"chutes And Ladders"

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.