If only we could get Jesus to stick to spiritual things. He keeps straying into politics and business. And if that isn’t bad enough, in our text from Luke today he’s all about how we organize our social calendar. He thinks it matters whom we invite to our dinner parties and where we sit when we go to one. What’s that about? Why would a spiritual messiah be so interested in social etiquette?

One of my secret pleasures is clicking over to public television on Sunday nights and hearing the phone ring. Then this: The Bucket residence. The lady of the house speaking. The show is called Keeping Up Appearances. Patricia Routledge plays the socially ambitiou, Hyacinth, who is married to the hen-pecked, longsuffering Richard Bucket. She insists that Bucket should be pronounced bouquet, which better conveys blue-blood status. But Hyacinth comes from a working-class family with three other sisters who are also named for flowers: Daisy, Rose, and Violet. Hyacinth’s actions are all structured around how to situate Richard and her within the proper caste. She especially enjoys throwing dinner parties that she calls “candlelight suppers.” Only the best of society is invited, though usually they don’t come. The show reveals something about us: we are all of us all too concerned with measuring ourselves upward.

Brooke Astor died three years ago at the age of 105. She was called the Queen of New York City. She helped maintain the social diary of the city, making sure everyone knew who was in and who was out. In fact, she carefully made out a guest list of special friends who should be invited to her funeral. It was open to the public at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, which was founded by her late husband’s great-grandfather, but there was enough security present to discourage the wrong people from entering. Ironically, very few of those on Lady Astor’s special friends list showed up at the reception afterward. And when reporters asked passers-by on the street in front of the church if they knew who she was, few did.

The entire occasion was overshadowed by tension over her relationship with her son, Anthony Marshall, and his wife, Charlene. They were accused of elder abuse of Mrs. Astor and of robbing her estate. He was acquitted of the abuse but convicted of stealing from his mother, and at 85 he was sentenced to prison. It’s a curious thing, isn’t it, that people who were so desperate to separate themselves from the hoi polloi should end up with them—mother sharing an address in the cemetery with commoners, and son condemned to sharing an address with common criminals.[1]

Jesus uses a social occasion, a dinner party at a Pharisee’s house, to make two eternally important spiritual points. First, the humble will be exalted in the end, while the exalted will be humbled. And two, we should arrange our social relationships to fit the guest list of heaven.

As for the first, Jesus warns us not to spend our lives trying to elevate ourselves socially above other people. He tells about jockeying for the best seat at the table near the host at a dinner party. How embarrassing, he says, for you to assume you are the most esteemed guest and then have to be asked to move down to make way for someone the host values more highly. Better to work it the other way and be asked to move up.

One problem with seeking public recognition of your importance is that it requires not only that you be a winner but also that someone else be a loser. I know of a country club in Dallas that doesn’t just evaluate candidates for membership on the basis of their own merit; they have to be matched against another applicants. In other words, in order to maintain the sense of it being exclusive, every time someone is welcomed to the club, someone else is told they are not invited. And if you think that’s just a grownup exercise, all you have to do is visit a junior high school lunchroom or an elementary school playground. Social segregation is alive and well among the young, too. And where do you think they learn it?

When we come to church, we are not coming here to reinforce one more time that we are a certain kind of people who can gather with a certain kind of people and keep the lines of the world clear. We are here to make clear a different world. See, when we look at ourselves in the lens of the social register, we get to thinking that what we have is all because of who we are. So if you have a lot, it’s because you deserve it. And if you don’t, that too is because you deserve it. Which is fine reckoning by most people’s standards, since it keeps us all striving to do more and to be more. Merit is a good thing, as far as it goes. But it goes only so far. It goes only as far as the cemetery. We need a way of reckoning that takes us further. We need something that defeats the downward pull of the grave—which is why we call it gravity, don’t you know?! We need the power of levity to overcome it. We need something that gives us real and lasting upward mobility.

And that something is only the resurrection power of God’s grace in Jesus Christ. Our own deserving saves none of us; the gravity of our sin pulls us all down. And unless we acknowledge that and confess our humble estate before God, God can’t raise us up. God will have to first tell us that we deserve a lower place. Do I need to tell you what the lower place is on the other side of the grave?

We come to church to change the world by being changed ourselves. We are here to practice a different way of life and to model it for others so that the world will not be afraid to embrace differences. If the poor and the crippled, the lame and the blind are going to be at the heavenly banquet table of God, we’d better make sure we are sitting next to them in this life, lest we are ones who are left out.

And this takes discipline for us. We have all sorts of reasons why we live in neighborhoods with only people of relatively equal net worth, why we send our kids to schools with kids who are just like us, and why we cultivate friendships with people who care about things that preserve our self-interest. But that only means we have to try harder to counteract this. When we take mission trips to the Dominican Republic and when we send our kids there, we are not just doing charity work for the less fortunate; we are looking after our own spiritual welfare. We are making sure that we ourselves have a place at the table of God. When we tutor at a public school with at-risk kids, we put ourselves in touch with those whose salvation and ours are tied together. When a family takes in a foster child or adopts a kid who was abandoned, they are changing themselves and giving the world a picture of the kingdom to come. And when our church gathers at the Table of the Lord and we refuse to discriminate as to who is welcome there—save those who call upon the name of the Lord— we are rehearsing for the heavenly banquet to come.

Thomas Lee Jones is a spokesman for the advisory committee of the New York social register. He defends the admittance criteria this way: In truth, he says, the register is run in a very wholesome way. A 25-member advisory board simply asks themselves this question when evaluating a candidate: ‘Would one want to have dinner with this person on a regular basis?’[2]

There it is. The same simple way of putting it that Jesus gave us, but with a different assumption about the outcome. Is it really a “very wholesome” thing to give in to the ways of the world that separate people from one another on a basis that breaks down at the cemetery? Isn’t it more wholesome to unify people around the way God will welcome us on the other side?

That word wholesome: do you know that the word for salvation can also be translated wholesome? To be saved is to be made whole. To be saved is to be put back together after the world has broken us apart. One of the chief ways the world breaks us apart is by dividing us rich and poor, or the able and the disabled. That’s why Jesus says we should invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.

It’s also why we have to work to make our church a place that models that. In Jesus’ day some religious people were more brazen about keeping clear of the wrong people. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947 in small cliffside caves. Among the 900 documents discovered that dated from Jesus’ day was one that imagined the guest list for the great banquet of God. All the wise men of the congregation, the learned and the intelligent, men whose way is perfect and men of ability … the men of renown. Interesting. But then this: No man smitten in his flesh, or paralyzed in his feet or hands, or lame or blind, or deaf, or dumb, or smitten in his flesh with a visible blemish; no old and tottery man unable to stay still in the midst of the congregation; none of these shall come … among the congregation of the men of renown, for the Angels of Holiness are [with] their [congregation].[3]

By those standards, how many of us would qualify? I’m personally getting a little worried about that old-and-tottery-man thing. Sounds like a weak bladder problem getting all too close to home. But to this, Jesus declares in his best Bill Maher impression: New Rules!

Julio Diaz seems to get it. When he stepped off the 6 Train in the Bronx one night as per his routine, he planned to head for his favorite diner. The 31-year-old social worker found the platform deserted save for a teenage boy who approached him with a knife in the stairwell and demanded his wallet. Julio gave it to him. The boy started walking away. Julio called after him: Hey, … you forgot something. If you’re going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm. The boy looked at him like he was crazy and asked why he was doing that.

Julio replied: If you’re willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess you must really need the money. I mean, all I wanted to do was get dinner and if you really want to join me ... hey, you’re more than welcome.

Before long the man and the teenager were sitting across from one another at a diner. The boy was amazed that Julio knew the names of all the people who worked there, including the dishwasher. Julio asked if the boy hadn’t been taught to be nice to everyone. Yes, he said, but I didn’t think people actually behaved that way. When the bill came, Julio told the boy that if he gave him his wallet back, he would pay the bill. He did. Then his gave the boy $20 in return for the boy’s knife. Julio asked the young man what he wanted out of life. He said he didn’t know, but I suspect he had a better idea as he walked away into the darkness after meeting Julio Diaz.[4]

Will anyone have a better idea of what they want out of life after meeting you or me?

The word etiquette comes from the French, meaning ‘ticket.’ Apparently, when we get out of this life ourselves, our ticket to the table for our next meal will depend upon whether we have eaten in this life with the kind of people Jesus welcomes. Hmm.