. Too often we were all drowning in laboring effort or disinterest.
I observed that the better I was known by the host family, the more compatible my dinner companions. Here my being single did not prevent my being seated with couples or several other vibrant singles. The host had enough sense of me I guess to use me as an asset for conversation. I was more at ease and not merely waiting for my first escape from the reception.
Jesus has been invited to a Sabbath dinner perhaps at midday. There is an awkwardness as religious/social elite are observing him as an odd teacher/healer. A guest has dropsy, a swollen abdomen from liver or renal failure. Jesus can heal with less effort than "pass the salt please," it seems. Yet healing has been judged on the Sabbath as work. This elite will judge. Jesus heals and then wonders out loud.
"Is it lawful to cure people on the Sabbath, or not?" ... "If one of you has a child or an ox that has fallen into a well, will you not immediately pull it out on a Sabbath day?" Luke 14:3-5
The silence is deafening. Social disease reigns. Jesus reaches for an image they all know, how they sat themselves today. He goes there by a story of a wedding feast. Where will you be seated?
In my last parish there was a significant African population. At receptions one was not seated by place card. Many just chose a seat, for the attendance was fluid. Always there was a high table and those appointed would be called up and seated in a planned fashion of import. If later someone of higher family or tribal importance arrived you might be asked to shift at the high table. This was similar to Jesus' day. It was far better to take a lower place and be elevated than to over estimate your status.
Here is the connection of the two stories. There are worthy places in our life that must step down or step back. Even the Sabbath, the time that rests us in God, must step back when an action of the reign of God steps in. A child falls in a well on the Sabbath, you save her. The ox is mired in the ditch you, save him. A person can be healed who will be seen today and not tomorrow, you reach forth and heal. A life hurts and you know a helping insight, you put off what next is on your duty list and listen. You speak when it is right to do so. You have your eye on a life luxury however humble and a true need in another life comes to your awareness. You reconsider so as to be a help. You are walking down a city street on your way to an appointment and someone who claims to be in need approaches. If you are in God's reign you respond.
If you are seated at an awkward table and live in the awareness of God's reign, you make your best effort at being a good dinner companion. Who knows, perhaps you are meant to be the leaven in the lump? Perhaps one you judge to be a lump will give you a life insight.
Or perhaps God is offering you a moment to develop. What? Maybe an awareness that you are only as important as the care you offer, as the ego you are willing to surrender. One day maybe you will be worthy of the high table, the reign of God. It will perhaps surprise you to hear,
" Friend, move up higher;"
Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted." Luke 14:10-11
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