Jeremiah 2: 4-13 (New Jerusalem Bible)

Luke 14:1, 7-14 (Common English Bible)

It may come as a surprise to you that Jesus did have some Pharisees who were his friends. And Jesus enjoyed dining with them. And in this story Jesus was once again invited to a dinner hosted by a Pharisee.

According to Luke, Jesus enjoys food just like we do. There are many references to eating, banquets and being at the table in Luke’s gospel. So here we find Jesus at a meal again at a Pharisee’s home and guess what, Jesus is teaching while everyone eats. Kinda reminds me when I worked at Holm’s Industry in Scottsburg, we had working lunches. I actually didn’t like them because I didn’t know whether to concentrate on the lecture or my food. Well, the food won for me.

But Jesus was not giving a lesson on how good the food was. He was explaining to the people gathered just how different the rules are in the Kingdom of God. To understand just how radical this teaching was, we need to understand the social system that was in place in 1st century Judea.

It was a system of patronage, where honor and favors were the currency. As a benefactor, favors were owed to you by others as a higher ranking in society. Mealtime was often the place where status was on display. Guests of honor sat near the speaker. If you were less important you sat farther away. If you had no status, you weren’t even invited.

But Jesus had a different idea for the ways it should work. As Jesus watched the guests at the Pharisee’s home, struggling for good seats at the table, he saw an opportunity to give them a lesson.

Jesus said, “Do not put yourself forward in places of honor, instead go to a lower seat away from the important people.” Jesus reminded the audience the table belonged to God and not Rome, so don’t act like Romans. Jesus was reminding them they were children of God and not the children of any Emperor. The Roman practice of self-promotion did not fit well with the Prophet Micah’s statement, “to walk humbly with your God.”

Jesus knew his Pharisee host would only invite the people within his own status. But it’s probable that the Pharisee thought that Jesus was his equal. Jesus had demonstrated a deep understanding of the Scriptures, and had been a knowledgeable teacher in the synagogues wherever he traveled.  

But Jesus told his Pharisee host, “You’re inviting the wrong people. By including only friends and those who can advance your status, you are no better than your guests struggling to get the best seat by the table. You're trying to make yourself look good by surrounding yourself with “important” people, while you ignore the very ones who should be enjoying your hospitality.” And churches can be like that. What if a number of people entered our church who had purple hair, rings in their nose and holes in their bluejeans to worship with us? I think it would be great and so would Jesus. It would be a sign we’re doing the right thing.

The Pharisee host probably thought he was following the protocol according to the social rules that were to be respected. It’s just like in the past when men were expected to wear a three-piece suit and tie to church. To the best of my knowledge there is nothing in the New Testament about what clothing to wear to worship. It’s just an antiquated habit and not a rule written in stone.

The social climbing for positions of importance that Jesus saw around him is no different from what we see today. People still feel the need to justify their standing in their community. People feel they need the right clothes or an expensive vehicle to show they are important.

However Jesus says, you don’t need to impress anyone. The only one whose opinion of you matters is God, and God knows your heart. 

So Jesus says to the people gathered for dinner, “Don’t seat yourself too high up the table but take the lower seat. Show the kind of humility that honors God. Then Jesus tells the host, “Don’t invite those who can repay you, but those who can’t repay you. Instead invite the poor, the unloved, those who are crippled and those forgotten by their society. Lift them up and stand with them.

In our culture, just as in Jesus’ day, we still have this division between wealth and poverty and the powerful and those without influence of any kind. And we have too many politicians today who care more about the money lobbyists can give them, than the people they're supposed to serve. An example of this was the recently passed, the “Big New Beautiful Bill.” This has to be the most misnamed bill in American history. The politicians who passed this infamous bill, knew what they were doing. They knew it would only help the rich and hurt the poor. But they didn’t care, the lobbyists with money were more important to them. This is the type of privilege that Jesus condemns. The Christ calls us to live in a radically counter-cultural way bringing equality for all God’s children. 

When we read the Book of Jeremiah it’s one of the longest books among the prophets. It is 52 chapters long but Jeremiah did live a long life despite all he went through. Born in 650 BC and died in 570 BC at the age of 80 years, apparently God had a lot of things for Jeremiah to do.

Jeremiah emerged as an important figure in the Kingdom of Judah in the late 7th and early 6th century BC. His life was marked by opposition, imprisonment and personal struggle. Central to Jeremiah’s message were prophecies of God’s judgement. One thing about the word “prophecies” back then, they were not predictions of something to happen hundreds of years in the future like Nostradamus, but more like political statements on current events. And that was issues like idolatry and social injustice. Jeremiah did preach or prophesied about the siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonian army and the subsequent Jewish captivity in Babylonia for their disbelief. And this happened in 570 BC when Jeremiah was still preaching.

The reading today from the Prophet Jeremiah demonstrates just how lost the nation of Judah has become. In this time period we’re dealing with two Jewish kingdoms. The Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah in the south. Jeremiah condemns Israel because they have rejected their own God, Yahweh. Never in their history had the people forsaken the God of their ancestors. The Israelites have rejected something of great value and replaced it with something worthless, pagan gods in stones.

When we exchange God for an idol of whatever it is, like an expensive vehicle, or house or winning a million dollars we can be changed. We become what we pursue. If we pursue something that is empty, we will become empty. If we pursue vanity, we will become vain. If we pursue darkness, we will be assimilated into that darkness. What pursuits or ambitions lead us away from the source of living water? Technology might make life easier, but technology has no soul.

Israel had been given the privilege of God’s glorious presence. The people had known God as their glory but later rejected God. Yet other nations with pagan gods during the time of Jeremiah, have never rejected their pagan gods. No one can blame God for Israel’s idolatry, but as the old saying goes, “you made your bed, and now you have to lie in it.”

Jeremiah warned God's people they committed two evils by turning away from the only true source of living water, their God Yahweh. We often make a bad mistake when we exchange God for something else. If we choose a political leader who lies, threatens people and wants revenge and puts that person on par with God as some have, there will be consequences as it was with Israel and Judah.

God cares about what we do. God feels the pain of the earth and those on it who suffer injustice. We can love God best when we love all of God’s creation. Paul Tillich, one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century, had a famous formulation for what God must be for us, namely our “Ultimate Concern” or the “Ground of Being,” is basically what Jeremiah is saying to his own people. A rejection of God leads to accepting other things as their ultimate concern. An attitude like that leads to a desire to go it alone since there is no God to them. They have no desire to follow God’s righteousness and justice for all people. 

Lives, whether ancient or modern, cannot really be fulfilled without the God who created the skies and earth, the God who sustains all that is and the God who is everliving and ever calling to spread love. AMEN.