TRIGGER warning: the beginning and end of this reflection use a sporting analogy that readers with no enthusiasm for the beautiful game may find tiresome.
READING this Gospel is like getting comfy on the sofa to watch a football match on television, then waking up only to discover that you dozed off straight after the kick-off, and have missed the whole of the first half. You know the score, because it is on the screen. But the substitutions and set-piece moves, the drama and the pointless arguments with the ref — they are lost to you.
Luke 14.7-14 is like the second half of a football match. We have to rewind, and read with 14.1-6 in mind. Jesus is on his way to dinner, a sabbath meal at the house of a leading Pharisee, when he encounters a man with “dropsy” (oedema). Of course he heals the man. Jesus’s message to the bystanders who criticise him for sabbath-breaking is that God’s healing is a 24/7/365 imperative.
What happens next reads like a foundation Gospel for the Church of England: “Choose a seat at the back.” In the case of the man with dropsy, the Law of Moses seemed to speak clearly about the proper course of conduct. But it turns out that only context can enable us to interpret the Law appropriately. In the case of the dinner and the invited guests, the Mosaic Law does not apply. So, thoughtful guests have to fall back on manners, consideration, or — as those who cannot resist codifying the uncodifiable would label it — “etiquette”.
No one wants to make themselves appear arrogant, as in this story of the dinner. But false modesty can be just as socially inappropriate. The term “humble-brag” has not yet made it into my beloved Oxford English Dictionary, but it will. My two top tips, both born of experience, for avoiding social assumptions that can cause excruciating shame are: (1) among students in Freshers’ Week, never ask someone, when you meet them for the first time, if they are also a fresher (they always turn out to be finalists, or postgrads, or even members of the teaching staff). And (2) never, ever, EVER ask a woman when her baby is due unless she’s already told you that she is pregnant.
Act humbly, and you may be exalted: because if you act arrogantly, you may well find yourself humiliated. Very sensible. But there is a risk in such humility, not mentioned in the Gospel. You may end up eating your dinner feeling unappreciated, passed over, because no host appears at your elbow to say those cheering words, “Friend, come up higher.”
The Gospel world is a hierarchical world, in which everyone recognises that some people are more important than others, and so deserve preferential treatment — everyone, that is, except Jesus. The last section of this Gospel, vv.12-14, carries the point further. This turns what had looked (in vv.8-11) like an embarrassment for some of the guests into a reflection upon the host. Why was that host inviting only the kind of people who would be fighting over the best seats? A better host, a better person, would be filling his house with “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind” (v.13) — if not because the host wanted them there, then because the host had the sense to do what it takes to receive a blessing from the Lord.
Here is a useful message: if we cannot do the right thing for the best reasons, still doing the right thing because it is “the right thing” carries some weight with God. Not all of us are naturally compassionate, sympathetic, or (for that matter) comfortable in the presence of a large bunch of strangers. But we can still know and do what is right, because it is what God has told us that he wants from us.
At the time of writing this, the new Premier League season is about to begin. I am already participating in a different method of seat selection — not one commended in this Gospel (though it is known from elsewhere as a biblical method of making choices: Acts 1.26). Better seats are available to those who can afford them. But corporate hospitality and posh refreshments will never produce the same thrilling sense of inclusion and common endeavour that sitting in the “lowest places” does — even if those lowest places are still disgracefully overpriced.