Read All of the Instructions First - Luke 14:1, 7-14

In the spirit of back to school season, I would like to begin today’s homily with an important life lesson from the fourth grade. Our teacher had been trying to teach us the importance of reading through all of the directions before starting a task. Apparently, this was difficult for us to remember. So she passed out a sheet of paper with the afternoon’s instructions. There were 10 steps, as I recall. The first task was to split up into groups of four and then move from station to station. The stations had activities like long division, clapping erasers outside to clean off the chalk, straightening the books, and defining long vocabulary words. And we had to get to the end of the list before the bell rang.

My group went to the math table first. As we struggled with a difficult problem, I looked over and noticed that one kid was just sitting at her desk, smiling. Unfair, I thought, as we toiled away. This went on for a while, and as more kids noticed that girl just sitting there, we were confused. The teacher seemed to be enjoying this. Finally, she stopped us and asked us to read the directions again. Sure enough, #10 at the bottom said, “Remain at your seat, you do not have to do any of the items above. Congratulations on reading all of the directions first.” The agony of that moment remains with me to this day. But I do read all of the directions first now.

In today’s Gospel, we find Jesus at a Pharisee’s house for dinner. He’s going on about humility and how you’re supposed to invite other kinds of people instead of the ones who are present at this party. Very fun and comfortable dinner conversation for all present, no doubt. At first glance, it sounds like Jesus is giving a list of instructions. If you are the guest at a wedding banquet, don’t take the good seat in case you have to move. That would be embarrassing to everyone, so start out humble. And if you’re the one throwing the party, don’t invite the people who can repay you with a return invitation. Instead, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.

So, it’s kind of weird that Jesus is giving etiquette instructions, like a spiritual Ms. Manners. But these are no ordinary instructions. Jesus isn’t teaching us simply how to score social or spiritual points. Maybe we need to remember that fourth grade lesson of reading all the way to the end first. That’s essentially what he’s teaching, in two brilliant moves in the story.

Here’s the first: “When you are invited,” he says, “go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you.” There is a hidden subtlety here. He’s not just talking about where to sit. He’s not even talking about avoiding embarrassment or feigning humility. He’s talking about perspective. That lowest seat has a double meaning in the ancient Greek. The word for lowest is eschaton, which is also the word for the last, the end of time, the end of life.

Jesus is saying, take a step away from the pecking order for a minute and look at the big picture. Get the perspective you can only get from that last, lowest seat. The perspective from death itself.

He is suggesting, I think, that we consider our lives from the perspective of our death, and of his death. We start at the end and look back. This brings our lives into sharper focus, as any death does. We see the things that really matter. We embrace life more fully. We take risks, we learn how better to love ourselves and one another. We try to make a difference. And because our lives are so precious, we also seek healing in their darker places. This is the view from the end.

Here’s the second move: Jesus turns to the host and instructs him to invite those who cannot repay him. The last, the loss, the least. This is not a superficial lesson in charity or outreach. This is a lesson in salvation. Jesus is the one who saves, through his life, death, and resurrection. We do not earn our salvation by racking up good deeds. And the flip side is also true - our list of sins cannot keep us separated from God. Jesus is destroying our attempts at spiritual score keeping. The lesson here is that we need to stop keeping track of all of our goodness and failings as if the ending of our story depended on it. This is a liberation.

In one short parable Jesus has laid out the view from the end, and the mechanics of salvation. These are among the greatest gifts in the Christian message. They invite us to live our lives free from the fear of not measuring up. They invite us to live our lives already trusting in our goodness and our salvation.

In the 5th century, St. Augustine wrote his masterwork, The City of God. It describes our earthly lives as a pilgrimage to life in the resurrection. Life on this side, he said, can be immensely difficult at times. But life on the other side of resurrection is blissful. He ends the book with a detailed vision of resurrected life. At that time, we will be made perfect. There will be no suffering or pain or brokenness. Our bodies will be restored to their beauty and perfection. Only the scars of the martyrs will remain as a means to show forth God’s glory. It is a lovely vision of the end of our journey at the end of the book. Scholars have suggested that we should read that final heavenly chapter first as the lens through which to read all of the preceding chapters about earthly life. This is the view from the end. It is the Christian way of understanding life from the eschaton, from the last, from death itself. It’s earth through the lens of heaven.

No matter how old we are, sometimes in the life of faith we all need to be reminded of some fourth grade wisdom. Reading all the way through to the end is always a good idea. It’s like realizing that we don’t have to master long division or get all of the chalk out of the erasers. We do not have to frantically toil to be in good standing with God. We already know #10, which is grace.