31 August 2025 Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

Jeremiah 2.4–13     Psalm 81.1, 10–16     Hebrews 13.1–8, 15–16     Luke 14.1, 7–14

Picture the scene with me.  You are about to fly interstate, you arrive at the terminal and approach the ‘check-in desk’.  Yes they don’t have automatic check in yet, we are talking a number of years ago.  Anyway, you give your name, and you are handed your boarding pass.  And you realise you have been given a seat in ‘Business Class’  even though that is not what you originally booked.  But you don’t give it much thought, because a couple of years ago someone who worked for the airline ‘upgraded’ you on a flight you were taking for their friend’s wedding, so you think maybe it is a ‘hangover’ from that or maybe they just decided to ‘randomly’ upgrade you.  Anyway, you board the plane, you go to your seat, the plane gradually fills up, and it appears that everyone is now boarded, but we are still waiting.  You then notice that the flight attendant is talking with a passenger at the door, and they are looking at his ticket, and then they appear to be looking in your direction.  The flight attendant then approaches you and asks to see your ticket, asks you your name, and you, and they, realise that while the surname on the boarding pass is correct, the initials are incorrect, and the person standing at the door of the plane has the same surname as you, but with the initials printed on your boarding pass.

You are then told you will need to vacate the seat and you are then escorted to the only vacant seat on the plane, the very rear seat.  You take that ‘walk of shame’ to the back of the plane.  Now no one on the plane except you, the other passenger and the flight attendant know why this is happening, all that the other passengers see is someone who was sitting in business class is now being taken out of that section and ‘walked’ down the plane.

This is the ‘walk of shame’ Jesus is alluding to in the beginning of the parable.  He has been invited to a special meal, and having arrived he then stands, or sits, and ‘observes’ the other invitees ‘jostling’ for the ‘good seats’.  Those seats close to the ‘guest of honour’ or the ‘head of the household’.  This gospel story has two different, yet connected, threads.   The first thread is about how to behave when coming to the table.  In the time of Jesus, it was ‘normal’, to try to get the ‘best seats’ because that way you will be seen as someone of ‘importance’.  Formal entertaining was usually done at a ‘U’ shaped table, so everyone can basically see everyone else, and everyone is focused on those sitting at the head of that ‘U’.  Now Jesus’ words about ‘humbling’ yourself so that you will then be exalted were words that would have been heard with horror by those who had prestige and power.  This is not how society worked, those with power and prestige made sure that everyone else, or at least those with less power and prestige, knew exactly who they were and how important they were.

Now let us return to our plane.  You are sitting at the back of the plane, your hand luggage has been relocated to an overhead locker near you, and the plane has taken off.  A flight attendant now approaches you again and explains, ‘I am sorry for this, it was not your fault, and there is a spare seat in business class, and we would like to offer it to you, if you would like to follow me again, please.  The rest of the passengers now see you again ‘walking the aisle’ except this time you are heading to the front of the plane.  You are then located in a vacant seat, next to an ex-pilot, and you and he then have a great time discussing lots of things and thoroughly enjoying your flight.  The ‘walk of shame’ had now been replaced with the ‘walk of honour’.

But it would be a misunderstanding to take the words of Jesus as a demand for Christian ‘humility’ which says ‘I am nothing’.  Because that leaves us open to a secret wish for correction and being ‘elevated’ in the eyes of those with us or else secretly denying the value that God places on every person.  When we put no value on ourselves we then are unable to value others and therefore we cannot love them as we love ourselves, as Jesus commands.

Jesus then moves to the second thread; when planning a celebration, or gathering, who are you going to invite.  In first-century Israel, and possibly most of the rest of the world, reciprocity was very important.  When socialising, you invited and ‘schmoozed’ with those who would improve your social standing, those who could ‘scratch your back’.  And Jesus is again turning social society on its head by suggesting that they should be inviting those who cannot ‘do’ anything for them socially, those who cannot ‘reciprocate’ the invitation.  And I wonder whether some of that 1st century behaviour that Jesus is challenging is still part of our DNA.  Without wanting to become political, what do these words of Jesus say about our attitude to asylum seekers and refugees, about the homeless and those with mental health issues, those whose ‘dress standards’ do not align with ours.  Jesus challenges us to bring the ‘other’ to the banquet, to go against custom and ‘unwritten protocol’ to make all our tables eucharistic, to make every place welcoming and inviting for humankind in all its wondrous diversity.

Jesus’ words here remind me that God has given me good things, for no good reason, and God invites me to do the same for others.  It challenges me to take my faith seriously enough to act and live differently because my faith only matters to me to the degree that it helps me navigate all the daily decisions I make in the situations I encounter.  Jesus invites not just first-century hearers, but twenty-first century followers to live differently, to break the rules of ‘what’s in it for me’, and ‘what can you do for me’, and to value others because they are – as we are – children of God.  Many of our gospel stories reveal that Jesus often ate with those ‘on the edge’, those on the margins, so much so that he was disparaged as a ‘glutton and drunkard’.  But he also ate with the religiously zealous and socially powerful, which is where we find him today.

And Jesus is cryptically telling us our reward for following these invitations will not be ‘material gain’, it will be found ‘at the resurrection of the righteous’.  And I wonder if this is not so much something in an ‘eschatological future’, as it is that life that awakens inside us when we find that our separateness is a delusion, our power is really no power, and our resources weren’t ever really ours to begin with.  Maybe it means that in the mystery of God’s realm, we find our own lives handed back to us, wounds and all, with more beauty and honour than we could ever imagine or expect.  We find our reward buried deep in the mysteries of resurrection and hope.  Of receiving and being received.  Jesus insists that God’s kingdom is not a kingdom of scarcity, it is one of abundance, where everyone is welcome, already loved, already known, and already cherished.  The currency of that kingdom is humility, generosity, and hospitality.  The table at the center of that kingdom has many seats, all of them honourable seats, all of them first-class seats.  When we dare to gather at Jesus’ table, we are actively protesting the culture of upward mobility and the competitiveness that surrounds us.  There is nothing straightforward or easy about it, it requires hard work over a long time.  To eat and drink with God is to live in tension with the pecking orders that define the institutions and organisations of our culture.  But it is what we are called to do, - to humble ourselves and place hope in a radically different kingdom.  Jesus asks us to believe that our behaviour at the table matters – because it does.  Where we sit speaks volumes, the people we choose to welcome reveal the stuff of our souls.  Favour the ones who cannot repay you.  Prefer the poor.  Choose obscurity.  This is God’s world that we live in, and nothing here is ordinary.  In the realm of God, the ragged strangers at our doorstep are the angels.