Table Manners by Jesus

15^th Sunday after Pentecost (Ordinary Time/UM Kingdomtide) C

September 1, 2013

Luke 14:1, 7-14

Sermon preached at Tanza United Methodist Church, Tanza, Cavite, the Philippines.

An Orthodox icon on the Mystical Supper. (Image courtesy of Iconreader.Wordpress.Com)

Introduction

Today’s Gospel reading contains “table etiquette” by Jesus. We read in the Gospel that Jesus was in “the house of one of the chief Pharisees on the sabbath, to eat bread…” (Luke 14:1, John Wesley New Testament), that is, to eat a Shabbat meal with the Pharisees. (See this article in Wikipedia, which talks about “festive meals” besides havdalah Shabbat, the Shabbat eve dinner that welcomes the Shabbat.) As we celebrate the Lord’s Supper this morning, we see that these “table manners” apply to our ordinary celebratory meals but ultimately how we celebrate the Holy Eucharist.

The first part of Luke 14 (vv. 2-6, which is excluded in the pericope today) tells of the healing of a man with dropsy (or in modern day terms, edema). The Pharisees were watching to see if Jesus would heal the man with dropsy (which of course, they knew he would) and thus “prove” that Jesus is indeed a Sabbath-breaker. This is similar to last Sunday’s Gospel reading where Jesus healed a “bent” woman in a synagogue on the Sabbath. His reason in both instances is the same: if they can afford to be “humane” to animals even on the Sabbath, why could they not be humane to another human being on the Sabbath day?

Then Jesus launches out into a “parable” regarding the “table manners” of those who are present. How can we apply the etiquette of Jesus in our everyday lives? But most especially, what are the table manners we are to practice when we gather around his Holy Table?

I. Sitting at the lowest place (Luke 14:7-11)

The Jews have adopted the Roman dining practice of the using triclinum, where guests are arranged around the table on three couches, according to their social status. The couches are arranged in a “U” shaped around the table. The host family reclines on the lectus imus, the couch on the left hand side. The honored guests recline on the lectus media, the couch in the middle. Meanwhile, low-status guests recline on the lectus summus, on the right hand side.

A Roman dinner using the three couches composing the triclinum. (Image courtesy of Bible-History.Com)

We could easily image that people would scramble to occupy the “chief seats” (Greek προτωκλιςια protōklisia, ‘the first couch’, note the similarity to the word triclinum), i.e., the lectus media. This would be equivalent to jockeying for a position at the “presidential” or head table in modern-day wedding receptions—a place normally reserved for the bride and the groom, their parents, the wedding sponsors, and the officiating minister.

Jesus’ tip on table etiquette is actually very practicable (yet counter-intuitive): If you occupy one of the “chief seats” at a banquet, you will suffer embarrassment when you are asked to yield your place should a more important guest arrive (vv. 8-9). But when you are invited, go to the lowest place (εςχατον τοπον eschaton topon, ‘the last place’—other, less-honorable guests do not even get to recline on any of the couches). When your host tells you, “Friend, go up higher”, “then shalt thou have honour in the presence of them that sit at table with thee” (vv. 9-10). Jesus ends with a familiar saw: “For every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted” (vv. 10-11)

As for the Holy Communion, there is no “chief seat” or “last place” at the Lord’s Table. The first ones to receive do not immediately mean they are the most pious—or most hypocritical. Let the Lord judge each person’s heart. But since the issue is at the heart, the problem is more difficult to detect. In I Corinthians 11, St. Paul talks about those who partake of the Lord’s Supper in an “unworthy” manner (vv. 27-29). Those who were guilty of doing so have fallen sick or some have even “fallen sleep” (i.e., died) v. 3). By “unworthily”, the passage means as those who partake of the bread and cup without examining him/herself first. In other words, the “unworthy” presume themselves to be “worthy”; while the “worthy” consider themselves “unworthy”. Paradoxically, God makes people who consider themselves “unworthy” as “worthy”. “For every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted” (Luke 14:10-11)

II. Inviting the poor to the table (Luke 14:12-14)

The second part of Jesus’ “table manners” is on who to invite to a dinner or supper: Jesus said, Do not invite your friends, or your brethren, or your kinsmen, or your rich neighbors. When they invite you to their own dinners or suppers, they would have “recompensed” you (v. 12). Instead, Jesus said (quite contrary to common sense), you should invite “the poor, the disabled, the lame, [and] the blind”. You will be blessed because these have no ability recompense you. “But thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just” (vv. 14).

When the Jewish people celebrate the Passover seder, they make sure they have at least one poor guest. In his A Passover Haggadah (1993), Nobel Prize-winning author Elie Weisel writes,

A memory from my own town, Sighet: Our Seder table was never without a stranger. I remember that we went from one synagogue to the other, from one house of study to another, looking for a stranger without whom our holiday would be incomplete. And it was true of the most Jews in my town and probably most of the Jews in other towns. On Passover eve, the poor, the uprooted, the unhappy were the most sought-after, the most beloved guests…. Without comforting our impoverished guest, our riches would shame us. (p. 24)

Jesus did not mean this as a command to invite only poor people at our parties. John Wesley (in Notes Upon the New Testament) explains that this discourse is called a “parable” “because several parts are not to be understood literally, The general scope of it is, Not only at a marriage feast, but on every occasion…” (note on Luke XIV:7).

In I Corinthians 11, St. Paul rebukes the Corinthian Christians for discriminating against the poor when they gather for the Lord’s Supper:

Therefore when ye come together into one place, it is not eating the Lord's Supper. For in eating every one taketh before another his own supper, and one is hungry, another drinks largely. What! have ye not houses to eat and drink in or do ye despise the church of God, and shame them that have not What shall I say to you shall I praise you in this I praise you not. (I Corinthians 11:20-22)

--Some people get greedy and drunk, while others are left hungry and thirsty.

Are there ways that we—intentionally or not—exclude and discriminate the poor and the stranger from the church?

(Image courtesy of Methodist Memes on Facebook.Com)

 Conclusion

At the Lord’s Table, the barriers of pride and discrimination disappear. No one is above another at the Lord’s Supper; everyone is equal before God. There is distinction between the first and the last. Discrimination has no place at Holy Communion for at the Lord’s Table, we are all one: rich or poor, weak or strong. May Christians heed the invitation of the Lord to his Table in order to strengthen the bond that unites us all.