University Presbyterian Church - Chapel Hill, NC

“Biblical Etiquette”

A Sermon for University Presbyterian Church, Chapel Hill

Anna Pinckney Straight

September 2, 2007

Hebrews 13:1 – 8, 15 - 16[1]

Let mutual love continue. ²Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. ³Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured. ⁴Let marriage be held in honor by all, and let the marriage bed be kept undefiled; for God will judge fornicators and adulterers. ⁵Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” ⁶So we can say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?” ⁷Remember your leaders, those who spoke the word of God to you; consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. ⁸Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. ¹⁵Through him, then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name. ¹⁶Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.  

Luke 14:1, 7 - 14

On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely.

⁷When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. ⁸“When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; ⁹and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. ¹⁰But when you are invited, 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. ¹¹For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” ¹²He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. ¹³But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. ¹⁴And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

I think I’ve always had mixed feelings about etiquette.  I realized it for the first time when I was 12 years old.  My sister and I were given a special gift from our parents.  When we unwrapped the mysterious packages we found this: The Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette.

I have to tell you, I was, well, surprised.  Almost, if you can believe it, speechless.

I wasn’t sure what to make of it.  Was there something behind it?  Having your parents give you an etiquette book naturally forces one to consider that there may be a lack of etiquette that leads to the necessity of the gift.  Luckily, my sister had gotten one too, so at least I knew that if I was socially inept, I had company. 

And then, there was the other side of me, the side that couldn’t wait to look inside my new book and find out more about place settings and invitation wording.

There are parts of etiquette that I dearly love.  There is beauty in a table properly set, with each fork and glass in its proper place, ready for a multi-course meal.   There is poetry in writing the proper, and prompt, formal RSVP.  

And yet, there are parts of etiquette by which I simply cannot abide and have happily discarded.  Girls can’t call boys?  That’s absurd.  Of course we can.  And I did.  I joyfully tell young women that if they don’t learn to ask someone out on a date and then plan that date, they are missing out on one of the great risks and joys of life.

When it came to our wedding, Ben and I not only spent the entire morning together, we walked down the aisle together, I in the dress he had helped me pick out and he in the tie I had helped him to select.. 

I think Jesus might have had some of these same mixed feelings when it came to the proper way he was expected to do things in his world.  After all, look at this week’s text.  It’s all about dinner parties.  Where to sit.  Who to invite.  Jesus lived in a world where there was a strict protocol for such events based on social, religious, and financial standing.  A strict protocol.  And here, Jesus is trying to help his followers navigate this system, faithfully.   It’s not, I’ll admit, how I typically think of Jesus, but here he is, giving dinner party seating advice.

But before we start confusing Jesus with Emily Post, remember what we read last week about Jesus.  Disturbing the temple marketplace.  Shouting.  Causing a scene.  Hardly behaving in a way that would have been considered normal or acceptable.

In fact, in this reading from Luke itself, Jesus is being watched closely because of his breech of the social norms of his time.  That you do no work on the Sabbath.  Nothing.

So.  Jesus might be giving seating advice here, but because we know the larger context of Jesus’ message in the gospel, we know that he is far from becoming a spokesperson for the status quo.  This text, we can be assured, is not at all about how to succeed in business or the habits of successful people.

For all of the talk about guests and place settings, that’s not at all what Jesus is talking about.  Jesus is talking here about a particular kind of etiquette. Biblical Etiquette.  Biblical Etiquette that is ethics, where people matter more than rules, opportunity more than appearance.  Caring for another.

Well, it’s about this.  And more.  After Jesus gives the seating advice, he goes on: “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends… or your relatives…, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. Biblical Etiquette is even more than ethics.

The topic Jesus is introducing, the lesson Jesus is teaching here, goes beyond justice.  Beyond ethics.  It is about true, genuine hospitality.

Social justice calls us to care for the needs of others.  It can be done through donations, elections, and volunteering.  Making sure that food is distributed fairly.  That health care is available.   

Hospitality is more.  It is sitting at table with someone in need, who you may not know, or with whom you may disagree.  Fred Craddock writes in his commentary on this text, “Jesus is not calling on Christians to provide for the needs of the poor and the disabled; he says to invite them to dinner.  This is the New Testament’s understanding of hospitality.”[2]

Hospitality is about more than caring for the needs of another.  It is about going to the root of the word itself, caring for a stranger.

Dorothy Bass has written about an evening when a rabbi was a guest speaker at the university where she teaches.  It is their tradition to take guest speakers out to dinner after their presentation, and at that dinner “a Catholic member of the group told about arriving in Jerusalem late on a Friday afternoon. Shabbat--the Sabbath--was beginning, and when that happens, Jerusalem shuts down. The bus taking him to his destination stopped running, and so did the cabs. He had just resigned himself to a very long walk when a kind family noticed him and asked about his situation. ‘Come in, come in, they exclaimed. It is Shabbat, and tomorrow our son makes bar mitzvah! We need a guest.’ He went in, had a wonderful time, and 24 hours later was on his way again.

This story evoked a story from one of the Jews at the table. While traveling in Spain as a college student, he arrived in a tiny village late one night. The whole place was dark, and he was uncertain what to do. But then he saw a light in the distance. It turned out to be the light of a monastery. He knocked and was welcomed and fed and given a place to sleep. The next day, after he was on his way again, he discovered that the monks, assuming he was destitute, had slipped some money into his pocket while he was sleeping.”

Bass reflects, “Many people would call these episodes random acts of kindness. But in fact they were not random at all. The hosts in these two stories had been practicing for years what they would do when a stranger passed by on the street on Shabbat, or what they would do when someone knocked at the door late at night. Their capacity to offer hospitality was embedded in a whole way of life. There was room in the lives and in the hearts of these hosts for strangers--not infinite, unboundaried room, but a certain kind of open space, furnished with words of greeting and handshakes, food and beds, and the remarkable capacity to overcome the fear of the stranger that seems to be part of our human make-up.”[3]

In an article on the spiritual discipline of hospitality, Ana Maria Pineda writes “How do we overcome our fear in order to welcome and shelter a stranger? The Christian practice of hospitality is the practice of providing a space to take in a stranger. It also encompasses the skills of welcoming friends and family to our tables, to claim the joy of homecoming….. To welcome the stranger is to acknowledge him as a human being made in God's image; it is to treat her as one of equal worth with ourselves - indeed, as one who may teach us something out of the richness of experiences different from our own."

Hospitality…  “the experience of being nourished and challenged daily by the central Christian mystery- namely, that the stranger at our door can be both gift and challenge, human and divine.  All Christians are called to the practice of hospitality.  What is important is that each community discover how to practice that hospitality in ways that are relevant to its own situation.” [4]

I think that this is what is being hinted at in the letter to Hebrews.  It would be easy to hear these words as moral absolutes about marriage and life, but I think what is, instead, being suggested is a new understanding of fidelity.  If you troubled by your marriage, deal with your marriage.  If you find yourself wanting more, the problem isn’t that you don’t have enough money, it’s that you haven’t learned how to receive God’s abundant blessings.  Be faithful to God first, and let everything else come from that.

More than food.  More than comfort. More than following proper form.  The Biblical Etiquette that Jesus is advocating here is nothing less than transformation.  It is a lunch counter, a session table, and peace talk where all are more than invited.  All are truly welcomed.  Where we do more than coexist, we are in community, together. 

It isn’t something we do, it is a way of life, based not on the words of an etiquette book, or any other book for that matter, but the Living Word made present in our lives this day.

Fred Craddock:   “Hospitality, then, is not having each other over on Friday evenings but welcoming those who are in no position to host us in return.  Nor does the text speak of sending food to anyone; rather, the host and the guest sit at table together….  In the Christian Community, no one is a ‘project.’  Do you suppose Jesus was serious about opening church halls and homes in this way?”[5]

“Do you suppose Jesus was serious about opening church halls and homes in this way?”

Do we suppose?

So let us ask.  What hospitality is relevant here and now?  I believe that when we look, not only will we find many places where this kind of hospitality is already happening, and we’ll also find more where it is possible.

Do you suppose Jesus was serious?

We do suppose.  Let us continue to suppose and learn.  Thanks be to God.