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The Gospel according to Luke 14:1, 7-14

Last week Jesus called us to talk about hell. If you missed it, you can pick up a copy in the back of the church. This week, Jesus calls us to talk about what I think is a closely related subject — manners. Etiquette.

Well, of course, manners are different from hell because we need manners. Manners are the oil that lubricates social contact, and you only need to be with someone with bad manners for a little while to realize how important manners are.

But manners and etiquette have a dark side as well, and it’s a dark side that Southerners like me have been steeped in. Ralph Waldo Emerson called manners, "An impassable wall of defense." They have also been called, "The art of wearing appropriate masks." All too often, manners consist of being disingenuous according to prearranged and socially acceptable rules.

When I have supervised small groups in the Disciples of Christ in Community program, manners, politeness, turns out to be one of the greatest stumbling blocks to intimacy. The small groups provide participants with an opportunity to share their faith and their doubts and their joys and disappointments and their lives with one another in a confidential setting. But often they don’t, because they think it would be rude to share their feelings. They’ve been taught since childhood that when someone asks, "How are you," your answer, no matter what the setting or who is asking, or how much pain you’re in, should be, "I’m fine, how are you?"

And when someone in the group shares something and other people in the group hear that the excuse the speaker is giving doesn’t make sense, or that the speaker, while denying being in pain, clearly has it oozing from every pore, they don’t say anything, they don’t name that truth, because they "don’t want to be rude." So sometimes people sit together once a week for nine months in a small group organized for the purpose of sharing and they are too polite to get to know one another.

Yes, yes, we need manners and etiquette, but when they obscure the truth that should be heard, they become little socially accepted customs of isolation and dishonesty — rituals of hell.

One time Charlotte and I were leaving a dinner party (long ago and far away), and as we got to the door, the hostess lied and said, "It has been wonderful having you. I hope we can do this again sometime." It had not been wonderful. She did not want to do this again. The other couple they invited got drunk, and the husband challenged me on my views about race. I rose to the bait (despite the fact that I knew better than to do that with a drunk), and we spent much of the evening in a rather unpleasant argument. The host husband, who was clearly uncomfortable, coped by getting drunk himself (but at least he was a quiet drunk). So when his wife said, "I hope we can do this again sometime," we both knew it was a socially acceptable, good mannered, lie.

And I said, "Yes, that would be fun." That was a lie too. Not a terrible lie, and it got us out the door, which was, of course, the object. But I wonder how our relationship might have been different if I’d told her the truth, not in a cruel way, but told her how I felt, and then listened as she told me how she felt. I wonder what might have happened in our relationship (which pretty much ended that night) if we hadn’t been polite.

Well, Jesus doesn’t have to wonder. He went to a dinner party and wasn’t polite at all.

The Pharisee, an important man of social rank, who invited him had thought it was a brilliant move. Jesus was the talk of the town, and he was coming through on his way to Jerusalem. Either he would live up to his billing and be smart and witty and interesting, an asset to any dinner party, or, under the watchful eye of this elite guest list, he would embarrass himself, show that he didn’t have the refinement to run with this crowd. Either way, it should be very entertaining, a "no-lose" proposition.

Now Jesus was a pretty perceptive guy, and he when he got there, he quickly saw that the their dinner parties were completely different from the ones we have today. The host and his wife thought, "We can’t have a dinner party and not invite the people who have had us to their house. Their feelings would be hurt." (We’d never do that). So, over the course of time, the list pretty much got set, and the same people came and only the houses changed. (That would never happen to us). And without ever mentioning it, rituals developed. There were the people who would be first in the buffet line. There were the people who were special guests and would get more of the host’s attention. There were the people who would always sit near the host. There was one man who tended to monopolize the conversation, but you had to invite him. And there were the people who would listen, and the people who would be heard. They were the people who were the focus of attention of every circle of four or five they were in. (None of that, of course, would be true about our dinner parties).

These folks knew each other well enough to know what to expect. The same people pigging out. The same disguised bragging. The same prima donnas. The same stories. It was comfortable, and the rules of etiquette were followed, and people were polite, and all the social contacts were well oiled with good manners.

And Jesus arrives like sand in that social ball bearing. As soon as he gets there, he heals a man swollen with edema. Bad move. Social faux pas. This was the Sabbath, and it was forbidden to heal on the Sabbath. When he saw their stares, he said, "Wouldn’t you pull your child out of a well on the Sabbath?" They were amazed, but they didn’t answer.

Then he notices how they choose the places of honor. It is a well-practiced ritual that avoids confusion and conflict and settles the issues of who gets to sit where, who is allowed to dominate, who gives way, who speaks and raises his voice so that the others will have to hear, and whose voice is not heard. In other words, it is a ritual depicting the socially correct, societally sanctioned, by-the-Amy-Vanderbilt-book, pecking order.

And Jesus, who has already insulted his host and everyone else, now says "When you go to a wedding banquet –[the place where etiquette reigns supreme]– you ought not to take the high place and run the risk of being embarrassed by the host asking you to go lower. Take the low place, then if you are asked to go up, you’ll be honored."

Well, going to the low place so you can be called up in front of everybody to go higher sounds a little manipulative. But Jesus makes it clear that it won’t work if it’s just another way to make yourself look good: "All who exalt themselves will be humbled," he says, "and those who humble themselves will be exalted."

Can you imagine this dinner party now? The host scans the faces in the room. It’s just as he expected. Nervous glances. Uncomfortable titters. Suppressed rage. And one guy, who never has had any social graces and never did fit in very well, trying not to laugh out loud.

"It can’t get any worse," the host thinks. Then it gets worse. Jesus turns to the host and says (in front of everybody), "By the way, when you have these little soirees, don’t invite people you owe invitations to or who will owe you an invitation." (Meaning, of course, everybody there.) "Instead," he says, "Invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they can’t repay you."

Well, Luke’s description of this memorable dinner party goes on. I’m not going to go into all the rest of it, except to tell you what you might have guessed; it doesn’t get any better. Jesus is still astoundingly honest, and stunningly rude.

So, I said before that I wondered what would have happened if I had been honest instead of polite. Well, here’s what can happen, I suppose. People might be talking about that dinner party two thousand years later. And all because Jesus refused to play ball, refused to be polite.

So, should all the children here today go home and say, "I learned in church today that God wants me to be rude?" Well, the answer is: maybe. But God doesn’t want you to be rude just to be rude. Or because you don’t know the rules. Or just to hurt someone.

So how do you know when to be polite and when God is calling you to be rude like Jesus was rude? You have to remember how Jesus sees a dinner party.

When Jesus sits down to eat with people, he’s always thinking of that as an opportunity to get a foretaste of the heavenly banquet. We lose sight of what that dinner party is like. We can get encrusted with so many rules and concerns that we can lose our ability to even imagine it. But try for a minute. Try to imagine a dinner party where everyone knows they are invited solely because they are loved just because of who they are, and not for what they do, or their position, or their status, or their money. Just for who they are. And they know that they could never, never repay the invitation, and that’s just fine, because they aren’t invited to get something back.

And try to imagine a dinner party where the people there love one another that same way. So much so that, as we heard in the letter to the Hebrews, they treat strangers like angels. So much that if one of them is in prison, they remember that person as if they are in prison with them. So much that if one is tortured, they remember that person as though they were being tortured. They don’t look down on the poor, or the crippled, or the lame, or the blind. These are their brothers and sisters, and they share their infirmities and rejoice that those people are at the banquet.

The rules of polite behavior that Jesus saw at the Pharisee’s dinner party (and at many of our dinner parties) would be rude at the banquet in heaven. The rules of polite behavior that Jesus saw at many of our dinner parties would be rude at the banquet in heaven.

So, flying in the face of my Southern heritage, here is how to tell when God is calling you to be rude: when you find yourself in a situation where to be polite at that dinner party would mean being rude at the banquet in heaven. That’s when I think you should be rude!

And when people get really upset about it (and they will), try saying this to them, "Why don’t we leave this party and go somewhere else? I know another party where we can get something to eat. And it’s a place where there is a whole different set of rules."