“Kingdom Behavior”

Luke 14:1, 7-14

August 28, 2005

Last week we talked about the kingdom of God being a radical reversal of the standards, values, and customs of the world. As Christ’s disciples, this radical reversal reminds us that we are indeed at odds with the world in which we live. The world’s standards, values, and customs are not to be our standards, values, and customs. We are to live in a completely different way, a way that embodies this radical reversal of the kingdom. Of course, this is easier said than done, because like James and John, who struggled with this radical new concept, we too are products of our culture. We too have been raised and nurtured in the culture in which we live. We carry its standards, values, and customs as part of our everyday life.

The challenge of being a disciple comes not in the times when we intentionally participate in doing those things the church has been called to do, but in the times when we as individual believers are just going about our everyday lives with no thought about eternal implications. It is in those times of the familiar and routine when we often find ourselves unconsciously being drawn toward and going along with that in which we have been raised and nurtured, toward the familiar and routine standards, values, and customs of the world that we know so well. But it is in just those times when living by kingdom behavior becomes the most pronounced expression and witness of God’s reign.

In our text for this morning, we do not find Jesus walking on water, or doing a miraculous healing, or preaching from the top of a mountain, or ministering to the sinners and outcasts, instead we find Jesus with the high and mighty, the movers and shakers of Jerusalem in one of the most familiar and routine practices of everyday life – a dinner party. We all like dinner parties. Those times of social interaction when we gather together with family or friends or business associates or neighbors around a table and break bread and tell stories or talk about our children or what happened at work. Of course, we know that there are two things you do not talk about at dinner parties – politics or religion.

We do not really know who was invited to this dinner party. The guest list probably included other religious leaders, important family members, successful merchants, and wealthy neighbors, which was the typical custom in those days. Kind of like the old adage, “You’re known by the company you keep.” We do know that Jesus was also invited and that they were watching him closely probably to make sure that he doesn’t start talking about politics or religion, which he has been known to do from time to time.

The scene unfolds in an almost comical way. Picture in your mind a large dining room with a table that stretches from one end of the room to another with place settings all around. In those days, tables were generally made to be close to the floor, so people would usually have to lie down on their sides and recline on some pillows or their elbow, or sit crossed legged to eat. Jesus enters the dining room and immediately notices the way people are gathered around the table. He notices that the room is lopsided. No one is down at his end of the table. All the guests are trying to squeeze into the few place settings at the far end, near the head of the table, near the host and most honored person.

Imagine for a moment instead of eight people sitting around one of our white tables down stairs, there are thirty full grown men trying to squeeze and push themselves into a spot on just one end. Why all the commotion? Because in those days, the closer you sat to the place of honor, the higher the honor you had. So there they all were trying to get a bit of honor and prestige that emanated from the honored host at the dinner party.

So Jesus, not to be one to miss an opportunity for instruction about the kingdom of God, taps his fork on his class and announces to the group what it means to live by kingdom behavior. “If your invited to a banquet or dinner, don’t sit down at the place of honor,” Jesus says, “in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host. Instead, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you.” Can’t you just see the expressions on the faces of the quests around the table that day? And then Jesus says, “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled,” says Jesus, “and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” But Jesus is not done.

He then turns to the one who had invited him and says, “Look, when you give a luncheon or a dinner, don’t invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, with the intention that they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, 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.”

These words are familiar to us, aren’t they? They are kingdom words. Words of reversal and surprise. The first shall be last, the last shall be first. Whoever wishes to be great must be a servant, whoever wishes to be first, must be a slave to all. These are kingdom words that point to a new way of being and doing in the world, to a new behavior that is kingdom oriented. These words about kingdom behavior is neither a lesson in social etiquette nor are they a hard and fast rule to help us gain promotion, prestige, and honor; these words point us to the fact that even in the familiar and routine, we must live in the way that embodies the kingdom of God, the way characterized by humility and hospitality, the way that puts others before ourselves, the way that makes no claims, sets no conditions, and expects no return from others.

It is in those times of the familiar and routine when we live by kingdom behavior that the light of Christ shines most prominently. If the incarnation of Jesus Christ teaches us anything, it teaches us about the exalted one at the head of the table, who shared equally in the glory and honor of the Father, but who did not regard that equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself and humbled himself and moved down the table to be in and with a people who were the least, the lost, and the left out.

It is Jesus Christ who came in the midst of the familiar and routine, into the lives of the ordinary and the common, who sat around his table with a Samaritan here, a leper there, tax collectors and the unrighteous, social outcasts and economic outsiders. He never made it to the table to dine with Caesar or Herod, instead he bore their whips and died a criminals death on the cross. But in his humility, he was exalted and given the name that is above every name, so that all those who walked with him and after him – the outcasts, the widows, the inferior and the fearful, the feeble and unloved, the broken hearted and the poor in the spirit, you and me – could join him at the messianic table of the kingdom, where there are no barriers, where there is no clamoring for status or honor or prestige, but where there is only unity and joyous hearts full of worship and praise for the one who once again sits at the head of the table.

One ancient Greek historian once observed that it is in the small, apparently trivial act that character is most accurately reflected. Here Jesus reminds us of exactly the same thing – that the familiar and routine are not to be overlooked in defining life in the presence of God, but that even they are to be moments when we through our kingdom behavior we give ample evidence of the kingdom of God breaking into the world. Amen.