Brief synopsis of the readings: We begin in the book of Sirach. A father, speaking to his son, advises him to conduct his affairs with humility. Greatness comes from humility and this will find favor with God. “Water quenches a flaming fire, and alms atone for sins.” Luke’s Gospel describes Jesus dining at the home of a leading Pharisee and he was being watched. When he noticed some guests were trying to claim places of honor at the table he addressed them. He advised them instead to seek the lowest place. That way they would not be “bumped” down if someone more important arrived. This also increases the chances of being invited to a higher place if they were the most important. Jesus then spoke to the host and told him not to invite his friends or wealthy neighbors. They can return the favor. Instead he instructed the host to invite “the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.” Because they cannot repay the host, the host “will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

Imagine yourself as someone who has wealth and popularity. Your education gives you the reputation of intelligence and people generally look up to you. When you host a party, lots of people hope to be invited and everyone seeks a place at the table close to you. Not a bad way to live. But now imagine the reaction when you invite this guy everyone is talking about, a man named Jesus. He’s kind of a strange fellow and he’s making some incredible claims about himself, but he has a group of followers and he’s generating some buzz around town.

OK, so why was Jesus invited? Good question and the reading doesn’t tell us. Perhaps the unnamed pharisee was curious about Jesus and wanted to learn more about him. Well, probably not. Almost all of the encounters Jesus has with the religious leaders of his day consist of them trying to trap and embarrass him. It’s a safe bet that this pharisee wanted to find a way to make Jesus look foolish and lose credibility with his followers. I’m guessing that he hoped Jesus would crave an important place at the table and lord his status over everyone else. Problem is, Jesus never appears to take the bait and he doesn’t here. Instead he lectured the other guests and told them to head for the lesser places at table.

While we’re on the subject, in addition to escaping the trap he also gave good advice. Nobody wants to be publicly humiliated and nobody wants to be the story everyone tells about last night’s dinner party. This is also a nightmare for the host, having to tell a guest he’s been outranked and needs to move down. But it’s so much more than that. Jesus is not a Roman era advice columnist, not a precursor to the columnist Miss Manners.

But he is giving us a strong indication of the makeup of his Kingdom. Those who jockey for honor aren’t paying attention to other guests so much as they are trying to be seen. I’d venture to say that the next day they’d be hard pressed to be able to recount a conversation they had because they spent the whole evening scheming and preening. But how about those at the other end? I’ve always loved going to a social event and meeting someone new and learning about his or her life. And I do think that is how the Kingdom is built. When we reach out to each other, learn about their lives and experiences, and and find stuff in common, we benefit. I know of at least one marriage that started this way.

Because when we meet each other and learn about each other, we our world expands. We may find that a long held prejudice is no longer valid or the reports we’ve gotten about someone simply isn’t true. When I was ordained a priest I was told of a tradition where the new priest (me) asks for the blessing of the oldest priest in the house. I have to confess that this wasn’t supposed to be a pleasant experience. This priest was 92 years old and had a reputation for being quite bitter; according to legend if you told him to have a nice day he’d respond with: “I had other plans.” But I knocked on his door and had wonderful conversation with him. He told me about his ordination in 1928 and how much he respected some of the priests he knew then. At the end of the visit he gave me his blessing and asked for mine. And then he thanked me for the visit. He died a few years later but his memory lives on in me.

And as for those at the “important” end of the table? Well, in a sense, they are trapped. Even if they think our end is more interesting they can’t take the chance of being seen with us. President Truman once likened the White House to the “crown jewel of the federal penal system” because of the things he couldn’t do that we take for granted. He could host state dinners and meet world leaders but he couldn’t walk down to his bank and cash a check. He couldn’t meet anyone without aides or translators or protocols and he couldn’t ever trust that he was being given an honest answer. He was only able to resume his life in 1952 when he left the White House and returned to Missouri.

We need better than that, and we should want better than that. It doesn’t take much education or intelligence to be told we should leave “those others” behind. But as Jesus told us last week, many of those who are first shall be last, not because they’re bad people but because they’re pursuing the wrong values. We don’t know what happened at this dinner but I think it’s a safe bet that the “Jesus” end of the table had a good time and the “important” end of the table spent the meal grumbling about how rude Jesus was to them.

I’d also like to think at least one of the important guests took his advice the next time he was invited to dinner.