On a sabbath Jesus went to dine at the home of one of the leading Pharisees, and the people there were observing him carefully. He told a parable to those who had been invited, noticing how they were choosing their places of honor at the table. “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not recline at table in the place of honor. . . Rather, when you are invited, go and take the lowest place.” (Luke 14.1, 7-8, 10)
Back in the good old days–a relative term, since I remember them–a monsignor built a new house for him and for his assistants. Consistent with his way of doing things, his was the largest room, with a fireplace. The second largest room, given to the first assistant, as he was called, was placed a certain distance from his room and was smaller. As you walked down the hallway, the second assistant’s room was still smaller and still further from the monsignor’s room. A fourth bedroom, at the end of the hallway, was the smallest and the furthest, proof of least importance in the hierarchy.
The same logic dictated the seating at his dining room table, with the monsignor at the head of the table, his assistants seated in descending order, everyone clear about his place at the table and in the world. Blessed without a smidgen of self-awareness, the monsignor never seemed bothered or beside himself when this particular gospel was preached, certain, I suppose, that Rabbi Jesus wasn’t talking about him, the same dispensation most of us give ourselves when the Rabbi’s words hit too close to home.
Today, the evangelist tells of a time when Rabbi Jesus was invited to the home of a prestigious Pharisee, the monsignor of his day and time, to have dinner at his table. Almost always, whenever one of the evangelists speaks of a Pharisee, we know we’re about to see a tense situation where Rabbi Jesus is being tested by the powers that be, the assumption being that his teachings are wrongheaded. So we should not be surprised when we’re told that everyone in the room had their eyes glued to the Rabbi.
Rabbi Jesus, for his part, seems to be taking note of the people in the room also because he takes the occasion to offer a teaching, a parable as it is called, in which he takes the circumstances playing out in front of him and uses them to offer a counterpunch. And what does he observe happening in the dining room of the Pharisee? It seems, unsurprisingly, that everyone is jockeying for the place nearest the Pharisee.
In the process, they are making it clear that they consider the Pharisee the most important person in the room–interesting as we consider Rabbi Jesus is also in the room, but apparently he is of minor importance in the bigger picture–and they want to enhance their own prestige by getting as near to the Pharisee as possible, assured, in this way, of their own self-importance and hopeful of gaining more importance–at least in the eyes of others–by their place at table.
Overall, it may strike us as a silly game, were it not so typical of how we humans do things. Even today, we find corporate offices arranged in order of importance by size and by floor, the big man in a big office on the top floor, the nobody in a cubby hole in the basement. Or, if you’re the flying type, watch who boards first and who sits in the front of the plane. If that weren’t enough of a clue as to what is going on, the hierarchy is made clear even before boarding, the well-heeled in a VIP room where they are attended to in the style they are used to and where they don’t have to be bothered by the clutter of bodies in the main seating area of the airport.
Of course, it’s not only in corporate offices and at airports, but pretty much all over the place–in sporting arenas, in banquet halls and in parking lots. It seems many of us have an insatiable desire to be more important than others, our egos needing the soft pats of society like cats at the feet of their owners. For some ungodly reason, we want to stand out as better, smarter, and richer, competing for status like greyhounds on the race track.
One social commentator suggests we’ve been this way since the beginning of time, a difficult position to prove or disprove, since none of us were around when it all started. However, the ancient writers of scripture seemed to concur, having Cain competing with Abel as soon as Adam and Eve took them out of their baby carriages. So intense was Cain’s need to be better than Abel that he decided to kill him, doing away with the competition in one fell swoop of the stone, marking him as a murderer for the rest of his days, more of a distinction than he may have wanted.
It’s anybody’s guess as to why we behave the way we do, outperforming, outspending, outclassing others; but a strong case is often made that all are efforts to mask our sense of inadequacy, feeling adequate only when we can see others as inferior, unimportant, and sub-whatever-word you want, subhuman, subservient, subordinate.
Certainly, the need to divide humanity into grades of beef does not benefit us or the world, reducing us to competitors instead of coequals, resulting in a world always in conflict, everybody racing to the head table just so they look better than those who have to eat at the kids table. Doing all we can do to see others as lesser so that we come off as better is a recipe for a world in a downward spiral. All of which may explain a lot of things going on today.
Once again, Rabbi Jesus looks at the world in a different way, the way that God wants it to be, and so he shakes his head at the foolishness of people outmaneuvering, outshining, and outperforming. “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled,” he says, “but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” A way of life that, if followed, we could say, would throw the world on its head.
Some years ago, a young American, along with some other students, went to Switzerland for medical school. He experienced a culture shock because the system was so different from what he had experienced at home. The classes were pass or fail and the students and faculty believed learning was a cooperative effort, not a competitive effort. So, no grades, no awards, no Dean’s List. He found it freeing.
Back home, he told a colleague about his experience. The colleague told him that it was common practice for medical students in his school to tamper with the microscopes in the lab so that the next student would have to waste valuable time readjusting the settings. No sense of cooperation; pure, unadulterated competition, everybody wanting the best seats in the house.
Were we to try Rabbi Jesus’ way, we might also find it freeing, able to look at one another without envy or without suspicion, able to see others as fellow travelers, not as stepping stones, able to breathe the same air as others, not sticking our noses up in the air, high and mighty. Rabbi Jesus says the path to that freedom is simple–be humble.
Of course, it’s not all that simple because to be humble we have to make a radical readjustment of the way we see ourselves and how we see others, purposely seeing others as the same as us, not as beneath us in some way, ignoring all the visual cues we normally use to divide ourselves from others–color, creed, or zip code. Should we choose to give it a try, it will be a learning curve because we are so programmed to divide others into nice, clean categories like the aisles in Walmart.
But Rabbi Jesus reminds us that what works for Walmart doesn’t work for God, who, frankly, sees things in a very different way, putting the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind at the head table, while the proud, the privileged, and the powerful end up washing dishes. Or, as the Rabbi said on several occasions, “the last shall be first, and the first shall be last,” a good quote to put on our refrigerator door or on our bathroom mirror to remind us of the other way to look at life.
Henri Nouwen, writer, speaker, all-around good guy, held a position at Yale, but one day he walked away from it all, choosing to spend his last years working with severely mentally and physically challenged people, men and women who didn’t care about his degrees or his books or the number of stripes on his university gown. He fed them, bathed them, and dressed them, even brushing their teeth because they couldn’t do it for themselves. And, in that place, he finally found peace, he found freedom.
One such person Nouwen cared for was a man named Trevor. On one occasion, Trevor was sent to a hospital for an evaluation. Nouwent went to visit him. The hospital higher-ups were elated to learn that the renowned Henri Nouwen was coming to their hospital and made arrangements for a special luncheon to be held in Nouwen’s honor. The luncheon was to be held in the Golden Room, a perfect name to refer to the executive dining room open only to the important people, so to speak.
When Nouwen walked into the dining room, he immediately began to look for Trevor, but he was nowhere to be found. So he asked the people in the room where Trevor was. They answered that patients were never allowed to eat in the Golden Room with the hospital administrators. Nouwen answered that he also would leave if Trevor wasn’t allowed to join them for the meal.
So, rattled and taken aback, someone was sent to locate Trevor, who was brought into the dining room. But as the administrators all elbowed each other to get close to Nouwen, Trevor began to sing his favorite song, changing it a bit to meet the occasion, “If you’re happy and you know it, raise your glass!” Discombobulated a second time in the few seconds they were there, the officials looked at Nouwen, unsure what to do themselves. Nouwen smiled and began to sing along with Trevor.
The others in the room were left with nothing to do but join in the singing, the big suits surely uncomfortable, certainly embarrassed, singing the words of the children’s song they had forgotten long ago. In that moment, Nouwen, with Trevor’s help, taught them more than any book he had written, any talk he had given, any sermon he had preached.
It was the same teaching Rabbi Jesus offered when he was invited into the Gold Room of the Pharisee’s home and, quickly sizing up the situation, said, “When you hold a lunch or a dinner, don’t invite your friends or rich neighbors. Instead, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” Meeting their startled stares, he added, “Blessed indeed will you be,” as he took the seat at the far end of the table, an empty place there because nobody in their right mind wanted to sit there, out of the limelight, in left field, a place for losers.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 