Sermon for August 31, 2025
Pentecost 12 C
Luke 14:1, 7-14; Proverbs 25:6-7a
Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
Beth Ann and I celebrated our 25th anniversary last week, and in honor of the occasion we took a trip to Montreal and Quebec City, the French-speaking part of Canada. We’d heard good things about those cities, so we figured we’d take a look ourselves. When I travel, of course I enjoy checking out the well-known tourist spots—these are the things that get you interested in going there in the first place. In Quebec City there’s the old town, built essentially on a giant rock that’s been nicknamed the “Gibraltar of America”. It’s flanked by two rivers, and entirely surrounded by giant fortified stone walls—the only walled city in North America. Inside the walls it feels like you’re in France, as you walk the cobblestones on narrow, twisty, hilly streets. Many of the buildings are anywhere from 200 to 350 years old! It’s all very charming.
Another thing I like to do when traveling is trying to experience the place as the local people do—and a great way to do that, I find, is by riding public transportation. So, after our flight landed and we quickly got through Customs in the small airport, we bought bus passes and hopped in the back of a city bus to begin the ride downtown. I kept checking our route obsessively on Google maps as the bus moved from one stop to the next, to make sure we didn’t miss the place where we’d have to transfer to another bus. The transfer point seemed to be a hub where several different bus lines came together. So, when it came time, we stepped out of the back door of the bus, onto the sidewalk, looked around; everything’s in French, and we started debating with each other about which way to go.
All of the sudden we hear someone speaking to us in English with a French accent. It was the bus driver! He must have noticed the confused looks on our faces before he pulled away to continue his route. He had stopped the bus, hopped out right onto the sidewalk and asked if we were trying to go downtown. “Oi!” I nodded, yes. Ok, he said, just go around the corner to that bus stop over there. Safe travels! And he was back on the bus and on his way.
How powerful it feels, for someone to simply notice you and offer a small gesture of kindness and hospitality, like that Quebecois bus driver did for us. Talk about making a great first impression for the people of Quebec! It was as if the bus driver were the host of the wedding banquet in the parable that we hear Jesus tell today in Luke 14. “Sit down at the lowest place” Jesus advises, “so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’….For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
This parable shows the power of simply noticing, and then acting in response to help with the true needs of those around you. So simple, yet so often overlooked. Yet this is how people who, (let’s face it) can find so many ways to divide ourselves from one another—yet through noticing and responding with kindness and hospitality, we can be brought together in our common humanity. And God is present in that! Notice and respond. This simple thing is how Jesus went about reconciling humanity to God, and to each other. This is what Jesus was actually doing in the first place when he told this parable.
He’d been invited to a Sabbath meal at the home of a leader of the Pharisees. We often think of Jesus and the Pharisees as being enemies, but as this story shows, that wasn’t quite true. Sure, there were tensions between some of the Pharisees and Jesus, when they didn’t see eye to eye. But in many ways the Pharisees and Jesus had a lot in common. They were religious leaders who devoted themselves to interpreting the scriptures, and teaching the faithful how to live their lives in tune with God’s kingdom. So it makes sense that a leader of the Pharisees would invite Jesus to eat a Sabbath meal with them, even if they were “watching him closely”.
It turns out, Jesus was watching them closely, too. As the “outsider” in this scenario, Jesus brings a set of fresh eyes, and so he’s able to notice things that might be “invisible” to the people who regularly ate at the Pharisees table. But simply noticing and responding can make a big difference in opening the doorway to God’s kingdom. Jesus notices how the guests chose the places of honor when they went to sit down. The more distinguished the guest, the closer he sat to the host of the meal. There was nothing “wrong” with this—it was standard practice for the time. It’s what anybody would have done. The host would set up a “U-shaped” table with himself in the middle spot, and the guests moving out from the middle down the sides to the ends of the “U”. Jesus notices this, and offers his interpretation of how the guests should be seated: “Don’t sit yourself down at the place of highest honor, because someone more distinguished than you might arrive and take your place. Instead, seat yourself at the lowest place, and wait for the time when the host might honor you by inviting you to sit closer to him.”
What Jesus was saying wasn’t anything new. The Pharisees themselves had almost certainly heard it and read it themselves, in Proverbs 25:6-7 (which was our first reading for today). But Jesus does expand upon the meaning of the proverb. He challenges his host—and really, all of us—to be on the lookout for opportunities to simply notice the people around us, and then to respond in ways that are helpful—not as a means for advancing our own social standing, but as a way of extending God’s blessings of grace and mercy for those who are in need. And that is exactly what that Quebec bus driver was doing for us—noticing our need, and offering us a small taste of God’s grace and mercy at a random bus stop in Quebec City, Canada. It was a small gesture which we would never have an opportunity to reciprocate for the driver; but his small gesture made a big difference to us, so that we didn’t get lost on our first day in a foreign country. If it made that kind of difference to us, how much more so would noticing people and then offering a small gesture of grace and mercy make to those who feel beaten down by the difficulties and weariness of life?
“You will be blessed,” Jesus says, “because they cannot repay you, for you will repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” And every week, Jesus gives us a little foretaste of that great resurrection blessing, when he calls us to the Lord’s Supper. There, he is the host who notices us and our need for God’s love and hospitality in our lives; and in response Jesus feeds us with his own presence, full of grace and mercy. At the Lord’s Table, we never have to worry about who is in a higher or lower position; about whether we’re the bus driver, or the confused passengers sitting in the back and wondering if we’re going the right way. Because at the Lord’s Table, as at the foot of the cross, we are all the same closeness to Jesus our host, who invites us, together with all of the saints, to the great feast of heaven. Amen.