Pentecost+12/Proper 17C (Luke 14:1, 7-14)

​Jesus observes the guests who are gathered for a sabbath meal and look for the seats of honor that they think they deserve. We can imagine those seats are usually close to the seat of the host. These guests delusively believe they are someone important and honorable so they illusively presume there must be a place of honor designated for them. Note that both this delusion and illusion are happening only in the minds of the guests. Jesus comments, “...and 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.” (Luke 14:9) It’s like I think I deserve this place based on my self-evaluation of what kind of person I imagine to be but the host or others don’t think I am that person. 

The guests who are invited to the house of a leader of the Pharisees might be both illusional and delusional. It’s an illusion that there exists such a physical space called a “place of honor” while it’s a delusion that there exists such a person who deserves that place of honor. An illusion deals with a physical phenomenon. For example, think of a pool of water in a desert that doesn't physically exist. It’s a mirage, an optical illusion. A delusion is more of a mental phenomenon in which one is fixated on false beliefs. These two are not exclusive but influence each other. 

On a surface level, humility might be the heart of Jesus’ teaching on where to sit at a gathering. If one humbly presents oneself, one will be exalted. But what if this teaching is used just to be exalted? What if its motivating factor is one’s hidden desire for social recognition, not the virtue of humility? This may be false humility or humblebrag. Jesus isn’t interested in teaching us how to sociopolitically position ourselves. His focus, as he consistently and faithfully insists, is on the kingdom of God. It’s about how to spiritually position ourselves in the kingdom of God. 

In this respect, it’s crucial to consider a physical presence of the place of honor as illusory and a belief in which there exists an honorable person deserving that illusive place of honor as delusional. Simply, they don’t exist. They don’t exist in the eyes of God. They don’t exist as long as we don’t identify ourselves with someone we’re not in this game of locating ourselves in the place of honor. But they do exist only when this illusion and delusion are treated and believed as real, which appears to be our true reality. We can keep living in this unreality yet we do have a choice not to as Jesus directs us. There’ll always be someone and some seat higher, greater, and better than we are now. This cyclic one-upmanship race has no winner unless the one standing at the top becomes a god. In this cycle, we’re restless, wandering around, and never satisfied. So we suffer. 

Our spiritual practice of dis-identifying with anyone or anything is the pathway to freedom in God’s kingdom. This is not a defeatist approach to the social structure we’re born into. It is a strategy or a tool to externalize the inner kingdom of God. While our world is busy, labeling one from the other, identifying one with someone or something different from everything else, our gaze on the inner kingdom of God through the breath of God can help us go beyond all these labels and identities. We’re no longer boxed in but are open to all things and attach to nothing. (No need to fear losing our authenticity as who we are. It’s already expressed in the body we’re given at birth. I can never be you as much as you can’t be me since I don’t have your bodily features!) 

In light of this disidentifying spiritual practice, there exists neither the highest place nor person nor the lowest for us. Wherever we sit, we debunk the unreality of illusions and delusions. Our contemplatively breathed presence sheds light on how we can live here on earth harmoniously. Jesus’ teaching on who to invite to a banquet pushes us further: “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.” Try to disidentify ourselves even from our families and friends, and more so from rich ones. Completely free from conventional and biological labels, he takes us to the edge: “But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

This is how one stands stripped before God and what the resurrection may look like. When we’re set free from fabricated identities, those who are negatively identified based on their disadvantaged status and upbringing become set free. In the eyes of Jesus, they become the ones who bless us for the resurrection. “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” (Luke 6:20)