No Accounting for Grace
Luke 14:1, 7-14
Twelve years ago, almost to the day (technically it was September 1), I was leading my first worship service in the English ministry at Presbyterian Church of the Lord in Seoul, South Korea. Not only was it the first worship service I had led in South Korea, it was the first worship service I had ever led as an ordained minister. At that point, I had been ordained for all of two weeks. I felt as though I had been thrown into the deep end, not of the pool but of the ocean. It was sink or swim! Actually, it felt more like fake it until you make it. That first Sunday I even wore a clerical gown, as if to convince myself that I indeed was a pastor.
Everything was new to me. New church. New job. New home. New country. New culture. Of course, I had some familiarity with Korean culture through Sandy, and I had attended a Korean American church for years, but that was as a layperson. I had never been on the inside as a member of the clergy. I quickly learned that there were aspects of Korean church culture about which I knew little or nothing.
I was one of 15 associate pastors at the church and the only one who was not Korean. After leading worship that first Sunday, the first thing that struck me when I showed up the following Tuesday morning was just how corporate the atmosphere was. All of the pastors wore blue, black, or gray business suits. Most of us were grouped together in one room in rows of cubicles like a typical corporate office. The expectation was that pastors show up in the office by 9AM and stay until 5PM unless out on a home or hospital visit or some other church business, for which I was given a company car—a nondescript Hyundai sedan.
Every Tuesday morning, including that first Tuesday, shortly after 9AM, there was a meeting of all the associate pastors with the senior pastor. As it was my first meeting, I made sure to linger behind the other pastors as we filed into the conference room. There was a long glass table in the middle of the room, at the head of which were two faux leather lounge chairs, one for the senior pastor and one for the second in command, the administrative pastor.
On opposite sides of the table and facing each other were rows of those same faux leather chairs, five a piece. The seating arrangement reminded me of a meeting of SPECTRE, the international criminal organization from James Bond films. I half expected to see the senior pastor stroking a white Persian cat.
As there were not enough lounge chairs for everyone, one of the associate pastors scurried off and quickly returned with several folding chairs that he placed at the end of each row. In the meantime, not wanting to stand around and draw undue attention to myself, I took a seat in the second to last lounge chair in my row, a safe enough distance from the senior pastor.
For the next several weeks, I continued to choose that seat. I noticed that all the other pastors occupied their same seat each week as well. This seemed too much of a coincidence. Eventually I discerned the pattern: pastors who had been with the church the longest sat closest to the senior pastor, and so on down the line. It was a hierarchy. As a newcomer, my proper place was in the back of the room in a folding chair, yet I had been choosing my seat like an American, oblivious to the hidden hierarchy. Fortunately for my sake, the pastors had been too gracious to tell me, and I did not have to walk in disgrace to take the lowest place, as Jesus warns in today’s passage.
The passage begins with Jesus in the house of a leader of the Pharisees who has invited him to dinner on the sabbath. On the surface, this might seem surprising. Weren’t the Pharisees adversaries of Jesus? Why would one of their leaders invite him to dinner? One senses that there is a bit of Godfatherly wisdom in action here, as in, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Luke even tells us that the other guests were watching Jesus closely.
The guest list at this dinner party is a rather distinguished crowd made up of Pharisees and lawyers, i.e., well educated elites. As a wandering rabbi from the countryside with a growing reputation for working miracles and stirring controversy, Jesus is likely the object of curiosity. No doubt these members of the religious establishment are waiting for him to do something provocative that they might use against him.
They don’t have to wait long. In verses 2-6, which we skipped over, at this very dinner party Jesus heals a man with edema, i.e., swelling of bodily tissue caused by fluid buildup. Remember, it was the sabbath, a day of rest during which no work should be done. And from the Pharisees’ perspective, healing—however miraculous—constituted work. Yet, when Jesus points out how the religious leaders don’t hesitate to work on the sabbath when they deem it necessary, they bite their tongues, knowing they’ve been defeated.
For those keeping score, this marks the fourth sabbath controversy that Jesus has caused in the Gospel of Luke and comes not long after his healing of the hunched-over woman in the synagogue that we read about just last week.
Unable to muster a challenge against Jesus, the esteemed party guests turn their attention to more important matters, like choosing for themselves the best seats at the table. This does not go unnoticed by Jesus, who responds to their social climbing by telling a parable. The funny thing about this parable, is that it seems less like a parable and more like just plain good advice.
Basically, what Jesus tells them boils down to, when you’re invited to a wedding banquet, don’t sit in a place of honor. After all, someone more distinguished than you may come, and the host may move you—in the presence of all the other guests—to the lowest place, such as a table by the kitchen door, or even the children’s table. Imagine how embarrassing that would be!
Instead, voluntarily take the lowest place, and when the host comes along, he may say, “What are you doing here by the kitchen door? Come on up and sit on the dais next to me!” “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will bet exalted.”
Again, on the surface this sounds more like good advice than good news. It’s the kind of proverbial wisdom found in—where else?—the book of Proverbs. In fact, the Old Testament reading in the lectionary today is Proverbs 25:6-7:
6 Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence
or stand in the place of the great,
7 for it is better to be told, “Come up here,”
than to be put lower in the presence of a noble.
In telling the parable, Jesus clearly has this proverb in mind. Yet while the proverb and the parable may be good advice, Jesus came to proclaim good news. So, where is the good news in this parable? Where is the gospel?
Let’s start with this phrase the “lowest place,” which is where Jesus encourages those who are seeking honor to sit. When you are invited to a fancy shmancy dinner, he says, don’t look for the best seat but take “the lowest place.” The Greek word for “lowest” that Luke uses is eschaton, which literally means last. When you go to seminary, you learn a lot of five-dollar words like “eschatology,” which is the part of theology concerned with judgment, death, and the last days.
With this word eschaton Jesus is introducing the concept of death into the parable. Not convinced? He makes it more explicit when he addresses his host directly. When you give a banquet, he says, don’t invite your friends, family, or rich neighbors. They might try to repay you. Instead, “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.”
This is the great achievement, the great challenge, the great conundrum of the gospel: to get to the highest place, you must sit in the lowest place.
You will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous. There is only one road that leads to the resurrection and that is death. There is no rising from the dead without first dying. This is the great achievement, the great challenge, the great conundrum of the gospel: to get to the highest place, you must sit in the lowest place; in order to be first, you must make yourself last; in order to truly live, you must first be willing to die.
Another way of saying it is you must give up. Give up trying. Give up trying to pad your spiritual résumé with good deeds. Give up praying. Give up reading the Bible. Give up going to church. Give up giving to the church. Just give it up. It’s not doing anything for you. It’s not tipping the eternal scales in your favor one ounce. It’s not improving your score in the slightest.
A few days ago the president made news when he uncharacteristically spoke of his eternal destiny, openly wondering whether he had done enough to get into heaven. This, he said, was one of his motivations for attempting to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine. “If I can get to heaven,” he said, “this will be one of the reasons.”
No, it won’t. It won’t make a damn bit of difference. It won’t register at all. The president could win the Nobel Peace Prize each year for the next four years and it wouldn’t move the needle one inch.
Please understand that I am not speculating on where the president will spend eternity, nor is my point here at all political but rather theological. The president is hardly alone in thinking that he can earn his way to heaven. Not only is that how many outside the church think, it’s how many churchgoing Christians think. We think that if we do enough good, then God will be obligated to recognize it and reward us.
Where the bar is set—how much good we must do—is never specified. I gave up my parking space near the store entrance to the woman with the three kids. Did you see that, God? And do I have to do good every day? Can I take some days off, like a sabbath?
God is not the great bookkeeper in the sky matching our deposits against our withdrawals. God is not keeping score on some heavenly balance sheet because…there is no accounting for grace. So, what the president must do, what you must do, what I must do, what we all must do, is give up trying to impress or persuade God to look with favor on us. Because God has already looked with favor on us through the life, death, and resurrection of God’s Son, Jesus Christ.
At the heavenly banquet we are all on the guest list. We are all invited to the party. Indeed, we are the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind who come to the party empty handed. No bottle of wine. No pastry. Not even a card. Nothing! We come empty handed because we have nothing to give to the God who gave himself for us.