Jesus’ advice to wait until people of power and influence notice you won’t help you get wealth or status in the world. It will help you build a relationship with God.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the fourteenth chapter of Luke’s Gospel (Luke 14:1, 7-14), in which Jesus shared a Sabbath meal at the invitation of a leader of the Pharisees.
This wasn’t terribly uncommon in Jesus’ life. He was a respected and well known teacher. As he traveled, the leaders of the local synagogues (who would have been out of the Pharisaic tradition): they wanted to meet him. They wanted to talk with him. They wanted to learn from him. They probably wanted to argue with him — because that’s what Jewish leaders did in the first century, was have conversations and discussions and arguments about the theological and spiritual questions of the day.
So Jesus accepted the invitation and he watched as other guests found their appropriate places around the tables in the room. It was a hierarchical society (ours is more hierarchical than we like to admit), and so people knew what their place was, at least in a social setting such as a Sabbath meal.
Jesus reminded them of a piece of wisdom that came out of the ancient Hebrew Wisdom tradition, that when you are invited to a banquet go and sit in a lower place than your social standing would entitle you to, so that your host may then invite you to come higher. Jesus followed that, however, with a somewhat different set of advice. Instead of inviting your social equals or your social superiors to a dinner, invite the poor. Invite the disabled. Invite the people who cannot invite you back. Invite the people who cannot improve your social standing.
That, said Jesus, is the way to gain credit, favor, with God.
I have to say that as advice for gaining social, economic, vocational, or political success in the twenty-first century, it’s terrible advice. If you go and sit far away from those in power, those in power will happily ignore you. Those in power —we’ve all seen this — they favor those who are in their face, who are noisy, who are obvious, who make themselves known.
Jesus’ point was that that is not how it is with God. God sees each and every one of us with a clarity that we cannot equal, a clarity that we cannot imagine. So God knows those who are quiet just as well as God knows those who are obvious. God knows those who are humble as well as or even better than those who are prideful.
If you want material success, it’s terrible advice. If you want a depth of spirit, if you want the opportunity to open your heart to God, if you want to follow the way of Jesus, then it is the advice to follow, these are the things to do. You will be seen by God. You will be called close to Jesus’ heart.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
