Luke 14:1, 7-14 (NRSV) Updated Edition)
On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the Sabbath, they were watching him closely.
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When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not 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. But when you are 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. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers and sisters 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.”
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"In the story from Luke Jesus wants those present at the dinner to recognize their internal ranking system and its' inherit problems. His story takes the form of advice on where to sit when entering a wedding hall. Since it's so hard to know how others see you and so difficult to accurately rank yourself, take the lowest place and then let the host move you up if the host sees you ranked differently than you have ranked yourself. This is much better than starting too high and having the embarrassment of being asked to move to a lower place. Jesus assumes there will be ranking but suggests an attitude of humility wherein the host determines your place rather than you grasping for it.
"In other words, don't worry about ranking. Leave that to the host and just enjoy yourself at the banquet. You have a place and it will be the right one since it is granted you by the host who sees you clearly. When everyone in a group isn't worried about ranking and trusts the host, a spirit of peace, contentment and harmony settles over the group. Instead of grasping for rank and honor trust that you have a place already. The greatest danger to you and to others is the discord that grasping produces. People who grasp will be brought low because they will misuse any rank they are given. In this way of interpreting Jesus' story, it's clear that we all have a place in God's love."
- Thomas L. Truby, from sermon delivered on August 28th, 2016 (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Truby-Proper17-2016-Its-All-About-Ranking-and-Rivalry.pdf)
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"Disgrace is shame; our old old duo which we get throughout the Gospel - shame and glory. The two are poles within which Jesus is teaching and [in which] the whole of the [imitative] understanding of humanity functions - shame and glory. “‘Give this person your place,’ and then in shame you would start to take the lowest place” (v9) - you would probably fall through the hole in the floor and slink away. [...] So Jesus says: “When you are 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 honoured.” And again: what is the word for honoured? It's then you will have glory, then there will be to you glory in the face of all who are at the table with you.
"So shame, glory and he's teaching all this in this space which is a Pharisee's Sabbath party. In other words, he's turning this into a divine happening, in which the extremes of shame and glory are being taught about. And it's the judge who is present. Are they going to get that, in fact, the judge was present? It is actually showing them what shame and glory looked like. [...]
"And [then] we get a verse which is not in our reading, it's the next verse of the [Luke text], but which should be [part of the reading] because it's one of the dinner guests on hearing this said to him: “Blessed is the one who will eat bread in the kingdom of God” [...] And this person has understood what Jesus is about. Jesus is undoing the Levitical instructions as to who gets to eat in the holy place at the banquet in the resurrection of the righteous. He's undoing that now in real-time. [...] [H]e's showing the guests at apparently a relatively secular banquet what might be the sign of the kingdom, the breaking in of the real feast where not those who are 'free from blemish', [but] those who are cast out can, in fact, join in the banquet of heaven.
"And one of the dinner guests has understood this. [...] I just wanted to bring out that someone gets what Jesus is talking about, someone understands that he is fulfilling and moving beyond Leviticus in talking about the Lord who invites, who has no favourites, and who breaks through all our reciprocities which are built on favour and fear of vengeance."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for Twenty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r7TXK3dmzQ)
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"The problem which Jesus raises with his listeners is the same question as we have seen in other circumstances: on which ‘other’ do I depend to be noticed and told “I like you”? I think that there are two possibilities: I can depend entirely on my peers, in which case my goodness, my striving to do well, and the sort of life I lead will be a reflection of them, and I'll have to do everything to keep myself well-considered by them, receiving those whom they receive and excluding those whom they exclude, so as not to run the risk of finding myself the excluded one. Not only all these things, which might seem superficial, like the little games of hypocrisy which we all have to play to keep our social life going, but it is also the case, perhaps without my realizing it, that all my “I” is nothing other than a construction forged by the difficult game of keeping my reputation. There is no other “I” at the bottom of it all, behind the “I” which I am acquiring through the little manipulations by which I search to keep my reputation. My “I” and my way of being related to the “other” are the same thing.
"The other possibility is that I receive my “I” from God, and here's the rub: God has an awful reputation. Which is nothing other than saying that God's reputation and the reputation of the victim are the same thing. That is what Jesus was suggesting: in order to receive your reputation, your being noticed and recognized, by God, you have to be prepared to lose the reputation which comes from the mutually reinforcing opinion and high regard of those who are bulwarks of public morality and goodness, and find it among those who are held as nothing, of no worth. That is also what Paul says to the Corinthians: God chose what is weak in this world to put to shame what is strong; God chose what is base and despised, even things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are. (1 Cor 1:27-28)
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"[T]he order of this world has its own glory, which depends on mutually rivalistic imitation, and is a glory or reputation that is grasped and held onto with difficulty. Being enveloped in the order of this world prevents us from beginning to act in solidarity with those of poor repute, because if we do so we lose our reputation. But those whose minds are fixed on the things that are above, that is, those who have begun to receive their “I” from their non-rivalistic imitation of Jesus, already begin to derive their reputation from the Father and not from their peers. This they do in the degree to which, doubtless with much difficulty, they learn to give little importance to the reputation which people give them, and thus become free to associate with those who have no reputation, just like the one who was numbered among the transgressors.
"If they manage not to be ashamed of what the world treats as despicable, then, when the final revelation of the Son of man with angels appears, where it will be established beyond doubt who God really is, that is, the risen victim will be the central axis of all the life stories that are under construction; then, at that moment those who were little concerned about the loss of their reputation will receive an everlasting reputation: they will hear in the midst of a huge public what every little child wants to hear from its parents: “That’s right, little one, that’s what I wanted; I like what you’ve done.”"
- James Alison, Raising Abel, pp. 180-183
[Source of link to Thomas Truby sermon and quote from James Alison's Raising Abel, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper17c/]