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The seven works of mercy, 1580
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Growing up we all had an assigned place at the table, all 6 of us. Mom and Dad had the opposite ends. My sister and I sat on either side of Mom; my brothers, on either side of Dad. There was always grace. Since Dad was the enforcer of manners, there was an advantage to being away from him. Each infringement was met with the backside of a fork on the knuckles. So I rather liked my more distant place. Just the same we all became young people with very good table etiquette in time.
My favorite tables belonged to my grandmothers. There was always grace. The food was ample and Southern and very good, three to six vegetables. There was always rice and gravy. You could sit in a new configuration and I was always near Granddad. But I knew better than to sit at the head or the foot of the table. Those places belonged to my grandparents, always an adult to Grandmother’s right and a child to my Grandfather’s right, the places of honor. We had good enough manners and Dad’s fork was used only from plate to mouth.
Tables are not just about eating. They define hierarchy. They create social community providing time to converse, to catch up on shared life. The very act of eating is filled with care. Someone’s work bought the food, or garden provided it, often considerable thought had gone into what is prepared or shared, guests were often welcomed and made to feel at home.
Jesus seems to feel the same way about tables. He is so often a guest at someone’s table, like today when he is having a Sabbath meal in the home of a Pharisee. He is being watched closely as if his manners were not good enough. We skip over his first possible offense when he heals a man with Dropsy, a swelling of the limbs from accumulated water. He does have the manners to ask whether his host thinks this is lawful to do on the Sabbath. There is silence, so Jesus takes that as assent and says essentially, “If you can pull an ox out of a ditch on the Sabbath, why not heal.”
Then Jesus gets a little meddlesome. He takes note where people seat themselves. I guess there were no place cards. Clearly there are those who take the more honored places. Perhaps this is a frequently gathered group and people know where they belong. Just the same Jesus begins to teach that it is far better to take a lower seat and be invited to take a more prestigious place than to be asked to step down a notch.
In my last parish there were a fair number of Nigerians and Ghanaians. At a wedding or special celebration they always had a high table where the chiefs or more elevated people of their community or of the occasion would be seated. As a priest invited often to say grace, I would be seated there. But never did I presume to go there. Following Jesus’ advice I would sit near a door until I was invited higher. It was all very carefully choreographed. One by one we were offered our place. Only once in 15 years was I seated too high and humbly asked to move down two seats. I never understood the hierarchy but I did understand the embarrassment of my host or the Master of Ceremony.
But Jesus is not really concerned with the etiquette of seating order. He is concerned with whether we are lost struggling to be self important. The sign of letting this self importance go is taking a lower place. Imagine how this might look at UNC-Chapel Hill game or a Duke game. Those in the plush seats with arms would drift upward in the stadium and those in the nose bleed seats would be invited lower. Not very likely is it?
Yet when former President Jimmy Carter began to build with Habitat for Humanity we understood this to be a significant image. One who once stood at the pinnacle of American political power, then taking up a hammer and saw did much to draw our attention to those who can be aided in gaining a home. It raised the question, if a former president can be so humble, can’t we? The remarkable thing is you do not just build a home for a family; you build it with a family. You muck in together and become peers.
Or when your children and adult advisors go on a youth mission trip to Appalachia to repair homes of the desperately poor, they learn, we learn, what it is to step down a seat. Those trips are only in part about building/repairing houses. They are equally about building awareness and making a difference. And the stories we hear on their return are of what it is to see how poor another’s life is and how blessed your life is. These are the vital lessons of Jesus.
Humility as Jesus sees it, as the Christian faith understands it, is the practice of seeing others in their need and responding, but more than responding. It is somehow about becoming one with them. Thus Jesus takes this gathering at supper a step further. He essentially says, “I know the custom is you invite family to the table or friends or those with social influence and power. You hope to maintain or gain something. But God’s reign looks like this: ‘invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.’”
We don’t do that much do we? It can be frightening or socially awkward. And yet when we do remember the poor, when we contribute to the food bank, when we help at a soup kitchen, when we aid the women’s shelter, when we aid in holiday gifts to those in need, when we help with Habitat for Humanity, we are on the right track. We are opening ourselves to others, focusing on another’s need, responding tangibly.
And that is what was so wrong in Raleigh this week with the decision to enforce an ordinance long overlooked that requires a permit to feed the hungry in a city park. Love Wins Ministries has been feeding the homeless and/ or hungry for years in Moore Square. They do more than feed. They listen to people’s lives. They are able to help some move in more self sustaining directions. But they also accept that there is fragility in our culture deserving care. Their purpose is not to change people but to be with them in care. They have stepped in where society has stepped out as we have been for these last several decades.
Perhaps the issue is the desire to further gentrify the area. There are ways to do that that also care for the poor, but it comes with costs. Those would be space, services, care, and humility. It costs us to recognize the poor as special to God. Why? Perhaps because they are in the ditch for now. They need a help up often. It comes with the cost of knowing something deep, about their lives, their bearers, their value and values. We heard it in the readings from Hebrews.
Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.
That is of course a reference to when Abraham and Sarah entertained three strangers who came to their tent. Abraham and Sarah were just obeying the nomadic custom of feeding weary travelers. They instead found an encounter with God and God’s plan for their lives.
The biblical norm is that God leans on our lives most notably when we welcome the stranger, care for the poor, notice who in vulnerable, stop and aid them. Something in us opens and if we listen and notice, we will find something of God in our care.
Love does win and to some degree you may only see its reward at the resurrection. Or you may find it in your deepest being where God waits to be found.
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