Where Does God Sit?

Luke 14:1,7-14

I’m going to break up today’s text into two lessons: the first deals with how to respond to an invitation, the second, with how to extend one. Both lessons occur in the context of a dinner party at the house of a Pharisee. Let’s give ourselves a brief refresher on the relationship between Jesus and the Pharisees, shall we?

Throughout Luke’s gospel, Pharisees, scribes, and lawyers (meaning scholars of religious law) are consistently confronted by Jesus for being sanctimonious, prideful, self-serving, and hypocritical. Loyal to the letter of the law, but lacking in love. Consistent with the commandments, yet cold and compassionless. In the 6th chapter, Luke describes a confrontation between Jesus and a group of Pharisees over his disciples plucking and eating grain on the Sabbath. Right after that, there’s a Sabbath healing of a man with a withered hand that stirs up moans and groans from the scribes and Pharisees. Luke ends the scene by telling us that the religious leaders were filled with fury and began conspiring against Jesus. In Luke 13, Jesus heals a crippled woman on the Sabbath, and the leader of the synagogue responds with indignation, the woman should’ve picked another day to get healed. In Luke 11, Jesus calls out the Pharisees for their legalism at a dinner event. They were making a big show of washing their hands, and Jesus essentially says “God cares more about your heart than your hands.” Yet again, in Luke 14, Jesus is a dinner guest at the house of a leader of the Pharisees on the Sabbath. And he heals a man with dropsy.

In each of these encounters the Pharisees are watching Jesus closely, watching what he does or doesn’t do, who he touches, who he heals…in short, they want to know what his hands are up to. Jesus is watching them closely, too, but he’s looking at what their behavior says about what they believe. He cares about what’s going on inside, what’s motivating their actions, what’s fueling their faith, Jesus wants to know what their hearts are up to.

Jesus notices how the guests chose places of honor around the dinner table. Then he decides so speak up, and offers a thinly veiled criticism of their self-serving pride. But this is more than just a critique, more than a simple etiquette lesson, it’s a parable, and the subject of the parables is always the kingdom of God. But the takeaway question isn’t: “Where do you sit in all of this, and what does that say about how important you are in the kingdom?”, it’s this: “Where does God sit in all this, and what does that say about how important God’s kingdom is to you?” What we believe influences our behavior.

So where does God sit? Well, here’s one thought, probably shared by most Jews at the time. The lid of the Ark of the Covenant was known as the “mercy seat,” it was made of pure gold, an ornate golden throne upon which God was believed to sit. The Ark was then kept in the temple, and then again was cordoned off again in a special room, three walls and a curtain known as the “holy of holies.” Let me read an excerpt about this seat from Leviticus 16:2, and tell me if it reminds you of anything: “The LORD said to Moses, ‘Tell your brother Aaron that he shall not enter at any time into the holy place inside the curtain, before the mercy seat which is on the ark, or he will die; for I will appear in the cloud over the mercy seat.’” Does that remind you about last week’s text from Hebrews, which was referencing the scene from Exodus at Mt. Sinai (or Deuteronomy at Mt. Horeb)? In Exodus, God sat on a mountain, in Leviticus God sits on a golden throne, but in both places the seat of God is frightening, shrouded, unapproachable.

The rest of the 16th chapter of Leviticus describes, in great detail, the process for purifying the priest and purifying the holy of holies on the day of atonement. Purity procured the privilege to approach God. Impurity posed a great threat to this privilege. This belief greatly influenced the behavior of the Pharisees, particularly toward those seen to be unclean. The Pharisees believed God sat above and apart from the mess. If they were to commune with God, then they must avoid the mess, too. The following 9 chapters of Leviticus 17-26, also known as the Holiness Code, were rules and regulations for avoiding messes.

In Jesus, we find that God’s seat is (and has always been) smack dab in the middle of the mess. The reference in the crucifixion accounts to walls crumbling and the curtain tearing are yet more iterations of the central theme of the life, teaching, and ministry of Jesus: God’s sits with us. In Jesus we see a God who is unafraid to get “messy.” Jesus looks at, listens to, lays hands on, and loves the lepers, the sick, the sinful, the adulterous, the unclean, the messy people. People who have been excluded from the community for being “too messy.” They are threats to the purity of the populous, and they’ve been told their place is on the periphery.

There’s a scene from the movie Forest Gump that captures what it’s like to be on the outside:

“You can sit here if you want.” That was the Gospel being proclaimed. In Jesus Christ, us and God ain’t strangers any more. And God’s kingdom, symbolized at this great banquet table, calls out to us who are mired in the mess of a selfish and sinful world, can you hear it? “You can sit here if you want.”

That’s the invitation that changes lives. We’ll talk more about our call to participate in extending this invitation next week.

But Jesus’ first parable deals with how we respond to it. “When you’re invited to a great banquet, do not take the seat of honor.” What does it mean to respond God’s invitation with humility? I think it has to do with where we believe God sits. Does God sit on a great fiery mountain? Does God sit on a golden throne? Does God sit above and apart from the mess? That’s what the Pharisees believed. And they clambered over who got the seat of honor, because they felt they deserved it. They’ve done what it takes to be important, avoided the mess, remained pure. They scoff and scold Jesus for sitting with sinners. Their criticism reveals a deeper fear: that being important in the world isn’t all that important to God. That’s the scandal of grace, isn’t it? That we can’t do anything to deserve it, that being important isn’t all that important to bringing about the kingdom, that not even God takes the seat of honor. The scandal of grace is that no matter how much we wash, God refuses to sit in the palm of our hands, and, instead insists on sitting in our hearts amidst the mess we’ve made there.

God took on flesh to show us where God sits: not in a gold throne, not behind a wall or a curtain, not above or apart from, but with us. All of us. God took on flesh to show us that the kingdom of God is already among us, we just need to rearrange the chairs. In order to do that we’ve got to stop thinking we’re so important, or…stop thinking that we’re not good enough. Most especially we’ve got to stop treating others like they’re so important, and others like they don’t matter. How do we do that? If we believe that God sits with us, how does that change where we sit in this world? How does that change who we sit with? How does that change who we look at, and listen to, and love? I’ll let that sit with you this week.