For a second time, Jesus shames elites at a dinner party. Here’s what he’s trying to teach us about power and shame.
Jesus and the awkward dinner party
Proper 17C | Luke 14:1, 7-14
It is hard to deny that Jesus is a lousy dinner guest. I know you’re thinking: Hey, what about the Last Supper? Which is a pretty awesome deal. Or maybe you’re thinking about the Eucharist. Which is like half the show on a Sunday morning.
These examples show that Jesus can be a great dinner guest.
This story shows Jesus can also be a terrible dinner guest. And if we can’t be sure which one we’re going to get, we might think twice about inviting him over. We like an interesting conversation over dinner, but Jesus is not above making the host look bad. So let’s be honest, he’s not gonna be our first choice.
Of course, this sets up a problem for us, doesn’t it? We’re followers of Jesus, trying to learn about love, grace, and the Kin-dom of God. Our business is trying to make Jesus stuff more a part of our lives. We look to him to better understand what we need to be doing.
So generally, we’re supposed to do what Jesus does.
And what does Jesus do twice in the gospel of Luke? He shames people in their homes.
Not so literal
Now, a person who looks at every word of scripture as a prescription for their behavior is probably going to get a really weird message from this story. That any visit to someone’s home should involve a little shaming.
Of course, Jesus doesn’t do that every time. So maybe we don’t do that.
But who does Jesus shame in these two stories?
Not just anybody. These aren’t people who are different from him. Or people who have a different opinion. And honestly, it isn’t people who are “sinning” generally. These two events have something very specific in common.
- These are elite dinner parties.
- With an elite guest list.
- And Jesus invites these religious elites to be humble.
But it isn’t because of their status that Jesus does this. It’s because of how they use that status.
In both cases, Jesus shames people who don’t feel shame for how they treat other people.
This could get twisted.
If we treat this as a standard for behavior—a prescription for how we are supposed to behave regularly—we’re likely to find this too vague to go by. There are a lot of people who don’t feel shame for a lot of things.
But this attempt at a universal understanding for behavior misses the specificity of this context.
He’s not going at regular people feeling a bit self-righteous here.
Jesus is among the elite. People who have all the wealth in the community. The people who, if they aren’t in charge, they do have the ears of the people in charge.
And he shames these people for two very similar reasons.
At the first party…
Jesus shames the host of the dinner for not treating a servant with dignity.
Then at this party…
Jesus shames the guests for playing the social hierarchy game.
The rules of the game
This game that we all play with one another is 100% constructed. There’s no genetic factor or biological rationale that is hardwired into humanity to do this. We’re literally doing this because our parents did it.
However, humans have been playing a game of hierarchy for so long that we don’t know any other way to be.
This game imposes a hierarchy upon everything and involves striving to be higher within the hierarchy.
This, of course, is rational. The hierarchy we all live by is better for every group the higher up you go. More wealth, more influence, and fewer obstacles between you and your goals. Climbing the social hierarchy is a rational goal. In this system.
[Quick side note: climbing the social hierarchy today is harder than at any time in the last 70 years. Our ability to change our own material conditions has been steadily declining for decades. So let’s not think the hierarchy itself is a demonstrable good. Especially when that hierarchy is being used against us.]
So the game is a bit broken. And while it may be rational to play the game, the game itself is not rational.
How it works
While the guests in the previous dinner party are doing something we all know deep down is wrong (we at least know that upper class snobbery toward the lower class is not cool), we may be less familiar with the problem at this dinner.
We understand Jesus is teaching them to be humble. And we probably have figured out that the guests weren’t being humble. But why? What is the specific dynamic being critiqued here?
It goes back to the idea of striving to ascend the social hierarchy as rational and therefore justified. The people were behaving as social climbers. This is not a case of a young person refusing to give their seat to an older person on the subway.
These are people claiming status. And Jesus is essentially saying to them You may be near the top given the people in the room now, but you also may drop at a moment’s notice. In other words, with the social hierarchy, there’s always someone more important than you.
We have all heard that we should “fake it till we make it.”
This actually seems like sage advice. And it does wonders for an epidemic of low self-esteem.
But ultimately it is about playing pretend in a broken system.
A system that may yield personal (though fleeting) glory, but ultimately punishes its practitioners and impoverishes its people.
Because it is all fleeting. Arbitrary. And ultimately, deceptive.
We think we’re better. Or that we have more. So we must be worth more. Or we gain more to feel more worth. This is grotesque, but seductive thinking.
Striving to be a better person is a laudable goal. But doing so at the expense of another; to be a better person than they are is not.
The Prompt
It says that Jesus teaches them about these social hierarchies because he notices where they are sitting. But that isn’t the only prompt.
On the way in, Jesus sees a man who is sick. And this man is right outside. These people all walked past him to get to the dinner.
And Jesus asks the people heading in if it is lawful to heal this man on the Sabbath.
[Crickets.]
Then he says:
“If one of you has a child or an ox that has fallen into a well, will you not immediately pull it out on a sabbath day?”
– Luke 14:5
Jesus speaks about lifting up a man who is lower on the social hierarchy. On the Sabbath. He has already said the Sabbath is for healing. It is for restoring. This is what it is all for.
And he restores the man that they all walk past. And then they claim the best seats at the table. The seats of honor.
The Kin-dom response then becomes quite obvious.
Invite people you would walk past. And take a lower seat.
And given, as Jesus has said elsewhere, the first shall be last and the last shall be first, the ones most deserving of those seats of honor aren’t the strivers. Those seats are reserved for the outcasts.
This is why Jesus can both make sense to us and sound like a radical ideologue. Because these ideas tend to reject what we treat as normal, while also making sense. If not, at least a little, uncomfortably political.
The beauty of this teaching
…is that he thinks the elites can choose to stop playing the game. They can relinquish their power. Lift up the poor. Which means we can stop at any time!
Some ways to change the game are super obvious. Like feeding programs.
Others require us to realize what we’re doing. And then proactively look to help. To give the microphone to the timid or preference the meek.
The point is not to construct a new set of rules, but to embody God’s beautiful ordering over our own.
It isn’t to prescribe new boundaries but encourage one another to more fully embody the ones we have. Which means both internal work and common work for our community.
It can be as grand as bringing the Kin-dom closer and as simple as offering kindness to a stranger.
Because we are all a reflection of God; and I would hate to leave God out of a dinner they’re hosting for all of us.