Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• In the interest of space and time, the lectionary leaves out verses 2-6, which is the parallel story to last week’s story of the healing of the crippled woman. This week, Jesus encountered a man who had dropsy (it is once again unclear if the man was there specifically for healing, or if he was simply present). This time, instead of immediately healing the man, as he did to the woman, Jesus first asked the Pharisees whether it was lawful to cure on the sabbath. Jesus really had them in a pickle. If they said yes, it was lawful, then they were condoning working on the sabbath. But if they said no, then they were neglecting the needs of their neighbor, which was also a violation of the law (“love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself”). When the Pharisees did not respond, Jesus healed the man and once again used an argument from lesser to greater, this time about helping an ox or child who had fallen into a well.
• We’ve talked a lot about Jesus’ meal politics in Luke’s Gospel and about the honor/shame code that was prevalent in first century Palestine. This quote from Pliny the Younger paints a clear picture of just how foreign to our culture these meals were: “Some very elegant dishes were served up to himself and a few more of the company; while those which were placed before the rest were cheap and paltry. He had apportioned in small flagons three different sorts of wine; but you are not to suppose it was that the guests might take their choice: on the contrary, that they might not choose at all. One was for himself and me; the next for his friends of lower order (for you must know that he measures out his friendship according to the degree of quality); and the third for his own freed-men and mine.”
• Proverbs 25:6-7 reads: “Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence or stand in the place of the great; for it is better to be told, “Come up here,” than to be put lower in the presence of a noble.” At first read, Jesus seems to simply be harkening back to this proverb. In an honor/shame culture, this is good advice, because it avoids shame and allows for the opportunity for a public display of honor. But is this no more than Jesus teaching a better way to play the social game? It seems like there’s more than that. Jesus tells the guests not to sit a few seats down, but to “sit at the lowest place,” calling to mind Jesus words that the first will be last and the last will be first. Also the word translated as “honor” is doxa, or “glory,” pointing beyond earthly recognition to recognition from God.
• On humility, Frederick Buechner writes: “Humility is often confused with the gentlemanly self-deprecation of saying you’re not much of a bridge player when you know perfectly well you are. Conscious or otherwise, this kind of humility is a form of gamesmanship. If you really aren’t much of a bridge player, you’re apt to be rather proud of yourself for admitting it so humbly. This kind of humility is a form of low comedy. True humility doesn’t consist of thinking ill of yourself but of not thinking of yourself much differently from the way you’d be apt to think of anybody else. It is the capacity for being no more and no less pleased when you play your own hand well than when your opponents do.”
Works Sourced:
Buechner, Frederick. Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC. New York, New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1973.
Culpepper, R. Alan. “The Gospel of Luke.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
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