Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 22], rcl yr c, 2025
JEREMIAH 2:4-13; PSALM 81:1, 10-16; HEBREWS 13:1-8, 15-16; LUKE 14:1, 7-14
For all who exalt themselves will be humbled,
and those who humble themselves will be exalted
Earlier this summer, Jeff Bezos—worth about $220 billion and the third richest person in the world—married media personality Lauren Sánchez. The wedding was initially estimated to cost between $20 million and $25 million, though the cost went up to as much as $56 million (in US dollars) after a venue change due to security concerns. The bride had 27 designer dresses for the occasion; her engagement ring was worth $4 million; there were reportedly $1.6 million in roses, $2 million of wine, and $6 million worth of security.
The party was three days long, shut down most of Venice, and included a Great Gatsby themed party—and considering that the Great Gatsby is a book critical of the absurd excesses of wealth in another guilded age—marks either a deeply cynical indifference to the moral implications of excess, or a vulgar and unacknowledged irony.
The wedding itself was met with protest, protestors pointing out other ironies—like the impact of the excesses of a billionaire lifestyle on the climate—a changing climate that may well sink the very floating city that was host to this absurdly excessive party. And so security was high for the guest list—a guest list marked by wealth, status, and celebrity.
And if you’re Jeff Bezos, why not? Why not invite those who are benefitting you in the present, and will benefit you in the future? The wealthy who would invest in his enterprises? Those with the sort of status who can grease the wheels of government, and make doing business that much more easy? And the celebrities who populate the cast lists of the content in his media empire? Inviting those who will return some favour in the future only makes sense, right?
There’s a piece missing from our reading from Luke this morning. On Jesus’s way to the house of a leader of the Pharisees, and before he gets to his dinner party and his parable of the wedding feast, he heals a man with dropsy. If you’re not sure what dropsy is, that’s ok. It’s not a word that’s used much these days. In Jesus’s time though it was used to describe what we would call edema—a swelling caused by fluid trapped in the body’s tissues, often in the hands, ankles, and feet. In some instances dropsy included an insatiable thirst, and so in Jesus’s time dropsy wasn’t imagined to be simply about swelling and thirst—dropsy said something about greed, about never being satiated, and never thinking you have enough.
So lying under the surface of Luke chapter 14—including Jesus’s parable of the wedding banquet and alongside what Jesus says about honour—are questions about greed, wealth, and selfishness. Are greed, wealth, and selfishness a matter of simply renouncing such things, and of choosing the lesser place of honour at the table?
Considering Jesus’s healing of the man with dropsy—and freeing him from his insatiable thirst—it does seem that “when it comes to greed, wealth, and selfishness, Jesus seems to suggest that it is a disease whose only cure is not simple renunciation but miraculous healing.”
Our passage, though—despite questions of wealth and excess, and Jesus’s role in healing us of such things—begins with the question of seeking honour. The parable today is about wedding banquets and where to sit; and that if you seek out a seat of honour, you may well be deprived of it and humbled; but that if you approach your relationships with others with humility, you may well be honoured in the end. In fact, Jesus tells us, there are times when it is most appropriate not simply to invite to dinner the ones who will repay us in the future, like friends, or relatives, or rich neighbours. Instead, “when you give banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind,”as Jesus puts it; that’s to say, invite those who cannot repay you.
This, for Jesus, is the way of true honour. Honour is not in assuming pride of place, or in placing ourselves above others, or assuming that we are somehow better or more deserving than others; honour is not in dining with the wealthy or powerful or in putting others into our debt, debts to be repaid in the future. Instead, true honour is in giving away your time, wealth, and food to those who are in the greatest need.
Now we know that sometimes Jesus did eat only with his friends, and so this parable isn’t about each and every meal we eat; there are times when we eat simply with those closest to us. And so Jeff Bezos may have a very very small escape clause here. Perhaps about the size of the eye of a needle.
But it would be unwise to claim the Bezos-Sánchez wedding as a parable of the Kingdom of God. The deeper reality of Jesus’s parable is that God’s coming reign over heaven and earth is found more readily when we dine and share of ourselves with those who cannot repay us. The deeper grain of the universe is not oriented to seeking greater honour, more wealth, or power through our sharing with others. The deeper grain of the universe is oriented instead to humility and relationships with the poor.
Because for Jesus, the pursuit of wealth, the pursuit of power, the pursuit of the debt of others, is not only a fool’s game, but it’s one of perverse results—where our seeking wealth and honour leads to losing precisely what we seek: “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
So let’s look not to the Bezos-Sánchez wedding as a living parable of the kingdom. We can look much closer to home. We can look to St. John’s Kitchen, where food is shared with anyone who shows up—even Jeff Bezos himself wouldn’t be denied lunch if he showed up this week. We can look to our own Community Dinners, where Regional representatives cross paths with their own critics. We can look to the DTK Sunday Suppers that Henriëtte Thompson is helping to run, we could look to Food Not Bombs who prepares food in our kitchen every week, we could look to the Salvation Army van that will be parked right next to our church within the next hour or so—all living parables of a kingdom where food is shared without reference to honour, wealth, or influence. But where meals are simply shared.
Now we will need to read a bit further in Luke, as we will over the next few Sundays, to understand the way in which God in Christ might heal us of our greed and selfishness. Because it’s not only the Jeff Bezos’s of this world that could probably do with a bit more Jesus in their life; so could we all.
But we can do something this morning. We can begin today with a meal, and gather around a table that invites us into God’s healing in Christ: a table laid at the foot of the cross, a cross whose grain reveals the deeper reality of the kingdom: that the last will be first, and the first last; “for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted,” seen first and foremost in Christ, and in Christ crucified for our sake, and for the sake of a kingdom where equity prevails, a kingdom of reconciliation: of us to one another, and of us to God.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.
As our parish musician, he provides both support and leadership so that a variety of parish programs can find musical expression and attract participation. When our handbell choir is in season, he is one of our ringers. At parish dinners, he provides popular piano music for the guests to dine by. For both worship services and concerts, he will rehearse and accompany vocal and instrumental soloists from our congregation on piano, organ, or even accordion.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.