This Gospel text from St Luke Chapter 14, verse 1, then verses 7 to 14 is used on the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C. Frequently when it comes up in the liturgical cycle preachers speak about humility. But it isn’t primarily about humility at all, it is however about relationship to Jesus.

In context, the previous passage from St Luke for 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C, was describing those who are the friends of God, and reminding us of the trials and tribulations they went through to get their seat at the banquet of heaven.

Luke Chapter 14 opens with Jesus accepting a dinner invitation at the home of an influential Pharisee. However, the missing verses 2 to 6 tell us that this dinner was far from a meeting of hearts and minds assisted by good food and drink. It begins with a man with dropsy being presented to Jesus, and since this dinner fell on a Sabbath, controversy was expected. Hence it feels like a well thought out trap, and that Jesus is more their entertainer than their guest.

Jesus, of course, heals the man. But before and after the healing He asks the assembled group of scribes and Pharisees a different question as an entry way for discussion about the Law and the Sabbath, and about normal emergency situations where the Sabbath Law gets bent (e.g. a son falls into a well).

Jesus gets met with stony silence. None of them wish to engage with Him on this issue, and Jesus must have been deeply disappointed because it should have been quite a fascinating discussion with so many learned minds in the same place. He would have been grieved too, because these men more than most knew that a rabbinical question was the starting place for learning, and this refusal indicates that there was nothing they wanted to learn from Jesus, and that their hearts were quite closed to Him.

Not deterred, as a good guest Jesus gives them something else as a discussion starter, in the form of a parable. Now a parable is a bit like a riddle, except that it uses everyday situations and includes an unexpected twist, and from that twist people could begin to fathom the purpose and meaning of the parable. The thing is, we often think of this part of scripture as pure teaching, and not a parable at all.

Perhaps, you, like me, have always envisioned a long straight banqueting table with at least 20 chairs or more, when this Gospel gets read out. But the Greek is very clear that at this dinner they were all reclining in the ancient manner. If so, please do yourself a favour, and go and read this blog post about the dining customs of Ancient Rome, and in particular how the couches were arranged in a Triclinium, and where the hosts reclined, where the higher valued guests reclined, and where the lower valued guests reclined.

The best positions had both proximity to the host, and the best uninterrupted views. The worst positions had less proximity to the host, and the worst views, and needed head swiveling when anything important took place eg. new food arriving, new guests arriving, entertainers arriving and performing.

http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/reclining-and-dining-and-drinking-in-ancient-rome/

The Romans based their practices on the Greeks, and the Greeks based their practices on the more ancient cultures of Egypt, Persia and Israel. Due to the Hellenistic era in Israel (see Maccabees), and due to the Roman occupation at the time of Jesus, everyone was familiar with this dining arrangement – and it is highly likely that the dinner Jesus went to was arranged upon similar lines.

In this parable Jesus sets two scenarios before His dining companions.

In the first scenario, a more distinguished guest arrives.
In the second scenario, Jesus suggests that the best place to aim for is the lowest place.

Most of you have had a share in arranging wedding receptions or other sit-down dinner events. Quite a lot of time is taken in working out the best seating arrangements for the guests to try and maximize everyone’s enjoyment of the occasion. Anyone at enmity with each other you wanted seated far apart from each other. Often you even work out place cards, or at least make sure all the family knows where you want each guest to sit.

The only time this apple cart gets overturned is when an uninvited guest shows up, or when someone who didn’t think he could make it suddenly finds that he can.

With the Jewish emphasis on hospitality, and the necessity of finding lodgings on a journey of several days, having an uninvited guest, or a guest added at the last minute, was far from uncommon.

In fact, this parable could easily be called the parable of the uninvited guest, or the parable of the extra guest.

The context in which Jesus placed this parable was the jockeying for the best reclining positions that went on as they entered the dining area, and this jockeying had probably even begun as each one arrived and had a guess at where he fitted on the pecking order of influence.

For them this dinner was more about enhancing or maintaining their power and influence than anything else. At such dinners among influential scribes and Pharisees lots of insider deals were done, or sensitive information shared.

Can you get the image of a group of men playing a game of one-up-man-ship among themselves to decide who is the most important person to take the best dining position near the host? Can you see that such a masculine gaggle completely ignores whatever the host may want? Can you perceive the underlying assumption that the host plays these games too, and that for them this group of men such behaviour is quite normal?

Now look back at the parable of Jesus, in the first part the host says, ‘Give up your place to this man’. It’s rather brusque, isn’t it? And it is more likely said to an acquaintance or to an unknown, than to a friend.

In the second part of the parable of Jesus, the host says, ‘My friend, move up higher’.

Therefore, it is friendship with the host that determines your table place far more than any power and influence you may wield.

To some extent, the advice of Jesus is practical, since if you are an uninvited guest or a latecomer, then it is pragmatic to take the lowest place, and not earn everyone else’s wrath for dislodging them from where they were. Far better for the host to initiate that rearrangement. The advice of Jesus also contains a revelation; because if you take His advice, you will learn whether how close you think your relationship with the host is matches how close the host thinks your relationship is – especially if your host leaves you in that lowest place.

When we think of the heavenly banquet to come, and Who the divine host will be, perhaps we will now put a lot more effort into our relationship with God, and a lot less effort in comparing ourselves to others.

Jesus also leaves us clues about how to improve our relationship with God.

Remember that He said, ‘Which of you, if his son falls into a well, or his ox, will not pull him out on a Sabbath day without any hesitation?’

What did Jesus do? He healed the man with dropsy without hesitation. This man, despised by the dinner group, was considered as important as a son or an ox to Jesus.

Let that sink in.

Consider that the vast number of recipients of the miracles of Jesus were poor, or crippled, or lame, or blind…. Consider how many miracles were worked for scribes and Pharisees.

Who was the one excluded from the dinner? The man healed of dropsy.

Who would Jesus have included, if He were the host for this dinner beyond all the others? The man healed of dropsy.

What else did Jesus tell us? ‘When you have a party, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind’.

He is inviting us to get to know the people who are special to Him, and the ones He highly values. Doing good towards whom Jesus accounts as His friends is the path of wisdom. Even on earth, if you help a friend that I care about, my heart is going to be extra kindly disposed towards you, yes?

Is any of this about humility?
Is all of this about friendship with Jesus?
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May the Lord Jesus grant us the grace to act upon this. Amen.

The Gospel for this Sunday, the 11th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B, comes from a section of parables of Jesus given in Chapter 4 of St Mark’s Gospel. These two parables about the wheat and the mustard seed are about the growth of the kingdom of God.

To understand these parables we need to have a better grasp of the development of wheat plants and mustard seed plants.

I found these websites helpful for wheat
https://www.agric.wa.gov.au/grains/zadoks-growth-scale
http://wheatdoctor.org/wheat-growth-stages-and-zadok-s-scale

The most striking thing is how much the wheat plant changes during its growth from seed to maturity and harvest. From seed a seedling springs, then something that looks like green leafy grass, then a stem forms and grows, eventually the flag leaf grows and the ear of wheat begins to emerge, and grow, and then to dry out, brown and harden.

Like the mustard seed, the beginning is small and insignificant.

At the end is a swift, sharp sickle when the grains of wheat are ripe, and farmers watch over their crops like mother hens until the perfect time for harvesting to maximize yield comes.

From our vantage point of history we can see how the Church has grown and changed significantly many times since that first Pentecost in the upper room. The Church under early persecution looked very different to the Church after Constantine and the age of the Desert Fathers; that was followed by the age of the monasteries eg Benedictines; and the age of the mendicant preaching orders eg Franciscans and Dominicans, the age of the crusades, the age of the missionary orders eg Jesuits; the age of the teaching orders eg Josephites, and the age of the laity/charismatic renewal. It is still the same Church fueled by the power of the Holy Spirit, even though it might look and feel different to anyone who lived through Vatican II.

This perspective should help us yield more responsively to how the Holy Spirit wants us to grow and change into the next era.

He is in control.

The most likely candidate for the kind of mustard plant Jesus referred to is the black mustard. Of the seeds planted in the ground, it is the smallest. What gave me a surprise is that it is an annual not a perennial plant. It would have been common in kitchen gardens. Apart from being a plant with a small seed, it has explosive growth, and it looks a lot more like a big weed than a tree.

When the Holy Spirit is active, kingdom growth is exponential not linear. That kind of rapid growth is one of the ways that alerts us that the Holy Spirit is moving upon something. The praise & worship band, Praise Nation, from Pittsburgh USA, didn’t know how many would come to an initial adoration and praise night in their parish, but 120 showed up the first week, 250 showed up the next week, 500 showed up the 3rd week, and 5000 showed up when it was transferred to the cathedral. That kind of growth doesn’t happen naturally.

With both plants the good stuff (wheat, mustard seeds) has to be separated from the useless chaff at harvest time. With both plants, threshing and winnowing is used to do that process. This reminds me of other parables where Jesus promises the separation of the good and the bad at the end of time.

With both plants there is an insignificant beginning, rapid growth, lots of change, and a definite end at the perfect time for harvest, and a separation of good stuff from useless stuff, and the whole process takes time to unfold.

What can we conclude?

God is in control.
God is in control of His kingdom.
God causes the growth of His kingdom.
His kingdom is characterized by small, insignificant beginnings, explosive growth, significant periodic change, and a swift fruitful harvest which happens at maximum ripeness separating the good from the not good.
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Let us be intentionally co-operative with this kingdom plan of His, trust Him, trust Him more than we ever have before, and do whatever is our necessary part to be numbered among the fruit and not the chaff when harvest time comes. Amen.

Why do You talk to them in parables?

This is a question the disciples put to Jesus in the 13th Chapter of St Matthew’s Gospel. Many of us still ask that question.

Part of the answer is that human beings were made to love puzzles. We find in ancient cultures deep appreciation for the riddle, and in biblical cultures appreciation for teaching through use of mashal or allegory. Consider the modern equivalent, the meme, which we all like trying to decode, even if we don’t always succeed at it.

A good parable is something that you chew over, and look at from different angles, with a group of friends or relatives, sharing insights and arguing over meaning and interpretation. They are, in essence, discussion starters.

But St Matthew’s Gospel provides us with a reasonable answer to why Jesus used parables, and why after a period of public ministry without parables He started using them almost exclusively.

The beginning of Chapter 13 says, ‘that same day, Jesus left the house and sat by the lakeside, but such large crowds gathered round Him that He got into a boat and sat there. The people all stood on the shore, and He told them many things in parables’.

So what happened earlier that day?

Chapter 12 has Jesus curing a blind and dumb demoniac and then He gets accused of being Beelzebul, and then the scribes and Pharisees ask for a sign (none of the previous healings and miracles are enough for them, they want to set the conditions for a sign they will accept, God has to dance to their tune first before they will consider dancing to His), and then family members demand words with Him, so it hasn’t exactly been a good day for Jesus. For all His efforts up to this point don’t seem to be bearing the fruits of repentance He has been looking for, otherwise He would not in Chapter 11 have called down reproaches upon the Galilean towns where most of His miracles had been worked.

In order for any of us to get closer to God in our lives, something has to change. If we do the same things, how can we expect different outcomes? Yet frequently our response is, ‘I don’t want to change’, ‘I don’t need to change’, ‘there’s nothing in my life that needs changing’, ‘I am quite content as I am thanks, quit trying to upset my equilibrium’, ‘the person sitting over there needs more change than I do’. And this seems to be exactly what Jesus was facing, crowds of people happy to see miracles happen, and happy to listen to good teaching, and happy to continue doing so, (Jesus had very high entertainment value), but very few allowing that teaching to transform the way they were living.

So we see Jesus in that post lunch / siesta time go and sit by the lakeside, letting prayer and natural beauty do their work in freeing Him from the frustrations of the morning. It is a time of pause. It is a time of re-set. It is time to try a different approach to the hearts of His listeners.

The easy to understand stuff, the sermon on the mount, the miracles and healings, haven’t born the expected levels of fruit. Something different is needed, something that engages hearts and minds more, something that requires some personal effort.

As Jesus sits on the lakeside, gradually the crowd gathers behind Him, and an expectancy grows. This time when Jesus preaches, it is different. This time He begins to use parables.

The first parable, the sower and the seed, is very instructive.

What is the purpose of sowing seed? To get a good harvest. And where is that good harvest?

It isn’t in those who aren’t paying attention (seed on the path).

It isn’t in those who get excited about what Jesus is saying, and then do nothing much about it (seed on rocky ground with little depth) or fall away very quickly.

It isn’t in those who make a start, and good progress, and then give up halfway through the process (seed among thorns).

It is in those who go through the whole process of transformation, in those who wrestle with the words of Jesus until they come to understanding, and then let that understanding change the way they live.

And how do you get to that sort of harvest? By using parables.

Because those who aren’t interested won’t bother.
 
Because those who want quick and easy answers will give up without much of a struggle.

Because those who will give it a go, and attempt to come to understanding, but who fail to reach full understanding because the cost of change is beyond them, will sooner or later give up.

Because those who patiently work at understanding, and who persevere at it, until the understanding fully comes and who then change their lives accordingly, they are the kind of disciples you really want. And using parables is an efficient way of finding them. These are the ones who make mature commitment to discipleship, and the process takes time, it isn’t quick.

Parables are how you find disciples from among the crowds.

There are at least two implications for us:

Firstly, that if the word of God is not challenging us nor changing us, then we haven’t understood it properly. Jesus really wants to see fruits of repentance in us. Why? Because change is the gateway to the kingdom of God and our greatest happiness. ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand’ is what both Jesus and John the Baptist preached.

Secondly, if you issue a call to action, the ones you want aren’t in the first wave of responders, nor in the second wave of responders, the ones you really want are in the third wave of responders, on them alone can you build something that will last.