Luke 14:7-14
“Chutes and Ladders”
(The Idea for Chutes and Ladders comes from a commentary by Mark Ralls in Feasting on the Gospels, Luke part 2 pgs. 62-66))
There is a game for children that has been around for a long time, since 1943, to be exact.
And I bet almost everyone here has played it at one time or another—whether as a child or with a child.
The game is Chutes and Ladders, and since it’s a game for young children, the rules are about as simple and straightforward as you can get.
Spin the wheel and move around the board.
As you go, you hope to land on the ladders and avoid the chutes or slides.
If you land at the base of a ladder—you get to climb all the way to the top, going far beyond where even the highest spin can take you.
But…
If you land on the top of a chute—you have to slide all the way back down to the bottom—back toward the square where you started.
Why talk about Chutes and Ladders?
This game by Milton Bradley can help give us some insight into the culture in which Jesus lived.
The people were very caught up in shame and honor.
This basically means that people’s behavior was molded by two things: the fear of being publicly shamed or being publicly honored.
To be shamed was a terrible setback.
And to be honored moved you forward in the eyes of everyone who mattered to you most.
In our Gospel Lesson for this morning, Jesus is at a dinner party, and He is watching how the guests are picking the best seats for themselves.
In a sense, it’s a lot like chutes and ladders or a junior high cafeteria where everyone is jockeying for a seat at the “cool” table.
And Jesus is giving some pretty sound and practical advice--advice to choose the lowest place so that you can be moved up, but He’s also pointing to something much deeper.
Much deeper even, than say, a biblical version of a Miss Manners Lesson.
“Here’s a little tip,” Jesus says to those jockeying for the place of honor, “The next time you are invited to a wedding, don’t take the best seat in the house.
What is going to happen if someone more ‘popular’ than you show’s up?
Hard to imagine, I know, but it could happen.
And when it does, you will find yourself at the top of the chute, and you will have to slide down from the seat of honor all the way down to the seat of shame.
And, oh, what a long, lonely walk it is from the first table to the one in the back, right beside the swinging door of the kitchen!”
And to make sure we don’t just confine Jesus’ Words to dinner parties, Jesus adds this: “Those who make their own honor the goal of their lives will be ashamed of themselves in the end, and those who are humble, repeatedly putting others first, will experience the true, deep and lasting honor in the Kingdom of God.”
Is it practical advice? Yes.
But it also speaks to our motives, what drives us to do things and how we live our lives.
What if the point of our lives is not about climbing all the right ladders of prestige and power?
What if our true purpose is to slide down as many chutes as possible in order to offer compassion, service and love to all those people on the rungs below?
I know this goes against our nature, it certainly goes against mine, but Jesus is talking about how life is lived in the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of God is the world as God originally intended it to be, not the way the world currently is.
And as Christians or Christ Followers, we are called to live in the Kingdom right here and right now.
You and I--the Church—are to be a community of people who are letting go of our attachments to the ways of this world and instead becoming part of the way that the Kingdom of God operates.
And a recurring theme in the Bible is that the Kingdom of God is the “Great Equalizer.”
As Paul writes in Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
As Christians, we should be absolutely and positively embarrassed and horrified to show any partiality based on a person’s financial status, the kind of clothes they wear, the color of their skin, their nation of origin—anything at all.
In Christ we are to die to this stuff.
There is a different code we are to live by.
A different set of rules.
We are to love God and love neighbor.
And who is our neighbor?
Everyone.
Isn’t THAT a relief?
Isn’t THAT a breath of fresh air?
While our current culture may operate under different rules than honor and shame we still live in the land of Chutes and Ladders.
We fool ourselves into thinking that happiness will be found on the rung above us.
So, we keep reaching and trying to climb as fast as we can.
The rest is simple math.
The more time and energy we put into this all-consuming madness, the less we notice those who are on the rungs below.
We forget those whom we have passed along the way.
And it’s just as true that we will most likely miss Jesus Himself Who is continually climbing down.
Think about it.
Jesus is God, but He was born in the back of a barn.
He spent His days bending down to touch lepers, to help widows, to place children on His knee.
Our humble Savior rode a donkey through the gates of Jerusalem and then knelt in front of His disciples to wash their feet.
The only time Jesus chose to go up it was up a hill called Calvary, where He took our sins and carried our sorrows on His bent and holy back.
On Easter morning, we discovered that His humility is what God truly honors—what the point of this life is really about.
It’s about offering people compassion, service, grace and love.
And in order to do that, we must humble ourselves.
And we can’t love others if we are all-consumed with self-promotion.
And so, humility and putting others first is what this Gospel Lesson is really about.
And really, it’s what living in the Kingdom of God is about.
(pause)
Have you ever noticed how often, in the Gospels, Jesus is at a party—eating at a meal?
And have you ever noticed how Jesus so often uses the circumstances of that meal or party as a time to teach great truths about the Kingdom of God?
It’s almost as if Jesus’ view of the Kingdom of God is that it’s a party.
That doesn’t mean that having a dinner party is easy to pull off.
If it were, there would be a lot more of them.
For one thing, you have to figure out who to invite.
Then, you have to have a fairly good amount of time to clean the house.
And it isn’t cheap.
You have to go out and buy a lot of extra food.
There have been at least three occasions when Clair and I have invited folks over for dinner; they have said “yes,” so we go out and purchase all the food and an hour or so before the scheduled event the folks call to cancel.
That’s really frustrating.
Has that ever happened to you?
So, putting on a dinner party isn’t all fun and games.
And in today’s lesson, Jesus makes it even a bit more challenging.
He says, “When you give a luncheon or dinner…invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind…”
In other words, don’t just invite the “popular people.”
Don’t just invite the folks that can up your status or who will repay you like some “good old boy network.”
Do it for the right reasons.
Do it out of love for others, not for your own upward mobility.
And don’t leave anyone out—God doesn’t and we are to imitate the love of God.
The humility Jesus calls us to is a core biblical teaching and it’s rooted in trusting God as our source of human dignity, which tends to reduce our predisposition to lift ourselves up.
The other day I was having a conversation with Mary Ellen about doing the very best she can in school.
I told her that taking the “easy way out” by not doing our homework or not going the “extra mile” actually works out to be the “hard way” in the long run.
And then, I started talking to her about “privilege.”
I told her that “we” are extremely privileged.
For example, my parents took great pains to make sure I had every opportunity to do anything with my life I wanted to do—to be anything I set my mind to.
But most people don’t have that kind of privilege.
And I think, maybe, that sometimes when we are privileged we live with some “subconscious” presumptions, things we take for granted.
We might even take it for granted that we are meant to seat ourselves in the places of honor.
But this passage of Scripture reminds us that we are all “ultimately seated” according to our Host’s will.
And that Host is God Himself.
The word “banquet” is a symbol of the Kingdom of Heaven.
And in Revelation 19:9 it says: “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.”
Communion is a foretaste of this great meal.
In Luke 13:29-30 Jesus says: “People will come from the east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God.
Indeed, there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last.”
One time when Jesus was at a feast, He was noticing how the guests picked the places of honor at the table, and so He told them a parable about the way things work in the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Reality.
And according to Jesus, we have completely misunderstood.
We have things backward.
We are out there looking for ladders, when Jesus is calling us toward the chutes.
We are climbing up, when Jesus is calling us to come down.
And if we dare follow Christ, Jesus promises that in the end we will find deep blessing and true honor.
“For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
