The Old South Church in Boston
Our Just Desserts
Sermon by Jennifer Mills-Knutsen
August 22, 2004
Luke 14:1, 7-15
There is just something in us that remains forever anxious about getting our just deserts. Are you familiar with that idiom? “Our just deserts.” It refers to “a reward or punishment that is deserved.” In the title of this morning’s sermon, I’ve actually misspelled it. It should have one “s” instead of two, since it comes from the French word “deservir”, which means “to deserve,” and according to the linguists, it has absolutely nothing to do with “a usually sweet food served as the final course of a meal.” I initially thought that it did, and had flirted with the idea of an imaginary retelling of the Gospel in which the disciples were fighting not just over their seats at the table, but who would get the biggest piece of fig pie. But the correct spelling makes it look like “just deserts,” which also seemed to me to have good gospel potential—you know, the Middle East climate, those many bible scenes in the desert and all that—but according to those same linguists, the expression also has nothing to do with “an arid, sandy region capable of supporting only a few, usually specialized, life forms.” Which leaves us with the French “deservir,” “to deserve.” Which is actually the closest to what Jesus is talking about in today’s Gospel reading—our attitudes about who deserves what, and our common belief we deserve more or better than someone else.
The gospel story places us with Jesus and the disciples at a dinner party, and Jesus is issuing uncomfortable instructions to host and guests alike about their behavior. In the first part of the story, he chastises the guests as they jockey for positions of honor around the table. He gives instructions in good manners—don’t assume you deserve the best place, he says. Be humble and wait for the host to honor you.
Miss Manners would give the same advice today. It’s just good etiquette. The same was true in Jesus’ time. Perhaps because the importance of formal dining for social status has changed, perhaps because it does just seem like good manners, I’m not sure this banquet table is still the best example of competition for places of privilege in today’s world. While I’m sure we all understand what Jesus was talking about—many of us have been to banquets with coveted seats at the head table or close to it—I’m not sure the example provokes the right amount of indignation anymore. After all, here in the U.S. especially, the emphasis is on casual dining, buffet lines and informal social relations even among the wealthiest Americans. The rituals of formal dining seem, well, like something out of another century. Who really cares where you sit anyway?
But as I thought about Jesus’ words over the last few weeks, I found myself sitting in a particularly harrowing traffic jam when I realized that there is indeed an adequate situation that evokes the frustration and indignation in Jesus’ example—the peculiar sport of Boston driving. Each and every day here in Boston, climbing behind the wheel of a car enters you into extreme competition with every other driver on the road. In this city, it’s every driver for herself. Faster cars routinely zoom around slower ones without a moment’s hesitation. If you turn on your blinker to change lanes, fellow drivers actually speed up to prevent you from getting ahead of them. Turn signals become mere last-minute warning signs that someone is about to jump in front of you. Instead of making way for merging traffic, Boston drivers inch up bumper-to-bumper to prevent anyone from getting in line ahead of them. And don’t even think about making a left turn at a busy intersection! You have to be brave enough to thrust your front bumper in front of oncoming traffic in order to get across. Did you all know that in other cities, people actually stop and wave other cars in front of them? It’s true. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. And in other places, people actually find a place to park rather than blocking a lane of traffic while they run in to get their dry cleaning or buy a loaf of bread. Can you believe it?
Having now lived in Boston for four years, I am guilty too of these same habits—and I have actually found it difficult to adjust to driving again in places with kinder, gentler roadway customs. Which is disturbing, because of the attitudes implied in this aggressive driving behavior. What convictions lead one to unreserved competition on the roadways? The idea that my own destination is more urgent than anyone else’s, and that consequently I have the right to advance my own bumper at the expense of all fellow travelers. The belief that my vehicle is the most important one in the world, and deserves every advancement in speed and position I can obtain. An attitude that my driving needs come first, and that I do not need to be concerned for the needs of others.
These are the same beliefs Jesus was addressing with his fellow dinner guests jockeying for position at the dinner table. What Jesus was pointing out was the tendency we all have—and human beings have shared from the time of the early Hebrews to first century Palestine to our own time—the tendency to believe we deserve more or better than everyone else. That our “just deserts” should be bigger or better than the person next to us. So this story from the Gospel is not merely a petition for good manners, kindness and courtesy at the dinner table or on the road—it digs at the roots of our self-doubt, our self-aggrandizement, our self-centeredness and asks us to be humble.
But the humility Jesus describes is not a simple deferral to those around us. It is not a self-deprecating or self-loathing belief that “I am not worthy.” It is not a comic confession of one’s weaknesses with an “Oh no, you go ahead, I’m not very good at it.” The humility Jesus describes asks us to believe and act as though we do not deserve anything better than anyone else. Frederick Buechner says it like this: “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.” True humility is believing and living as though our just deserts are no better or greater or more than anyone else’s just deserts.
One of the most famous stories about Dorothy Day, a founder of the Catholic Worker House movement who spent her life living among and serving the poor, captures this sense we all have about deservedness. As told by fellow worker Tom Cornell, the story begins when a wealthy donor arrives at the New York Catholic Worker house one morning and gives Dorothy Day a diamond ring. Dorothy thanked her for the donation and put it in her pocket without batting an eye. Later in the day, one of the more irritating regulars arrived at the house, a woman suffering from delusions and mental illness. As Cornell tells the story, she was “one of those people who make you wonder if you were cut out for life in a house of hospitality. I can't recall her ever saying, ‘thank you’ or looking like she was on the edge of saying it. She had a voice that could strip paint off the wall. Dorothy took the diamond ring out of her pocket and gave it to this lady. Someone on the staff said to Dorothy, ‘Wouldn't it have been better if we took the ring to the diamond exchange, sold it, and paid that woman's rent for a year?’ Dorothy replied that the woman had her dignity and could do what she liked with the ring. She could sell it for rent or take a trip to the Bahamas. Or she could enjoy wearing a diamond ring on her hand like the woman who gave it away. ‘Do you suppose,’ Dorothy asked, ‘that God created diamonds only for the rich?’” She was fond of saying in other circumstances, “nothing is too good for the poor.”
This story about Dorothy Day also shows the connection between Jesus’ chastising words to the guests arguing over positions at the table, and his equally chastising words to the host: “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” Jesus does not criticize the guests for lacking humility and the host for lacking generosity—his critique is one in the same. Both guests and hosts have become lost in ideas about who deserves what, based on their own advancement. They have come to believe that some deserve more than others, that some deserve diamonds and banquets and others do not.
Humility, by contrast, is about recognizing our common humanity—an acknowledgment that each and every person is created by God, and consequently has worth and dignity. Each and every person has achievements to be proud of and mistakes and imperfections to work on, and none of us should think more highly of ourselves than of our fellow human beings. Robert F. Morneau sums it up like this: “What is humility? It is that habitual quality whereby we live in the truth of things: the truth that we are creatures and not the Creator; the truth that our life is a composite of good and evil, light and darkness; the truth that in our littleness we have been given extravagant dignity. … Humility is saying a radical ‘yes’ to the human condition.” We are the creatures and not the Creator—that’s humility. It is not about denying our own needs, but about recognizing the needs of others as equally important.
In this way, humility is not so much about a way of doing—deferring to others, stepping aside from the best seat or letting a car make a left turn in front of you. It is also not so much about a way of being—being humble by admitting to weaknesses or playing down strengths. Humility begins first and foremost in a knowing—a knowing that we are all creatures of God and that God loves each and every one of us. Secure in the knowledge that God is in charge, and that God’s grace is abundantly available to us, we are no longer consumed by the struggle for our just deserts.
Just like aggressive driving, it is not simply about bad behavior, but about the beliefs that prompt that selfish action. Jesus’ words are not about etiquette and good manners, they are not even a simple moral lesson about practicing humility. Jesus’ words to guests and host are a reminder of the vision of the kingdom of God—a welcome table where all of us partake in God’s abundance, where all of us are seated in positions of honor simply because we are in God’s presence. A place where our earnest efforts are appreciated, but our welcome and our portion do not depend on our merit. A banquet where every member of the human family is invited to dine on the richest, finest, fanciest desserts, and no one goes away hungry. Do not be consumed by the struggle for your just deserts. Let go of grief and anxiety over the positions of honor in this life. Your success or failure is no measure of your worth. For God has created you and prepared for you and for me and for all of us a seat at God’s holy banquet table. Amen.
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