Taking the Plunge--September 1, 2025

Taking the Plunge--September 1, 2025

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.... When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. “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, 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. But 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. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 14:1,7-11)

As a rule, Jesus never calls us to do something he isn't also prepared to do; in fact, Jesus typically has done it first before he asks us to follow suit.  These words, from a passage that many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, are a case in point.

This month, we turn to a new focus in our devotional life and our year of "Living on the Edge," to consider being "with Jesus on the margins," and the texts of the lectionary for this past Sunday point us in that direction already.  As we start this new season, we find Jesus as a dinner guest at the house of one of the Respectable Religious Leaders, people-watching as the guests vie for the best spots and greatest social standing.  Now, before we go any further, it is worth noticing that Jesus is willing to be a guest at the Pharisee's house just as surely as he had been willing to be a guest at the dinner parties of "tax collectors and sinners" earlier in the gospel's narrative as well, and just as surely as he would go ahead and invite himself over to the chief tax collector Zacchaeus' house in a few chapters.  Jesus keeps all these doors open, and he is willing to keep the table talk going with all sorts of unlikely people--even though the tax collectors are hated by many, and even though many of the Pharisees seem particularly upset at Jesus a lot of the time.  Jesus is willing to break bread with all of them, which by itself is pretty scandalous.

But while he's at this particular dinner party, Jesus offers a bit of wisdom to everybody racing to grab the best seats like it's a grown-up game of Musical Chairs: what if you stopped trying to force yourself to the center of attention, and instead learned to be content on the margins?  What if you didn't need to try to make yourself the most important, and instead could associate with the least?  In fact, what if you were just plain done with all the foolish game-playing that tries to measure our worth from our social connections, influential friends, or the amount of elbow-rubbing we do with the "Big Deals"?  What if we no longer spent our energy trying to convince everyone (and ourselves) that we were the "greatest" and instead were comfortable enough in our own skin that we didn't mind associating with the ones labeled "lowly"?

Now that by itself is a pretty radical move. It certainly was in the context of the first-century Greco-Roman world, in which "humility" was not considered a virtue (in fact, the word that gets translated "humble" or "humility" in New Testament Greek is really just their word for "lowly" or "lowliness," which doesn't sound nearly so noble and maybe sounds pitiable).  In the eyes of the Roman mindset, the goal in social actions was to puff yourself up, to talk a good game, to boast of your accomplishments, and to persuade people of your greatness.  You needed to earn clout in every social interaction, and that meant you needed to be seen with the right people, be friends with the powerful people, and get leverage with the influential people.  Jesus' counsel takes all that and unapologetically turns it on its head. He advises us not to play that game at all, because ultimately it's an exercise in futility like being on a hamster wheel.  The opposite course is just to make friends with the folks nobody else will befriend, to associate with the ones who cannot do you any favors, and to take the place with the least clout or prestige attached to it.

And to be sure, part of the appeal and growth in the early church's first decades as it spread like wildfire was that it welcomed those who were seen as "nobodies" by the rest of the world.  The first apostles were mocked in the opening chapters of the book of Acts for being "unschooled" (that is, possibly illiterate) and "ordinary," but it was that lowliness that said to other "ordinary" people, "There really is a place for you here with Jesus."  The churches that Paul founded a decade or so later had members who were enslaved, poor, uneducated, and lacking power, and he makes a point of reminding them that God's intention was to choose the things and people that the world calls "foolish" and "weak" to confound the so-called "wise" and "strong."  As an emerging faith in the first century AD, part of what made Christianity so appealing to many was exactly that Christians were apparently willing to hang out with anybody, without always having an "angle" to try and climb up the social ladder or gain more influence or political power.  And that willingness to associate with "the lowly" was genuine--those first Christians really did care about anybody and everybody they crossed paths with.  And that was evident to others who heard and saw us, because those first Christians actually spent time getting to know the folks on the margins.  We were the folks on the margins, truth be told.

All of that would be reason enough to take Jesus' counsel and to give up on the need to chase after positions of power and perches of influence with our social lives. All of that would be justification for getting comfortable with (or at least getting used to) life on the margins.  But there is a yet more fundamental reason for us as Christians to put ourselves in the lowly spots, to seek the place among the last and the least and the left behind: namely, that's where Jesus chose to go.  Jesus himself was always willing to risk being put last or written off as a nobody.  In a sense, that's what the whole incarnation is about, isn't it?  That the Savior of the world and the very Son of God is born, not in the palace of Caesar or from a high priestly family in Jerusalem, but to a poor family from a nowhere town who have to borrow barnyard furniture to lay their baby in before they flee for their lives as refugees, all while the baby is still in diapers!  In fact, in Paul's letter to the Philippians, he quotes what might well be an ancient hymn text that emphasizes God's surprising choice to be humble and lowly in Jesus.  He says (and you can go ahead and sing along if you know this one):

"Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he existed in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (Phil. 2:5-8)."

In other words, Jesus took the plunge first and sought the lowly place--among us. From God's vantage point, it is a humbling thing to take on the flesh and finitude of humanity.  And yet God didn't blush or shrink from the idea.  In Jesus, God has chosen to sit at the place of least importance.  In Jesus, God has picked a seat next to the least, the last, and the left behind. In Jesus God tells the kids that no one else will sit with at the lunch table, "I will be your friend."  If we dare to meet and love the people on the margins, it will mean going where Jesus already is. And somehow taking the plunge into the low spots of the deep end is less scary when you know that someone else has already done it before you and invites you into the water beside him.

So this week, we will have plenty of opportunities to live out Jesus' direction for us.  We can be the ones who seek out the person who is sitting alone and ask if they could use a friend.  We can be the ones who speak up for those whose voices are most often ignored or dismissed because they lack influence or importance.  We can be the ones who just make a friend with someone whose life and story are quite different from our own.  And we can be the ones who no longer need to spin our wheels wasting our energy trying to push ourselves to the place of most importance (and elbow out everybody else from the limelight), because Jesus reminds us that we can simply be free from that game playing.  Jesus has saved a place for us out on the edges of things--it's the seat right next to him.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to go where you lead, even when that expands our social circles beyond our comfort zones.