The relationship between rules and friendship

A Reflection for Saturday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time

Find today’s readings here.

When I planned my wedding last year, I learned a lot about etiquette. Much of what I learned came not from my own generation but from that of my parents (and from those who had passed it on to them before), whose customs and traditions, I noticed, offered them not only a set of rules for behavior, but also the safety and security those rules could provide. When a group agrees on a set of rules, they can lean on those rules in order to avoid offending others. When it came to responding to an invitation, giving a gift, organizing a seating chart and more, the rules provided clarity and, at their best, encouraged me to think more deeply about the intention and meaning behind long-held traditions.

In today’s Gospel reading from Luke, etiquette matters a great deal—until it doesn’t.

Jesus tells a parable about choosing seats for dinner at a celebratory wedding feast. His narration tells us something meaningful about tradition, honor and customs in the Gospel age, as the implications about higher and lower places seem well understood by his listeners. Jesus advises them not to choose a place of honor in case someone who is “more distinguished” than them might need (and, by the standards of the day’s ritual, deserve) the seat. Jesus points out that such a gaffe would cause embarrassment and shame for you and accidental offense to someone else, whether it be the host or the distinguished guest.

Instead, he says it is wiser to choose the very lowest place. If you do so, the host, seeing you’ve humbled yourself, may invite you to a better position. As Jesus explains, “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Jesus is not throwing out rules and traditions; he’s relying on their importance in his contemporary society, knowing that the listeners of the parable will be quite familiar with them. But he is also saying that when we know each other and when we act in friendship, we can be free from some of the rigidity with which we might have initially approached the rules.

Jesus’ recommendation is not simply to know your rank and sit in your place accordingly and never waver. Instead, the humbling he recommends is a sign of respect, of friendship and relationship with the host who invites you and the other guests with whom you’re sharing the table. Even if your rank “on paper” is higher, there is virtue in putting that to the side and taking the lower, less favorable place. After all, God’s view of order, rank and rules is different than our view.

When we don’t know one another and therefore can’t trust one another, we have to rely more rigidly on rules to establish order. But where there is friendship, there is more room for flexibility and understanding. There is room to respond to matters as they unfold. In our church, how could we open ourselves up to knowing each other a bit better? Would it allow us to cling less intently to rules and instead to approach each other in friendship, responding to what each situation calls for?

There’s a time to keep traditions and a time to break them—or, at the very least, adjust them.

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