Living in the Mirror Universe

'On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely.

When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. "When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, `Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, `Friend, move up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted."

He said also to the one who had invited him, "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. But 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."'

--Luke 14: 1, 7-14

I am a great lover of nerd culture, but one series that I have actually never followed is Star Trek.  Maybe some of you are Trekkies, but I never quite got into any of the series.  Still, there is one episode of the original Trek that I have always appreciated called “Mirror Mirror.”  Airing in 1967, “Mirror Mirror” introduced what the show called a Mirror Universe, where Captain James T. Kirk was evil and Mr. Spock wore a goatee.  Other Trek shows through the years would return to the Mirror Universe, and icons of pop culture from Superman to Transformers have toyed with the idea of another world that is the complete opposite of ours:  where up is down, left is right, and we say hello when we leave and goodbye when we arrive.  It is a universe turned upside-down.  

Mirror Universe Spock.  The goatee tells you he's EVIL!!

I suspect that nearly everyone who heard the Good News preached by Jesus of Nazareth must have thought that he was talking about some kind of Mirror Universe.  Think about it.  In his stories he put those of low social and religious estate—such as women and Samaritans—in positions of favor.  He called people to sell all that they owned so that they could gain something that he called “treasure in heaven,” whatever that could mean.  When his followers got into an argument over which of them was considered the greatest he told them that the great among them must be “servant of all.”  And when those within his own religion chastised a good many of his actions he dared to say that he had come to fulfill their law by actually doing the opposite of what it said—such as fraternizing with a Samaritan woman by the well of Jacob.  We hear the invitation by Jesus to live in this upside-down world repeatedly throughout the Gospels, but perhaps none of those examples hit us church folks in our own time and place like the encounter at a dinner party that we hear about today.

There’s something about Episcopalians and dinner parties, am I right?  In every church where I have served, from South Carolina to Manhattan, from Kentucky to Asheboro, the folks know how to throw a good dinner party, complete with all of their closest friends from the church, and plenty of food and drink to go around.  When we hear that the setting for our Gospel this week is a dinner party at the home of a leader of the Pharisees, we can imagine the drinks flowing, the laughter swelling, and we can probably even see the Pharisee leading Jesus around so that he can press the flesh and meet all of these important people who, of course, are watching him very closely to make sure he doesn’t make a wrong move.  But something happens that shifts the tone of the party.

Jesus at the banquet held at the Pharisee's home

Jesus tells them a parable, but not one that has an allegorical character in it—like the Parable of the Sower or the Good Samaritan—instead, this one is spoken directly to the folks at this party, so that there is no mistaking who it is about and who it is for.  The next time you go to a party, Jesus tells them, don’t sit at the place of honor, just in case the host tells you to move when someone more important arrives, thus shaming you in front of the other guests.  But rather move directly to the lowest place—maybe something like the servants’ or kids’ table—so that, maybe the host will ask you to move up to a better seat, a more honorable seat.  Maybe our parties don’t have actual seats of honor, but we can understand the point here: remain humble, don’t be pretentious, and always respect not only the host but the guests as well.  

That’s not all, though.  Jesus doesn’t just give instruction for what the folks are to do when they are invited to their next party, but he also instructs the host—and by extension the guests themselves—that when they throw their next party they should not invite the people they see around the table—their closest friends and family or the richest, most prestigious people in town—no, Jesus says, invite the very people who can’t return the favor, who aren’t going to be throwing any parties of their own any time soon.  Invite the homeless, the sick, the poor, the unemployed, the person who lives on the opposite side of town.  Those are the people that Jesus admonishes the folks at this swanky church dinner party to invite and welcome in to their next social function.  It is social reform without reciprocity. Using a technique that literary critics call a polar reversal, a complete reversal in which those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted, Jesus is, in manner of speaking, flipping the north and south poles and overturning the world. Talk about upside-down logic.  

The banquet Jesus speaks of, as painted by Hyatt More

Jesus gives this same admonition to us today.  It may go against our reason and logic—as it must have for the folks who first heard it—but this is what divine hospitality looks like, and in this upside-down world that Jesus is inviting people into, everyone is family.  The strangers whom Jesus tells us to invite to our parties are not just any strangers, but they are those who in Jesus’ own day were considered unclean and undesirable, the ones that even today few of us would be quick to invite into our own homes.  This kind of radical hospitality makes sense only in light of the conviction that God rules the world, and therefore that adequate repayment for our efforts does not come in the form of a reciprocated invitation to someone who has invited us to their party, but rather in merely our relatedness to God and our conformity to God’s reign, rather than the ways of the world.  The Church at her best is the model for this way of living, as at the Table of the Lord, where Jesus is both the host of the meal and the meal itself, all are welcome.  No matter who you are, where you have been, what you have done, how you look, what you smell like, how much money you make, or who you hold hands with, you are welcome at this table, for it is Christ himself who invites us to meet him there, where we are fed with the bread of heaven and cup of salvation  In all the Gospels, especially Luke, meals are symbols for the in-breaking and anticipated rule of God, that’s why Jesus does so much of his ministry in the context of meals. The Eucharist (or Lord's Supper, or Communion, or Mass, whatever you want to call it) is the ultimate dinner party, one that we are meant to emulate at every one of our dinner tables.

The early Church regularly celebrated the Eucharist each week and held firm to Jesus' words:  "this is my Body...this is my Blood...whenever you do these things, do them in remembrance of me."  Thus, it was not just about the weekly celebration of the Lord's Supper, but the living reality that Jesus was present at EVERY table, in EVERY meal, whenever the faithful gathered together, and whenever those who were hungry got fed.  The presence and power of Jesus was not something relegated to worship spaces, but rather was something that was experienced at all times and in all places at such meals of the faithful.

Dinner Churches like Saint Lydia's in Brooklyn (stlydias.org) still embody Christ's presence at EVERY meal.

And let me tell you, angels have been known to come to these meals, in churches, homes, and everywhere in-between.  As if Jesus’ advice at the Pharisee’s party was not enough, the author of the Letter to the Hebrews echoes Jesus by urging the listener to not "neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some have entertained angels without knowing it" (Hebrews 13: 2).  What a beautiful, powerful image that is!  Hearing these words, we cannot help but see Abraham serving those three divine figures who come to him and Sarah and give them the good news that they will be parents  We can’t help but think of the people that we have eaten with, or those that we have walked through the grocery store with as they fill up their first cart of food in months, or the person kneeling next to us in tears as she reaches out her hands with her head hung low in anticipation of a morsel of bread.  Are not these such angels?  It is by emptying ourselves of the need to be exalted, the need to be reciprocated, the need to be loved and admired, that we are able to create a space both in our hearts and out in our world for those angels to come among us and remind us of the transformative power of God in Christ.  

For those at that Pharisees’ party, and for us today, it sounds like Jesus is calling us to somehow create a Mirror Universe, where things are upside-down. But what if I told you that we are living in the Mirror Universe, and that what Jesus is inviting us into is a world that is, instead, turned rightside-up?  Jesus’ vision of the world—or what he called the Kingdom of God—is a world that does not know social status, and is not concerned with how much money we make, where we live, how we dress, or any of the other hindrances that we have placed on one another in this upside-down world of ours.  By calling out the host and other party-goers Jesus might be considered a rude or ungrateful guest, but he is challenging them—and us—to make our tables look more like his, to make our get-togethers look like the Kingdom of God.  That is not a world turned upside-down, but one that is most certainly turned rightside-up.  I can’t wait for the next party! Who will you invite?