Hello my friends,

I wanted to look at one of Christ's parables with you today. One that I think is so relevant to our current cultural moment and how we see our Christianity in relationship to politics and our culture.

Before we dive into that, I wanted to recommend a few things that have me thinking lately.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

-If you haven't heart Brian Zahnd's interview with Carey Nieuwhof, I highly recommend giving it a listen. It is called "CNLP 512: Brian Zahnd on Understanding Deconstruction, Nietzsche, Nihilism and the Alternative to Christianity, and the Oddity of Post-Christian America." It is so rich, moving, and compelling.

-One of the interviews I feel like didn't get the press it should have is the one with Harvard historian Caroline Elkins on Fresh Air. She is an expert on the study of empires. She has some enormously helpful insights on the legacy of the British Empire and the fusion between church and state as well as an interesting perspective on the empire of the United States. You can listen to that interview here.

-If you are looking for an interesting mini-series that also sheds light on American history, I would recommend the "Satanic Panic." Investigative journalists look into one of the most unsettling parts of 1980s America, where conspiracies of Satan worshipers abducting and abusing children swept the nation. Learning about this part of our history put in better context for me the recent conspires we have seen as well as how this has been a feature of the American landscape since the Salam Witch Trials. It can be a touch listen at points, but it is full of lessons for us today.

-I am about to begin reading the book called, "Poverty, by America" written by Matthew Desmond, who is the Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of Evicted reimagines the debate on poverty, making a new and bracing argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it. If you decide to read it as well, let me know.

Okay, onto today's content.

The Gospel Comforts the Disturbed and Disturbs the Comfortable

First, let's read Luke 14:1,7-14:

Jesus at a Pharisee’s House

14 One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched.

7 When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table, he told them this parable: 8 “When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. 9 If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this person your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. 10 But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all the other guests. 11 For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

12 Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. 13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

In this passage, it really feels like Jesus is trying to teach us how to never get invited to another party for as long as we live, right?

Like, imagine you’re at a friend’s wedding reception or retirement party, and as soon as people started finding their seats, some random guest stood up, grabbed the microphone, and started telling the whole room a parable.

"Hey everyone, just so you know, when someone invites you to a wedding feast, you shouldn't take the places of honor.”

But then they didn’t stop there.

No, they turned to the host of the party or even the bride and groom and said, “Also, when people like you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid.”

Give that a shot at the next wedding you go to and let me know how it goes. (No, not really. Please don't.).

So we have to ask, why did Jesus feel prompted to share this parable at that gathering? What significance does it have for us today?

Let me show you how this parable can play out in a church today through a meme. Sometimes, I think memes are a parable in one picture, right? Here we go:

I don't know if you find this funny, but as a pastor, this meme made me laugh out loud.

I can't tell you how many times I have seen this happen or have heard from fellow pastors of it happening in their church.

It's funny because it's true. It's also sad because it's true, right?

Pastors like myself are constantly told by church members that they want young families at their churches. That they want their churches to grow, yet when new people come in and take their spot, it is how they respond to their presence that shows how they really feel. Will they be more upset or celebrate a new person being there?

What I always try to tell church people is that, while people may visit a church for whatever reason, their decision to stay or not depends on how they are treated by us, both individually and institutionally.

It really comes down to how we treat others.

The same was true in our passage from Luke. In the culture Jesus was living in, social hierarchy was very rigid, and shaped gatherings like the one Jesus is attending. Everyone knew who was at the top and what is more, who was the lowest.

So of course, gatherings like this could turn into people showing off their status and wealth or trying to make themselves appear higher in status than others. It really encouraged people to be elitist and prideful.

Those seen as "the lower class," the poor, the differently abled, or those who simply didn’t fit in, would just not be invited.

Gatherings like this could often turn into a vivid display of the haves and the have nots. But, that wasn’t just true for the culture of Christ’s day, right?

Really, in every cultural context, public perceptions influence how someone is seen, addressed, and treated. 

Ideological frameworks render people and groups by the categories of particular norms, biases, exclusions, and hierarchies of value. Such categories can produce a variety of effects along a spectrum from harmful to the liberating.

For example, in an oppressive system that attaches moral significance to economic privilege, someone living in poverty or dependent on public assistance might be stigmatized as immoral, lazy, or incompetent.

We see this often in capitalistic societies like ours where even helping people who have been stigmatized in such ways can be seen as "immoral" or "creating systems of entitlement."

But for Luke, those living in economic insecurity, the “lowly” (1:52), are categorized as cherished recipients of God’s favor and support in times of distress. Luke’s narratives compels believers to resist ideologies that diminish the humanity of others in any way!

As Carolyn J. Sharp, professor of Hebrew Scriptures at Yale Divinity school says so beautifully, "God’s realm is built not on the displays of wealth, prestige, or political influence, but on love of the neighbor, even in conditions of conflict (Luke 6:27–36)."

This parable is about entitlement and privilege and how our relationships are shaped by them.

For example, I know that as a white, straight, Christian man in America, especially as a pastor, I have historically had a place of honor reserved at the table for me, especially in places like Idaho.

I was born here in Idaho, grew up here, I know how it works. Just look at the positions of power in our culture. You will see more people who look like me than anyone else.

People who are making decisions and laws for others whose life experiences are vastly different from their own in almost every way. This can have a dramatic impact, even a deeply harmful impact on the people around us when decisions are made for them by people who are deeply ignorant of their lived circumstances.

To put it in the terms of Christ's parable, what kind of person can afford to through lavish dinner parties? What happens when people who can afford to throw lavish dinner parties only invite others who can afford to throw lavish dinner parties? Who gets left out?

When those who have power and influence only share with others who have power and influence, the vulnerable and the marginalized are neglected and harmed. Every. Single. Time.

Jesus wanted to change all that.

You see, Jesus' mama, holy Mary, had a prophetic song about him before he was born in the gospel of Luke (1:46-55).

She sang that he would "fill the hungry with good things and send the rich away empty." She sang that he would "lift up the lowly and pull the powerful from their thrones." She was singing about how the revelation of God in Jesus would turn systems where wealth and power are abused upside down. Where the most vulnerable, those who are treated as the last to receive good things in the current systems of power and privilege will be the first to inherit the kingdom of God.

Jesus also echos this vision so many times, like most famously in Matthew 20, “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

This is why I called my newsletter today, “the gospel comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable.” Because this gospel that Jesus comes to bring is really good news to the poor. It is also really good news for those who have been given positions of privilege and power who are radically focused on using those positions to help the poor. But it isn’t good news for those who want to continue securing and maintaining their own power and wealth at the expense of others.

For them, the gospel of Jesus isn’t good news. For folks like King Herod, the rich young ruler, Caesar Augustus and others in the New Testament, all men of great wealth and power, they didn’t respond super joyously to a teenage peasant girl singing in the streets about how God is going to turn their systems that exploit people like her upside down.

They weren't thrilled with the idea of being "pulled from their thrones" and "sent away empty." It wasn't good news for them because they were only concerned with having good news for themselves and no one else.

Remember, Mary is named after Miriam, who sang “the horse and rider fell into the sea,” after God liberated her people from the oppressive systems of Egypt. This gospel has been the theme of scripture from the beginning.

Side note: I honestly think this is why some Christian traditions don’t allow women in leadership. God uses them too powerfully to disrupt the status quo. What these traditions miss though is that God will use bold women as leaders whether the church will allow it or not. God has already given them a place of honor at the table and we as the church shouldn't stand in their way.

It is this gospel that Jesus is describing in this parable of the dinner party. It compels us to ask ourselves, "how do we order our relationships, social standing, economic standing, religious status, and leadership around privilege and power, rather than humility and generosity?"

How does our cultural context shape our social hierarchy?  What is the ideological framework measures people and groups by the light of particular norms, biases, exclusions, and hierarchies of value?

I’ll give you an example by confessing how I allowed bias to shape my perception of someone this week.

I was walking through my church's food pantry on Monday night. So many people were leaving with their food while a lot of others were waiting together in our lobby to get food for their families.

As I was walking back to my office through the lobby, I saw someone loading their food into a fairly new Mercedes SUV.

Some of you are already ahead of me and can see where this is going, right? I was really frustrated with myself, because you know what my first thought was? A snap judgment.

The old fundamentalist in me thought, “if they can afford that car, what are they doing at our food pantry?!”

Makes me sick looking back on it. That’s the framework of rugged individualism. The gospel of "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps." Like, “If you can afford that car, you shouldn’t be at OUR food pantry or seated here at OUR table.”

I caught myself making snap judgments based on the social hierarchy of our capitalistic culture.

When in reality, I didn’t even know them! What if they were gifted that car by a friend or family? What if they just recently hit hard times and that was the car they had when they hit that crisis? Most importantly, who seated me at the head of the table to decide whether or not they “deserved” to be at our food pantry or not?!

I did. I placed myself there and Jesus came along and said, “hey Ben, let’s think about this seat you’ve taken and why.”

It is so easy to make snap judgments like this. It is easy to look at the way someone dresses, or the car they drive, or the trips they go on and immediately apply a social standing, where they are seated at the table and judge what they deserve and what they don’t. It is easy to look at someone’s age, whether young or old, and do the same.

It is easier to put ourselves in higher seats of honor over others rather than putting ourselves in their shoes.

The reality is, in a culture like ours that praises rugged individualism as a virtue, that constantly preaches the gospel of “pull yourselves up by your own bootstraps” the needs of others are so often hidden. People often hide their needs, carefully burying them behind a smile and the phrase, “everything is fine," because more often than not, they fear being shamed as "lazy" or "immoral" for simply needing help.

We all have needs. Some have greater needs than others for sure, but others of us are just able to hide them more easily than others.

I think this parable is calling us as the church to reshape our relationships by humility and compassion rather than by a hierarchy of power and privilege.

I think this parable is calling the church to ask, regarding every social issue, from covid protocols, to public school curriculum, to books, to gun control, to abortion laws, to our LGBTQ siblings, to racial justice issues, to student loan forgiveness, to how our local churches are run, “who is placed in the seats of honor to make decisions about these things? How will this situation impact the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized, the differently abled, and the most vulnerable?” Rather than only asking, “how does this impact me and my beliefs?”

Our world desperately needs a people who are committed to humility and compassion towards others.

May we as the church not be known for exalting ourselves and humiliating others, but instead be known for humbling ourselves in order to lift up others and calling those in the positions of power of our world to do the same.

Now I want to hear from you. Did you find this helpful in any way? How do you relate to this ideas put forth about this parable from Jesus? What things would you have added that I may have missed about how it applies to our world today? Reply to this and let me know your thoughts.

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Thank you all for reading and for all the ways you support me and this project every week.

I look forward to talking with you.

Sincerely,

Ben

PREVIOUS NEWSLETTERS

​Symbolic Christianity vs Substantive Christianity​

​The Humility of God​

​Why We Need Resurrection​

​Trading Jesus for Barabbas​

​The Gun Problem is a Sin Problem​

​The Sin Of Christian Wrath​

​Hate Masquerading As Christian Love​