Chapter 13 - Sit down

Sit down

 I am quite partial to James.  I don’t mean the New Testament book (well, that too), I mean the Manchester band.  They were carried along on the wave of the Madchester music scene, and it was in 1991 that they had probably their biggest and most famous hit, Sit down, on its re-release.  This song features the chorus, 

Oh, sit down, oh, sit down, oh, sit down,

Sit down next to me.

Sit down, down, down, down, down

In sympathy.

 It’s kind of an invitation to anyone who feels a bit like they do, to sit down with them.  That’s literally what the chorus means, actually.  Sympathy is ‘fellow-feeling’, shared experience or understanding or commitment.  Think of derivatives of that word: sympathetic, when someone is understanding of another’s situation; sympathiser, someone who supports another’s position or cause.

 A similar word to sympathy is ‘solidarity’.  This word is perhaps most associated with the Trade Union movement, thanks in part at least to Ralph Chaplin’s 1915 lyric Solidarity Forever, which became an anthem of the Industrial Workers of the World.  Trade Unions are a good example of solidarity.  A group of people in similar positions stands together for their rights, or against exploitation.  Solidarity, like sympathy, is about sitting or standing together, often for or against something.  It is based on the acceptance that, ‘we’re all in the same boat’, and that we must unite against injustice of some kind.

 I would like to propose that solidarity is the way forward.  Solidarity with the little people.  This, perhaps above all else, is what Jesus modelled.  Let’s ignore for a moment the miracles and words of Jesus (not something I usually recommend!), and look simply at with whom he sat.

 Jesus was criticised for socialising with tax collectors, prostitutes and ‘sinners’.  His audiences were often ‘the crowds’, which may carry a similar sense to the term ‘people of the land,’ who came in the last couple of centuries of Second Temple Judaism to be viewed (by the educated and the religious elite) as simple, ignorant peasants, not fully capable of understanding or performing God’s law.  Yet, it may have been such people whom Jesus made sit down, to share a meal-for-one that kept giving.  Jesus had one of history’s biggest picnics with the little people.  And this was quite significant.  Table fellowship was an important social indicator.  People were defined, in many ways, by whom they shared the table with.

 Jesus regularly ate with poor people, uneducated people, morally dubious people, socially outcast people…

Taking seats

 Of course, Jesus didn’t just eat with the lower classes.  He was also, at least occasionally, the dinner guest of Pharisees and scribes.  And on one such occasion (reported in Luke 14), Jesus watched with interest as the guests took their places at the table.  It seems they were trying to sit in the most ‘important’ seats possible.  Jesus then tells a parable about a wedding banquet.

 If you’ve ever planned a wedding meal, the table plan is one of the most fraught elements of the entire wedding.  Who sits with whom?  And is this table near enough to the top for so-and-so, but they can’t sit higher than that person… It’s a minefield.  It’s funny how where people sit on social occasions becomes such a big deal.

 And so Jesus tells the guests at this dinner that they shouldn’t seek the place of honour at a wedding banquet, in case someone “more distinguished than you” has been invited, and the host has to ask you to give them your seat, leaving you to take the walk of shame to the bottom.  Instead, Jesus says, take the lowest place at the start, then the host might say, “Friend, move up higher”.  The point Jesus is making is that, “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (Luke 14:11).

 This last line is used a lot by Jesus in the gospels.  The idea of some sort of reversal, a social re-ordering (some might say revolution), seems important, and not just in the gospels, but in the prophetic tradition too.  Actually, maybe in the whole Judeo-Christian tradition.  The prophet Zephaniah (3:11-13) speaks of God removing the “proudly exultant ones”, and arrogance, from his holy mountain, and leaving in their place, “a people humble and lowly”.  Look at Psalm 146, particularly verses 7-9, and while you’re there, Psalm 147:6.  David’s song of thanksgiving in 2 Samuel 22, recapitulated in Psalm 18, features the line: “You deliver a humble people,” (2 Samuel 22:28; Psalm 18:27), continuing, “…but your eyes are upon the haughty to bring them down” (2 Samuel 22:28), or, “you bring down the haughty eyes” (Psalm 18:27). Hannah’s prayer, in 1 Samuel chapter 2 has a lot of echoes in Psalm 113, especially 1 Samuel 2:8 and Psalm 113:7-8.  The former of those texts says this:

​He raises up the poor from the dust; ​​​​​he lifts the needy from the ash heap,

​To make them sit with princes​​​​​​ and inherit a seat of honour…

 That’s exactly what Jesus is talking about with the host of the wedding banquet.  So Jesus is not coming out with some new-fangled idea.  In fact, his parable here (Luke 14:8-11) is really a midrash on Proverbs 25:6-7, which say:

​Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence

or stand in the place of the great;

for it is better to be told, ‘Come up here’,​​​ than to be put lower in the presence​​​​ of a noble.

 (Proverbs, especially chapter 25, provides a lot of material for Jesus, as it goes.)

 After this midrashic parable, Jesus then turns to his host and says that when giving a dinner, he should not invite friends or family or well-off neighbours, because they might invite him in return, and he would be repaid.  Instead, he should invite “the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind”, and thus he will be blessed, because these people can’t repay him, and he will receive his reward “at the resurrection of the righteous” (Luke 14:12-14).

 In the first place, this sounds a bit ungrateful from Jesus.  But apart from that, Jesus takes us toward the kind of ‘social inclusion’ that characterises God’s kingdom, where meals are shared between all kinds of people, from all social classes, all abilities, all ages, all genders, all races, and so on.  And not just meals.  Life.

 Jesus invites us all to look outside of our families, and our social groups, and to move in wider circles, to include others, especially the little people.

Provision = Division?

 But before we take this just to mean we should run a feeding programme, open a foodbank, or such like (all commendable and, sadly, useful initiatives in places, sometimes), let’s step back and remember that Jesus was only reported to have fed people once or twice.  But he ate with people a lot more.  Jesus spent much of his time sitting down with people.  Sharing with them, often over a meal.  Investing in them.  Listening to them.  Talking to them.  And this is, in general, a better approach than simply feeding people, for a few reasons.

 Firstly, feeding (or meeting specific needs through service provision) can keep a division between we who provide and they who receive.  The benefactor and the beneficiary remain where they are.  In fact, this can replace one form of dependency with another, or worse, can replace one form of oppression with another.  When our interactions with the little people keep us superior to them, and them inferior to us, we perpetuate the social stratification that God opposes (as we have seen above).

 Secondly, and related to this, is the danger that social action can, in practice, hinder social justice.  An example of this is the tendency for politicians (local or central) to attend the opening of foodbanks.  This betrays a tacit agreement between all parties that it’s ok to have foodbanks, because they meet the need of hungry people – often made hungry because of government policy.  Thus, the temptation is for well-meaning people to focus resources on feeding people, rather than diverting some of these resources toward campaigning for social justice, by challenging the systems which create the need for foodbanks in the first place, and calling politicians to account.

 However, there is a third strand to this cord.  Alongside social action and social justice is social inclusion.  In simple terms, these three roughly equate to doing something to people; doing something for people; and doing something with people.  Sometimes all of these approaches are needed.  But the most important, in terms of God’s mission in the world, the most Christlike, of the three, is the last.  It is only through including people, on equal terms, that we fully live out the gospel.

 This is solidarity.  Getting alongside people, the little people.  Listening to them.  Learning from them.  Not simply saying, “Let me help”, but “Let’s share life together…”

Don’t do something, just sit there

 An example from my own experience may help to demonstrate this.  When circumstances forced the closure of a soup kitchen, a predecessor of mine decided to redirect the donations of short-date food to the local hostel, run by a housing association.  This opened a door for him to become a sort of chaplain to the hostel, dropping in every two weeks or so.  Shortly after I succeeded him, circumstances forced a re-think of the food drop to the hostel.  The responsibility for this was passed to a couple of other churches in town (the donations eventually dried up).  However, I continued the chaplaincy, and in fact this became more fruitful, as (apart from some milk and cake left over from another activity), I was taking nothing with me.  I was no longer someone who was going there to do something to the men and women who found themselves there (ie. feed them); I was there primarily, solely even, as someone who just wanted to listen, to talk, to learn from them, to share with them.  They made me tea, not the other way round.  And some people – staff and service users alike – were drawn a little closer to God, and felt more valued.

… But for the grace of God…

 As noted above, the concept of social inclusion (for want of a better term) is Christlike.  The apostle Paul quoted what is thought to be an early Christian hymn, in writing to the Philippian church that their attitude should be the same as Jesus Christ,

who, though he was in the form of God,

   ​​did not regard equality with God

   ​​​as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself,

   ​​taking the form of a slave,

   ​​​being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

   he humbled himself

   ​​and became obedient to the point of death—

   ​​​even death on a cross.

 Jesus crossed the largest social divide in the universe.  Although he was God, he didn’t let it go to his head.  He was prepared to lay it all on the line – status, reputation, safety, his own life – and live with us and like us.

 If Jesus could do it, why can’t we?  I mean, Jesus literally had it all to lose.  He really was someone.  He really did have a reputation to protect.  He really was above us.

 There’s a saying that really winds me up: ‘There but for the grace of God go I’.  We use it to mean, ‘that poor person I see before me could just as easily be me, except that (for some unknown reason) God’s grace has spared me from their fate’.  But why would God’s grace choose me over them?  In fact, is it not the case that God’s grace is at least as much in evidence in the life of that other, as in mine?  That person lives with his or her condition – of poverty, of pain, of illness – even in very dignified ways.  And I simply condescend, patronise: ‘There but for the grace of God, go I…’  Maybe we should, rather, realise that God’s grace can free us from such a superiority complex, and say, instead, ‘Here, but for the grace of God, go they…’  Such people as ‘they’ are often humble, not exalting themselves.

 And as long as we keep these unhelpful distinctions, these social groupings, we are always in danger of paternalism.  By this, I mean that our service provision is all about us, the experts, fixing the other.  Paternalism is the enemy of solidarity, the enemy of genuine inclusion.  Paternalism prevents people from truly standing shoulder to shoulder, from truly sitting down next to one another, from truly kneeling side by side.

 In the quote from Philippians, above, we read that Jesus was “found in human form”.  Jesus became one of us.  He looked like any other man.  There was nothing that made him different, except that He was God.  But to look at Him, He was ‘just one of the guys’.

 Another story from my own experience.  One of the best models of feeding programme I have seen was run by a local housing charity, working among the homeless and vulnerably housed.  It happened once a week, in a local church, at lunchtime.  It entailed a three-course meal for a pound (first time free of charge).  What I love about this model is that it adds value to the whole thing by charging for the meal.  That means it is not free, it is not a handout.  Those who eat are investing something in it, they became stakeholders.  But at a pound, it is accessible to almost anyone, as anyone can get hold of a pound.

 Also, this programme included a monthly ‘thrift store’.  This part was free, and allowed people to go into the next room and look at a small stall of donated clothing, and some household goods, and take what they wanted.

 The charity also encouraged ‘service users’ to become ‘service providers’ by volunteering.  A number of the regulars became volunteers at the programme.

 For a period of time, I regularly attended this meal, usually only eating the soup and bread course (which was free, although I always paid the pound).  I went to sit with the other people there, to listen, to chat.  I got to know quite a few of the regulars.  I always wore some form of Salvation Army branded clothing (never full uniform).  But once, a volunteer from the thrift stall came into the dining area, and went round the tables telling the guys about the stall.  She came to the table where I was sitting with two or three others.  And, looking me straight in the eye, with a sincere and sympathetic face, she told me to come through and help myself…

 For a second, I was torn.  I almost wanted to say, ‘Sorry, you’ve made a mistake, I’m not one of these guys…’  Then I realised how that might sound to my friends.

 So I smiled and said, ‘Thanks’.  And she moved on.

 And then I realised that, regardless how it might have sounded to my friends, it would have been wrong to say I wasn’t one of those guys.  I was having lunch with them, I was getting to know them.  In some way, I was one of them.  And my ‘blending in’ was, in some way, Christlike.  That is what we must become: indistinguishable from the little people, because we are with them, and they are with us, until, ultimately, we are all one – there is no them or us.

 There’s a famous quote from Oscar Wilde, that, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”  We must recognise that we are all in the gutter.  We must realise this Biblical solidarity.  And then, all together, we can look at the stars.