Readings:
- Sirach 3.17-18, 20, 28-29
Psalm 68.4-5, 6-7, 10-11 Response: “God, in your goodness, you have made a home for the poor.” - Hebrews 12.18-19, 22-24a
- Luke 14.1, 7-14
Reflections on the Gospel Reading
This Sunday’s gospel reading should make all of us squirm. Has any one of us ever thrown a dinner party without inviting any of our friends, siblings, relatives, or neighbors? Have we ever exclusively invited only unrelated, unknown, poor and disabled people who could never possibly return the favor? Does Jesus really demand this much from us as his followers?
After Sundays that concentrated on internal dispositions such as enthusiasm (“I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!”) and effort (“Strive to enter through the narrow gate. . .”), this Sunday’s reading concentrates on the behavior characteristic of followers of Jesus. Sharing meals with the poor and the outcast of society is a powerful symbol of our readiness to take part in God’s banquet in the coming kingdom.
The liturgical practice of selecting short passages from the Gospels called pericopes (pronounced pe-ríck-oh-pees) sometimes has drawbacks. Today’s reading is a case in point. It is as if a reporter filed a story with a lead sentence and four tightly connected paragraphs only to find that in the printed version the editor kept the lead sentence but deleted the first and fourth paragraphs. This is essentially what has happened with today’s reading. To understand it we need to go back to Luke’s full story.
The Lead Sentence: “On a Sabbath Jesus went to dine (literally, eat bread) at the home of one of the leading Pharisees, and the people there were observing him carefully.” (Luke 14.1)
Luke provides a Sabbath meal setting for three items from his own sources and one from a source Q that he had in common with Matthew. We learn from verse 14.3 (not in today’s reading) that other Pharisees as well as lawyers (scholars of the Law of Moses) were among those attending.
Luke’s setting is ambiguous. By inviting Jesus to eat with him the leading Pharisee was showing Jesus a sign of honor. However, Luke adds that the other diners were observing Jesus carefully. The Greek text conveys a note of hostility and could just as well be translated: “They were keeping an eye on him.” (Funk et al. 1993, 349) or “They were watching him closely.” (NRSV) Earlier in his Gospel, after Jesus’ withering criticism of Pharisees and Lawyers, Luke notes that “the scribes and the Pharisees began to be very hostile toward him and to cross-examine him about many things, lying in wait for him, to catch him in something he might say.” (Luke 11.53 NRSV) This seems to indicate more than the normal antagonism and challenges to honor that were part of any public gathering of men in ancient Mediterranean society.
Paragraph One: Dropsy (Luke 14.2-6 [not included in today’s reading])
Luke is the only gospel writer to report that Jesus healed a person with dropsy, a condition of severe swelling (edema) due to the body’s retention of fluids. To understand why Luke places this healing in this particular context we have to set aside our understanding of modern medicine. As Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh observe, in the ancient Hellenistic world “‘dropsy’ was understood to be a disease in which the victim became thirsty, but drinking to assuage thirst only increased the victim’s thirst all the more.” This understanding of the affliction led to the use of dropsy as a metaphor for greed. “Thus a man thirsty for money or status is never satisfied with gain: the more he gets, the more he wants.” (2003, 284-285)
The healing of a man with dropsy, then, is both ironic and confrontational. Just as the healing of a blind person exposes our spiritual blindness, so also the healing of a person with dropsy exposes our spiritual dropsy – our desire for wealth and social status at the expense of others. In the next three “paragraphs” Luke’s Jesus invites us to be healed of our spiritual dropsy.
Paragraph Two: Advice for Guests (Luke 14.7-11)
In the hostile context of the Pharisee’s dinner Jesus’ otherwise banal instruction on proper etiquette is more than a rebuke. It takes on parabolic significance, that is, it points to a higher reality. The guests, who in their thirst for status and recognition are scrambling for the most honorable places, are unaware of the symbolic significance of their quest for honor in view of the coming of God’s reign. Jesus says, in effect, that true honor will not come from social recognition. The only true honor will come from God to those who are humble enough to recognize God’s power.
Like many of us, the guests at the dinner fail to accept Jesus’ proclamation of the coming reign of God where all social distinctions will be obliterated and the tables turned. Thus, the saying of Jesus (adjusted for the use of the divine passive): “For God will humble all those who exalt themselves, but will exalt those who humble themselves.” (Luke 14.11)
Paragraph Three: Advice for a Host (Luke 14.12-14)
In Luke’s narrative Jesus now turns on his host with another piece of unwelcome advice. Essentially, Jesus tells him to commit social suicide. “Dinners were important social occasions that were used to cement social relations . . . Moreover, accepting a dinner invitation normally obligated the guest to return the favor.” Elite persons “risked being cut off by families and social networks if seen in public eating with persons of lower rank.” (Malina & Rohrbach 2003, 285-286)
Luke’s Jesus tells his host to toss all of this aside. Instead of inviting four categories of honorable guests (friends, brothers, relatives, and wealthy neighbors) he should invite four categories of social outcasts (the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind), precisely those who could not exercise the expected reciprocity.
This advice makes sense only to those who are not consumed by thirst for worldly fame and recognition; who believe in Jesus’ proclamation of the coming of God’s reign; and who want to symbolize that belief in their actions by anticipating now the conditions of the future Kingdom. Converting for the divine passive again, God will bless these people by repaying them at the resurrection of the righteous.
Paragraph Four: The Parable of the Great Banquet (Luke 14.15-24 [not included in today’s reading])
The advice of Jesus to his host leads into the fourth section of the narrative, the parable of the great banquet, that Luke adapted from his source Q. (See Matthew 22.1-14 read on the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time [A]) After a double invitation and the insulting excuses of original invitees, the man who had invited the guests orders his slave to go out into the streets and lanes of the city and invite the very same four categories of people to the great banquet: the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame. The parable drives home the same lesson as Jesus’ previous instructions to his host.
The Lesson for Us: Faith and Action
Today’s gospel reading challenges us to live in accordance with what we believe. If we believe in the inevitable arrival of God’s reign of justice and peace, Jesus challenges us to symbolize that by our actions here and now. In other words, the way we treat the outcasts of society is the measure of our belief.
Do we really want to be healed of our spiritual “dropsy,” of our insatiable thirst for wealth and the social status that comes with it? How great a role does reciprocity play in our social relations? Have we found a way to live in effective solidarity with the poorest of the poor?
There are no easy answers to those questions, especially given the radically different social circumstances in which we live today. First century Palestine was incredibly rural and poor by our standards. More than ninety percent of the people lived in extended families grouped in tiny hamlets. Most families were only one bad harvest from destitution. Stability was the norm and value, and few people traveled more than one hundred miles from where they were born in their entire lifetime. Few would be able to throw the kind of banquet Jesus is referring to.
That raises even further questions. Was Jesus speaking at that time only to the rich? If he were speaking today, would he direct his instructions to me? Are his commands laws that apply to everyone or examples of what God might expect from me in particular circumstances?
Whatever the answers, in the Sunday Gospels ahead as we continue with Jesus along the way to his encounter with destiny in Jerusalem, Luke will remind us over and over again that our relationship to our possessions is a key indicator of our relationship to God.
Explanatory Notes:
Divine Passive The divine passive was a way that ancient Israelites avoided using the name of God directly. They did this out of reverence for the divine Name and as a protection against even inadvertently violating the commandment against taking the name of God in vain. Thus, “Much will be required.” implies “by God.” It can be rephrased: “God will require much.”
Q “Q” (from the German “Quelle” or “source”) stands for a lost written document made up almost entirely of sayings of Jesus which scholars have reconstructed from an analysis of passages in the Gospel of Matthew and Luke that are very similar to each other but generally not found in the Gospel of Mark. Examples would be the Sermon on the Mount or the Lord’s Prayer. These scholars hold that Matthew and Luke were written independently. However, each of the authors had access to written copies of Mark and Q.
In preparing these reflections, in addition to the biblical texts, I consulted the following works:
Fitzmyer 1985 – Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke X-XXIV : Introduction, Translation, and Notes. Anchor Bible Volume 28A. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1985), pp. 1038-1057.
Fuller 1984 – Reginald H. Fuller, Preaching the Lectionary. The Word of God for the Church Today (Collegeville [MN]: Liturgical Press, 1984), pp. 500-502.
Funk, Hoover & the Jesus Seminar 1993 – Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1993), pp. 349-351.
Johnson 1991 – Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke , Sacra Pagina Series Volume 3, A Michael Glazier Book (Collegeville [MN]: Liturgical Press, 1991), pp. 222-227.
LaVerdiere 1990 – Eugene LaVerdiere, S.S.S., Luke. New Testament Message, Volume 5. A Michael Glazier Book (Collegeville [MN]: Liturgical Press, 1990), pp. 190-195.
Malina & Rohrbaugh 2003 – Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, Second Edition (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), pp. 283-286.
NRSV 1994 – New Revised Standard Version – Bruce M. Metzger and Roland E. Murphy, Editors, The New Oxford Annotated Bible containing the Old and New Testaments. New Revised Standard Version. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994)
Pilch 1997 – John J. Pilch, The Cultural World of Jesus, Sunday by Sunday, Cycle C . A Liturgical Press Book (Collegeville [MN]: Liturgical Press, 1997), pp. 130-132.