August 29, 2010 Jeremiah 2:4-13 Luke 14:1, 7-14

“Seeking seats of Honor”

Dr. Ted H. Sandberg

I was flipping through the TV channels a while back, much to the chagrin of my wife, and stopped for
a few minutes on one of the animal shows. This particular documentary dealt with hyenas, and the
part that I saw, with how hyenas raise their young. It seems that all the cubs in a particular pack, or
clan, are born about the same time, each mother giving birth to twins. The film showed these cubs at
what looked like play – biting each other, pulling at one another’s ears and tails, jumping on each
other as most animal young seem to do. But the commentator refuted my assumption when he said,
“This isn’t play. Even at this young age, these cubs are establishing dominance over their siblings and
mates. The biting and pulling may appear to be play, but often times, the stronger will inflict deadly
wounds upon the weaker, thus insuring more for themselves.” And as I watched the film, it became
apparent that the stronger cubs were tormenting the weaker, already ensuring their place in the pecking
order of the clan.
While we humans aren’t quite as obvious in establishing that kind of pecking order, we do have our
power structures, don’t we? I found a listing of the “proper” order for Government receiving lines and
formal dinners from the book used by our State Department, Protocol - The Complete Handbook of
Diplomatic, Official and Social Usage by Mary Jane McCaffree, Pauline Innis, and Richard M. Sand.
They tell us that “At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the nations laid down the rules of precedence
based on diplomatic titles.”1 They also say that only the President can change the order of precedence
in the United States”?2 Precedence means, for example, that “Members of Congress rank according
to length of continuous service. If several members took office on the same date, they’re ranked
according to the order in which the states they represent were admitted to the Union, or they’re ranked
alphabetically by state. Consideration is given to ranking committee chairmen.” 3 You’ll also be just
fascinated to know, I’m sure, that the “rank of a foreign visitor often takes precedence above the
‘principle of courtesy to a stranger,’ one of the rare excuses under which the order of precedence may
be broken. For example, a British national at a dinner in his honor in an American home would not sit
in the guest of honor’s seat of another foreign diplomat of higher rank should he be a guest also,
although the foreign diplomat is permanently stationed in the U.S., where the British is just visiting.” 4
Is that clear?
You don’t really care, you say? It’s probably not going to be an issue anytime soon? More than
likely, that’s true. But the reason there’s such an extensive protocol listing is no different from the
reason we might select people to sit at a head table with great care – status means a great deal to many.
At least some are very zealous about being shown the respect they believe is their due, and the young
hyena cubs look passive when compared to the scheming sometimes given to maintaining this human

1 1. Innis, Pauline; McCaffree, Mary Jane; Sand, Richard M., Esquire, Protocol: The
Complete Handbook of Diplomatic, Official & Social Usage, Durban House Publishing
Comp, Inc., Dallas, TX, 2002, p. 16.

2 2. Ibid., p. 14.

3 3. Ibid., pp. 16-17.

4 4. Ibid., p. 18.
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power listing.
This is exactly what was going on when Jesus went to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a
meal on the sabbath. The Pharisees watched Jesus to see what strange things Jesus might do, but
while they watched him, Jesus watched them. What Jesus saw was all the jockeying for position that
went on between these “humble men of God.” Dining hierarchy was a deadly serious business: priests
at the top, then Levites, then other people according to rank. 5 If people eat at the wrong place, after
all, there’s no telling what else may fall apart. “[The] history of diplomacy is interspersed with
incidents of strained relations, and sometimes open hostility has arisen because of failure to give
proper recognition to the rank or order of precedence of an official of government.”6
After watching these religious leaders waltz around the places of honor at the head table, Jesus made a
suggestion, offered a simpler seating strategy. “When you’re invited by someone to a wedding
banquet,” Jesus said, “don’t sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than
you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you,
‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place.” [That, by
the way, would be a terrible embarrassment and losing face in the Middle Eastern countries of Jesus’
day is very similar to losing face in Jr. High School today – something to be avoided at all cost.]
Jesus suggests instead, “When you’re invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your
host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of
all who sit at the table with you.” Good advice, right? Martha Sterne, in commenting on this passage,
pictures the dinner crowd mulling this advice from Jesus over. They have to admit that Jesus has
come up with a pretty good idea. This is a good way to avoid being embarrassed. But then Sterne
says, “Of course, it’s hard to trust Jesus with important issues like supper hierarchy because he’s
known to have terrible taste in dinner companions. He always sits at the tacky end of the table with
those who don’t have place cards and aren’t even on the seating charts. He sits with the low and the
left-out and – what’s worse – he seems to have a ball.”7
Sure enough. While these religious leaders are thinking about Jesus’ first suggestion, Jesus continues:
“When you give a luncheon or a dinner, don’t invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or
rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a
banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they
cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
Even in our culture today, there’s something of an expectation that if I invite you for dinner to my
place, sometime down the road, you’ll invite me to your place. Multiply that cultural expectation by
10 or by 100 and you begin to understand the cultural obligations of Jesus’ day. This banquet Jesus
was attending wasn’t an intimate little gathering of friends. This was a public event, given by a
Pharisee who wanted to move up the religious prestige ladder. Banquets were a good way to get the
attention of those further up the status ladder, or to buy the allegiance of those further down the ladder.
When Jesus tells these religious leaders to “not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or
rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid,” but instead to “invite

5 5. Sterne, Martha P., “Abundant Life,” The Christian Century, Vol. 115, No. 22,
(August 12-19, 1998): 747.

6 6. Innis., p. 14.

7 7. Ibid., 747.
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the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind,” Jesus is really calling into question their whole social
system. “Rather than worrying about who you owe, and who owe’s you,” he’s saying, “you should be
concerned about those who can never repay you, those who will never help you move up the prestige
ladder, never provide you with a favor, never help you get ahead. Your banquet won’t gain you honor
and image in your tight little society, but your banquet will be a lot more fun and helpful.” “Invite the
poor who won’t know how much money you spent on the hors d’oeuvres, only that they’re delicious.
Ask the crippled and the lame who won’t be dancing around worrying about which chair to choose,
but will be grateful to sit down. Ask the blind, who won’t be watching over your shoulder to see who
else is coming. Invite the powerless. Ask the empty. You won’t believe what a party you’ll be letting
yourself in for.”8
Can you hear the objections to Jesus’ suggestion? “What! Do you know how much money it costs to
throw a shindig like this? Why would I spend that kind of money on those who can’t help me get
ahead? This is business, after all. I give to the poor, so why should I invite them to my banquets? Do
you know how bad they smell? Besides, they’re beneath me. They don’t belong to my social class.
My guests and I wouldn’t be comfortable with them, and they probably wouldn’t be comfortable with
us. Let them go to their own church – whoops – I mean, their own party.”
Maybe Jesus is speaking to us in this passage after all. Maybe we aren’t social climbers. Maybe
we’re retired, or self-employed. Maybe we’re content in our job, not trying to get elected to anything,
not worried about mingling with the movers and shakers of Chico, just trying to serve – not get ahead.
Maybe we consider ourselves just your average folk, happy with the good works we do, pleased to be
able to support the Jesus Center or Catalyst or some of the other help organizations in town, happy
with the money we give to social causes, thinking that at least this teaching from Jesus doesn’t really
apply to us.
But look around us. Our banquet this morning, this feast of worship, this gathering to open the bread
of life which is the Word of God, our gathering is pretty much a gathering of like people, isn’t it?
We’re not a very diverse gathering, are we? We’re probably pretty comfortable worshiping in our
accustomed pew. We literally know our place here and seldom are we inconvenienced by visitors who
sit in our spot, who may not be as clean as we’d like, who may not dress like we do, who may raise
their hands when they sing or pray, who may ask us to change how we worship. We may not be
trying to get ahead because all that’s been sorted out long ago, and now we’re comfortable with our
place at this banquet table.
Comfortable, that is, until once again we hear the words of Jesus. “But when you give a banquet,
invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot
repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
Who’s invited to this house for our weekly banquet? Who have you invited? Who have I invited?
Jesus’ simple seating strategy is far different from ours. Jesus wasn’t worried about how rich or how
poor someone was, because he knew that everyone – rich and poor alike – needed God’s forgiveness.
At Jesus’ table, everyone was welcome, everyone was invited because differences in appearance and
in social standing and even in skin color and nationality didn’t matter. What mattered to Jesus was
that all people be invited to the kingdom table. Rich and poor, young and old, black and white, men
and women, boys and girls, clean and smelly, arrogant and humble, gay and straight, employers and
beggars, hard-working and lazy, liberal and conservative, Pharisee and sinner, scholar and dropout,

8 8. Ibid., 747.
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Baptist and Catholic, Muslim and Jew, seeker and saved, the students who’ve come to Chico State and
those attending grade school, our neighbor next door and those who live in little more than shacks, you
and even me – we’re all invited to the kingdom table because we all need Jesus Christ – though
sometimes I wish it wasn’t so. It’s a lot easier to have a congregation of all conservatives or all
liberals. Much fewer disagreements that way. Much less worry about people leaving in a huff. But
that’s not what Jesus calls us to be.
Maybe it’s time to make sure our doors are open and we’re inviting everyone to this banquet, because,
after all, this isn’t our party, it’s God’s. This isn’t our feast, it’s Jesus’, and he paid an awful price to
invite everyone to come in to His banquet, even his death on the cross.
“When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be
blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
Who have we invited to Christ’s banquet? Let those who have ears to hear, hear and obey.