Lectionary Reflection for Proper 17C on Luke 14:1, 7-14

THE RACE TO THE TOP

I love watching talent shows. It never stops amazing me what human beings can imagine and create, and I love seeing people discover their brilliance and grow in confidence. But there’s a dark side to these shows. Even though only a small proportion of the thousands who audition get through, and an even smaller percentage get seen on television, it saddens me how many talented people come away feeling like they’ve failed because they didn’t win or reach the top ten. In the race to the top, you either win or you’re worthless. And in our ‘winning is everything’ culture, how we win no longer matters. The prophetic image of the “caterpillar pillar” from Trina Paulus’ book Hope for the Flowers¹ has become the tragic reality in which we live.

Sometimes, the human desire to win, dominate, and get to the top turns ugly, as the increased polarisation and contempt in global politics have demonstrated in the last decades. The current fight in the USA over gerrymandering, which started with the redrawn electoral map in Texas,² demonstrates how far human beings will go to disempower and silence one another. Gone are the days when society in general subscribed to Grantland Rice’s belief that “It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game.” Now, it seems, the ends do justify the means, and winning alone determines our morality.

We feel the pressure of the race to the top not just in society, but in our homes, our relationships, and even in our psyches and bodies. Ours is a culture of constant comparison in which we alternately feel elated in our superiority or devastated in our failure to shine. Our unceasing competitiveness plays out in sibling rivalries that tear families apart, frantic work hours that leave us always at the edge of burnout or worse, and the ever-present nagging sense that we’re impostors in our own lives, never quite achieving, earning, or owning enough. But, as Mitzi J. Smith rightly notes, “Our social status or financial resources should not establish our significance in the eyes of others or in our own minds”.³

Of course, the race to the top is nothing new. The world in which Jesus lived and taught had its own version, rooted in carefully calibrated social hierarchies and in the essential gift-and-obligation ethics of reciprocity. Relationships, opportunities, and survival depended on understanding and successfully navigating this “intricate web of social relations”.⁴ But the Jesus of Luke’s Gospel cared nothing for the race to the top. Carolyn J. Sharp clearly describes Luke’s purpose when she writes:

From the reversals of social and economic power anticipated with jubilation in the Magnificat (1:46–55) to Jesus’ healings of persons living with conditions of impairment (4:41; 5:12–13, 18–25; 6:6–10, 18; 8:26–33, 43–44; 11:14; 13:11–13) and solidarity with tax collectors and other publicly stigmatized sinners (5:27–32; 7:36–50), Luke has signaled that the inbreaking divine realm heralded by Jesus will dismantle worldly hierarchies of social status and economic power.⁵

The way Jesus confronted dehumanising social hierarchies and ideologies is both a challenge to our obsession with the race to the top and an invitation into the freedom of finding our worth in the divine values of love, compassion, connection, and inclusion.

JESUS’ ETIQUETTE

Jesus’ relationship with those who embraced the culture of honour and reciprocity can seem confusing. Some Pharisees were hostile toward him. Others seemed to be open to his teaching and even warned him when Herod sought to kill him. And Luke 14:7-14 is the third time Jesus accepted a dinner invitation from a Pharisee.⁶ But one thing Luke makes clear, Jesus always used these meals as an opportunity to confront the elite and challenge their prejudice and privilege. When Jesus arrived at the home of the Pharisee leader, Luke tells us that the host and his friends were watching Jesus closely (14:1). But Jesus was doing some watching of his own, and while the Pharisees were left speechless when he questioned them about what they had seen, he had a lot to say about what he saw in their behaviour (14:7).

It is important to note what the Lectionary leaves out at the start of this pericope. Just before he shared his parable (as Luke calls it), Jesus had healed a sick man in the Pharisee’s home. This was the sixth time in Luke’s Gospel that Jesus performed a healing on the sabbath⁷. The sabbath is an important theme in Luke’s Gospel. It is the foundation for Jesus’ Jubilee understanding of God’s reign, as proclaimed in the synagogue in Luke 4:14-21. In this understanding, the sabbath was not so much a day of rest as it was a day to bring rest to others through acts of justice, compassion, service, and love. It was in this spirit that Jesus constantly, provocatively, healed on the sabbath and challenged the religious leaders in the process.

Following this act of liberation (as healings are often viewed in Luke’s Gospel),⁸ Jesus noticed how the religious leaders all sought the places of honour at the table. On a sabbath day—when the sabbath/Jubilee values of justice, generosity, inclusivity, and simplicity were to be remembered and celebrated—this self-aggrandising behaviour was exposed as a source of injustice. It was exactly the kind of behaviour that prophets like Amos and Isaiah confronted and condemned in the Old Testament. And it was a startling contrast to the humble, serving actions of Jesus. Which is why immediately after the parable, Jesus followed up with instructions to the host to opt out of the hierarchical, reciprocal culture and invite those who would be unable to reciprocate, which would be to embody the spirit of Jubilee justice. As Joel B. Green puts it:

The powerful and privileged would not ordinarily think to invite the poor to their meals, for this would (1) possibly endanger the social status of the host; (2) be a wasted invitation, since the self-interests of the elite could never be served by an invitation that could not be reciprocated; and (3) ensue in embarrassment for the poor, who could not reciprocate and, therefore, would be required by social protocols to decline the invitation. As will become clear below, in recording Jesus’ table talk, Luke exploits these cultural scripts in order to undermine the taken-for-granted values and expectations of his discourse situation and, thus, to construct a new vision of life.⁹