How Are Your Manners

How Are Your Manners?

Luke 14:1, 7-14

When we asked our doctor about feeding Ainslee food during her first year of life, our doctor said, “You can start giving her food, but everything she needs for her first year is in her mother’s milk. Eating food the first year is more about socialization.” It struck me at that moment how much happens around our tables. Many couples become engaged over a meal at a nice restaurant. Prospective employers invite us out for lunch to talk about the parameters of a new job. Business deals and decisions are brokered. Friends share their dreams and fears. Families make decisions. Groups within the church strengthen their bonds. And children learn to eat not for nourishment, but so they know how.

A lot in our culture happens around a meal so it makes good sense to know how to act around the table. I remember the first time I had a face-to-face conversation with people from this church was around a table at the Colonial Inn in Hillsborough and I prayed there weren’t going to be multiple forks because I can never remember whether you’re supposed to work from the outside in or inside out with those forks.

Anthropologists have suggested for years that how people eat tells a lot about their lives[1] so if that’s true, what do your eating habits say about you? Do you know that you’re not supposed to unfold your napkin until your host does? When you’re hosting, did you know that on a formal dinner plate food that’s a bit runny needs to go on the left and solid food goes on the right? Do you belch out loud in appreciation for a fine meal or do you hold it in? When you’re done, do you place your knife and fork at ten and four o’clock angles (which by the way is the proper signal that you’re done) or do you groan, loosen up your belt, and ask, “What’s for dessert?” Eating is about more than simply ingesting food. And while we may not always know all the proper table manners, most of us certainly recognize the grossly improper ones.

In our text today, Jesus has gone to the house of one of the Pharisees for a meal. This all seems quite benign until we remember that meals were rarely uneventful in the Gospels. First, people in Jesus’ day normally ate just two meals a day.[2] One was before work. One was after work. The other thing we need to remember is that Dominos didn’t deliver in the biblical world. Meals were labor-intensive work. The food had to be gathered, then prepared, and then served. Meals weren’t something the family purchased at the drive thru on the way to soccer practice. They were a big deal.

Perhaps the magnitude of the meal in the first century is why some of the most significant moments in Jesus earthly ministry happened around the table – Jesus fed multitudes,[3] he turned water into wine,[4] he told parables about eating with undesirables,[5] and he made dramatic self-disclosures to his closest friends.[6] All of these happened around the table. Jesus also seems to get into a fair amount of trouble when he eats or gets invited over for a meal.[7] You have to wonder if the disciples were popping a lot of TUMS each time they ate because they never knew what Jesus might say or who he was going to challenge.

Our text today is no exception. Luke begins chapter fourteen by saying that the Pharisees were “…watching him closely.” This was more than watching to see how Jesus held his fork. They were trying to entrap Jesus. If the first half of Luke has the religious establishment following Jesus with intrigue, the second half has a “let’s-get-him!” aura to it. As someone who doesn’t like conflict, I’m always amazed at how Jesus takes it right to those who oppose him.

In our text, Jesus watches as the guests at this dinner party start to sit down. And he comments how people were jockeying for the best seats. The most important people got to sit in the most important places. For people in ancient Israel, being honored and avoiding shame were top priorities.[8] So the seating chart was about much more than who got the first scoop of potatoes. It was about status and place in the world. But Jesus says don’t jockey for importance. Take the worst seat in the house. That’s not table etiquette, that’s Kingdom Etiquette!

Some of you over the years have invited me to go to some basketball games at the Smith Center in Chapel Hill.[9] I’ve always enjoyed these trips. My understanding about most basketball tickets is that the more you give to the University of North Carolina, the better your basketball seats will be. Give a lot, and you’ll sit down close. If you haven’t given that much, well, you’ll see more from home than you could from your seats…but at least you’re still there.

Jesus turns this way in which the world works upside down and says, “Go for the upper deck seats instead!” Go ahead and buy your basketball tickets. But then go up to Franklin Street and give them to the panhandlers who are begging for change. Has this ever happened? If I were a betting man, I’d bet not.

When have you gone for the upper deck seats in life lately…not because they were what you could afford, or what you deserved, but because you were putting someone else before yourself? When have you humbly served someone else not because it would make you feel better about yourself, but because this is Jesus’ idea of what the kingdom of God is all about? When have you actively observed Kingdom Etiquette in life?

Two weeks ago, I was in Chapel Hill at the grocery store. When I walked outside, a man said to me, “Do you know how to get to Arthur Minnis Road?” This man looked a little rough around the edges and I secretly hoped he was talking to someone behind me but he wasn’t…he was talking to me. I looked down at my purple GreatDeeds bracelet which is a visual reminder that I should try and help someone each day and so I went over and gave him directions (I was feeling pretty good about myself at this point). And then he had me. I should have known that I would be taking him somewhere and that his original question was really about getting a ride but I wasn’t that smart on this day. He said he would ride in the back of my truck and given his appearance, I didn’t even offer the front seat next to me. As I took him to his destination, I was constantly looking in my rear view mirror. I had my leaf blower and string trimmer in the back of the truck. As I think about it now, if he really wanted to steal my leaf blower and string trimmer, he could have easily done it while I went in for a few groceries, but in that moment I was sure he was going to jump out of my moving pickup with my leaf blower and string trimmer and I would never see these tools again. When we got to where he wanted out, he politely thanked me, didn’t steal my leaf blower or my string trimmer, and went on his journey.

Somehow I don’t think my efforts are exactly what Jesus has in mind when he talks about humbling ourselves and serving others. I don’t think my version of Kingdom Etiquette toward this strange man would prompt Jesus to say, “Gregg, I want you to move up to a more honorable position at my table because of what you did.” To put it bluntly, I violated some of the basics of Kingdom Etiquette.

How are your Kingdom manners these days? Are you humbly serving both those you know and the strangers you encounter? If we were all invited to sit at the table of Christ, and somehow we sat based on how we observed Kingdom Etiquette, where would you be sitting?

Amen.

[1] Roger J. Gench, “Theological Themes,” Lectionary Homiletics, September 2, 2007, p. 38.

[2] Aida Besancon Spencer, “Exegesis,” Lectionary Homiletics, September 2, 2007, p. 38.

[7] See Luke 5:27-6:5; Luke 7:36-50; Luke 10:38-42; and Luke 11:37-53. David J. Schlafer, “Preaching the Lesson,” Lectionary Homiletics, September 2, 2007, p. 43.

[8] Aida Besancon Spencer, “Exegesis,” Lectionary Homiletics, September 2, 2007, p. 38.

[9] Tim Conder, “Living By the Word,” The Christian Century, August 21, 2007, p. 18, uses a similar illustration in his article and I’ve adapted his illustration to my own experience.