There’s an old story about an elderly West Virginia mountaineer woman. She was sitting on the front porch of her rustic cabin when a nice car comes bumping up the winding driveway. The car stops in front of the cabin and a well-dressed young man gets out. She stands up and before the man can get a word out she says, “Mister, I don’t care whether you’re buying or whether you’re selling. There ain’t nothing we need that we ain’t already got. And there ain’t nothing we already got that we don’t need. Just turn yourself around and clear out.”
That may not be a polite way to address a visitor but you have to admire the woman’s contentment. How many people can truly say they have everything they need, and also say they don’t have any extra clutter in their lives? It seems to be a rule among humans that we always want more. More money. More stuff. More power. More comforts. More entertainment. More life. We’re never satisfied.
That takes us to our gospel reading. At first we may think, “Haven’t we heard all of this before? …Jesus at a dinner with Pharisees and being critical, healing on the sabbath, and then lessons about money and status…”
Yes, we have heard all of this before; especially the immediately preceding chapters. So why all this again? Whenever I read things that seem repetitive my mind goes to those high school writing assignments English teachers give. They expect so many hundred words for an answer, but you can’t think of that many words, so you get repetitive.
I doubt Luke created his gospel with a word count in mind. So why the repetition? I mean, it’s nice to have lots of stories about Jesus. Many of them are fun to hear. But do these carry a specific point? The answer is probably yes.
As I studied this text for today I was reading my best commentary on Luke’s gospel by Joel Green (New International Commentary on the New Testament). He points out that all 24 verses we read form a unit. They are all the same dinner scene. And that the diagnosis of the man who was healed is probably significant.
The story starts off again at a dinner with a leader of the Pharisees. Keep that in mind. Pharisees could come from all economic classes. This guy, being a leader, was certainly among the upper class. There is a man there who suffers from dropsy. Now dropsy is not a diagnosis we hear about these days. We now call it edema; the accumulation of fluids in the body, arms and legs being where it is most obvious. The ironic thing about edema, is that despite a person swelling up because of retaining fluids, that person may also be thirsty …very thirsty! Have you ever been thirsty? Sure you have. You crave something to drink. Your craving may be so strong that the only thing you can think about is having some water. The sufferer of edema may crave more of what they already have too much of! Joel Green suggests that since this is what starts the scene it gives us ideas about how to interpret the rest. So let’s use that as our guide.
The scene shifts to the way the guests chose the places of honor. Jesus notices and comments. He says, “…do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’”
This may seem like Jesus is telling them that it is okay to play the game of honor and status, just play it shrewdly. In fact, this advice from Jesus is not at all unique. But Jesus goes on and says to the host, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet invite 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 remember that in their give-and-take culture, you were expected to repay a favor. You invite me to your banquet and I invite you to one of mine in return. If you were a very wealthy person and I was a common laborer you wouldn’t invite me at all. And if you did invite me, I’d almost certainly decline. How could I possibly afford to return the favor? If you were a laborer and I were a laborer we might attend each other’s get-togethers, but we would seldom if ever be involved in a social event with people outside our class. Still though: big banquets, strategic guest lists, and choosing the places of honor are all the dynamics of the wealthy and elite. Rather than enjoying their position and the comforts they already have, they are employing them to get a strategic social advantage. Everyone in that society was trying to climb higher up the ladder. Since everyone was doing it, anyone who didn’t do it was slipping down. Resources were scarce. Spending them on those who couldn’t repay the favor was seen as foolish. It was a sure way to a lower status.
And so, like the person with dropsy who was already suffering from too much fluid in his body but was thirsty for more, the lives of these wealthy people, already bloated by too much consumption, are thirsty for more. Will they ever be satisfied?
Jesus goes on with a parable about a great dinner. The dinner was prepared at the appointed time and a slave is sent to remind the invited guests. But the guests all have excuses. One has just bought some land and wants to go see it. One has just bought some oxen and wants to try them out. One has just gotten married and has other things on his mind. I doubt Jesus came up with these excuses at random. They roughly correspond to legitimate excuses listed in Deuteronomy 20 that give exemptions from military service in war time.
So, the guests have been invited. But now that the party has come they refuse based on what is considered to be acceptable grounds. We realize Jesus is directing this parable at the sort of people who are around him at the banquet. God is throwing a great banquet. These people were invited. But they are so bloated on their own consumption and entertainment and strategizing to get ahead that they turn God down.
Jesus is likely being even more broad in his application of this parable. The Jews were God’s chosen people and the first ones invited to the banquet. But they refuse. So God invites everyone else. In the parable the master says to the slave, “Go out at once into the streets and the lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.” When that is done and there is still room the master says, “Go out into the road and lanes and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled.”
Ironically, those who have been invited first, so bloated by their consumption yet in their craving more, miss the invitation to the true feast. Others take their place instead.
It may be easy to look back across the centuries to these wealthy people in a far away land and think it has nothing to do with ourselves. Indeed, much has changed. But much remains the same.
One thing that comes to my mind is our idea of “progress”. We’ve somehow gotten ourselves set on the idea that we humans, by our own skill and intellect, can make this world an ever-better place. Cars get easier and easier to drive. Computers get faster. Longevity goes up. There are constant advances in health care. And so on.
Yet how much progress is too much? I’ve talked before in sermons about the way we have way overpopulated planet and overconsume energy at an alarming rate. Are we perhaps already bloated yet craving ever more?
C.S. Lewis, one of the best known Christian writers of the 20th Century, didn’t have much good to say about progress. In his essay, “The World’s Last Night” he says, “In my opinion, the modern conception of Progress… is simply a myth, supported by no evidence whatsoever.” And in God in the Dock, “Is Progress Possible?” Lewis says, “I care far more how humanity lives than how long. Progress, for me, means increasing goodness and happiness of individual lives. For the species, as for each man, mere longevity seems to me a contemptable ideal.”
That one stings! How much effort do we put into extended our lives? Think about the enormity of our health care industry and all that it consumes. Yet Lewis calls the desire for longevity to be a “contemptable ideal.” Such is the thinking of our faith ancestors from not long ago.
What has our addiction to progress gotten our already bloated lives? Secularism and individualism. Civic organizations decline and suffer for members. Veterans organizations are declining. Churches are on the verge of closing all over the place. And those fewer and fewer large churches with big staffs and programs can only stay afloat for so long. I was talking to my one cousin last week who is an administrator in a small rural district in Pennsylvania. Like many school administrators, he began his career as a classroom teacher. He’s been in it long enough to see that the ethical fabric of our nation’s children has eroded away to nothing.
It is typical to point to the youngest generation and point out their flaws. But such thing is a mistake, and it is not what my cousin and I do when we talk about such stuff. We both note that since World War 2 every generation that has experienced the postwar “progress” has basically been raised on emotional junk food. There’s little wonder there is little emotional strength, people are greedy, civic institutions are collapsing, overall national morality has tanked, and charitable giving is falling through the floor.
Yes, that is what happens when a society, already bloated, wants ever more. Perhaps the industrialized world has dropsy.
Come, Lord Jesus, and heal us of our disease! But the cure will hurt. It’ll be a huge dose of humility. It will be recognizing that God is God and we are not. It always has been and always will be. We’re not going to get ourselves out of this mess quickly or smoothly.
Whatever comes, rejoice that God has invited you to the banquet, the biggest banquet of all. And may you have the humility to accept the invitation!
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