How much time to you spend observing people?

I hate the first 5-10 minutes of any party that I am invited to.  Especially if I am arriving late and there are already a lot of people there.  Because I know my own behavior – I will walk in the door, say hello to whomever welcomed me at the door, and do my darndest to try and not look past them to see who else is there – to see the place where I can ‘land’ comfortably – and usually fail miserably in the attempt.  It takes me a while to settle into the conversations that are real and that make the evenings a success.  Invariably, I spend most of those first awkward moments at a social gathering ‘observing’ everyone carefully. 
When you ‘observe everyone carefully’, there is a self consciousness to the interactions.  When I compare my conversations midway through the party to those at the beginning, there is a huge difference.  In the middle of the party, you are lost in the reality.  It is joyful and graceful.  You have forgotten about yourself.   In the case where you are watching yourself - the focus is invariably on me – “Am I making sense?  Did I just say something stupid?  Should I have brought that topic up for discussion?”  And the joy just goes right out the window, doesn’t it?

We know this reality in sports all the time.  When you are lost in the beauty of a game – it is pure gift.  That is when you are alive.  When I am having a great round of golf, it is a joy.  I just celebrate the shots.  But suddenly that thought comes:  This could be the best round of my life.  CRASH!, goes the round.  Because now I am no longer playing, but I am observing myself playing.  When you start observing yourself, it is now about the RESULT.  Then the joy goes out the window, and the score usually goes right with it.
 
Why do we watch each other and watch ourselves?  Why were the people WATCHING JESUS at that banquet?  Why were they OBSERVING HIM CLOSELY?  Because what was at stake for them was HONOR.  If they could be talking to the right person, seated next to the master – then they’d BE something.  If they held the seat of honor at the banquet, then people would notice them.  It’s that age long struggle with humility that was at stake.  Honor is that seductive evil that wants to drain us of the joy of the banquet that God invites us all to.  So the first great problem of this honor game is that it distances you from reality – it makes you unhappy.  That is what my experience at parties tells me.  I am no longer interacting, but I am watching myself interacting. The 2nd problem – it puts your life utterly in the hands of others.  My joy depends on you.  Only when you approve of me will I be happy.  And if you look at the people that our culture puts in places of honor, it is a little scary, isn’t it?  If you hand over your life to those people, what will you become?

THIS is what Jesus notices at that meal he was attending.  It is just this preoccupation with honor that breaks up THE BANQUET that God always wants to provide.  God is always inviting us to a sacred meal where we will know joy and peace and love.   But our honor game gets in the way.  So Jesus interrupts the interruption.  Take the lowest spot, he invites them.  Put aside that preoccupation with honor and being noticed, and just enjoy the banquet.  (Because it is people at the table in the back of the wedding reception who usually have the most fun, anyway…) And then Jesus takes it another step by looking at what you do when you throw a party, because that too can be an indirect way of gaining honor.  I invite you.  You invite me back.  Jesus interrupts that too – when you throw a party – invite those who cannot repay you – get completely out of the honor game. 

He is trying to break us of an addiction – the addiction to honor.  To break us on an addiction so that we might enter into God’s holy banquet. 
So stop observing people.  Stop keeping score of who is in or out.  Enter this week into EVERY CONVERSATION and EVERY ENCOUNTER THAT comes before you.  Don’t worry about what anyone might think about who you are talking to and what about.  Rather, enter into the depth of the reality of each moment, each gift, each person.  Enter into the banquet that God is always throwing for each of us – here at this table, here in our community, here in our lives.  Amen.  Amen.