In the middle of next month, Donald Trump will return to this country for an unprecedented second state visit as the guest of the British sovereign. At the banquet that King Charles will hold in the President’s honour, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Ed Davey, will not be present. Writing in the Guardian on Wednesday https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/27/ed-davey-trump-gaza-boycott-state-dinner-king-charles, Sir Ed explained that, while it goes against all his instincts to refuse an invitation from His Majesty,

“I fear we could have a situation where Trump comes to our country, is honoured with a lavish dinner at one of our finest palaces, and no one reminds him that he has the power to stop the horrifying starvation, death and captivities in Gaza. And no one uses this moment to demand that the US president picks up that phone to Netanyahu and the Qataris and does the right thing.”

Or, in the language of the prophet Jeremiah, from whom we have just heard, one might say that Sir Ed feels that the ‘glory’ of a state banquet at a royal castle hosted by the King himself is being used ‘for something that does not profit’. And thus – although it is likely that his absence may not be noticed by the US President – he will absent himself in protest, in the hope that ‘the people in Gaza are not forgotten during the pomp and ceremony’.

While I have utter sympathy with Sir Ed’s views about the awful situation in Gaza, and while I applaud the fact that he explained that he and his wife had ‘thought and prayed long and hard’ about the issue, this morning’s gospel reading forces me to observe that his strategy is a very different strategy to that taken by Jesus – at least the Jesus of whom we read in Luke’s gospel. For Jesus appeared to have no qualms about turning up to dinners hosted by people with whom he disagreed – and not just turning up, but stealing the limelight to seize an opportunity for some quite outspoken teaching.

If you dial back three chapters earlier in Luke, you’ll find Jesus at another meal hosted by a Pharisee. That episode is so shocking – at least to modern middle-class ears – that it is not included in the Church’s three-year lectionary, so the story is rarely heard on a Sunday morning. For, from the word go, this dinner party goes spectacularly wrong, with Jesus firing off insults to both host and guests – culminating in Luke’s rather understated remark that by the end of the meal the others present are feeling ‘very hostile’ towards Jesus.

And so, as the curtain rises for us this morning, a more senior figure – a leader of the Pharisees – is seeing if he can both tame this outrageous figure, and learn more clearly just how scandalous Jesus is. And while the mood around the table does not get as explosive as that in chapter eleven, Jesus is certainly not wasting another good teaching opportunity. And thus he tells what Luke refers to as a parable – but what an odd parable it is.

For parables usually speak to us in crystal clear terms about what Jesus calls the Kingdom. And usually they do so by simple and powerful similes:

Here’s a mustard seed – it’s very small but it becomes very big so that everyone could find shelter and shade – what does that tell us about God’s kingdom?

 Or 

A man got beaten up by bandits, and it took a despised nobody to treat him with compassion and dignity – what does that tell us about God’s kingdom?

 Or

 A loving father goes out of his way to care for both of his dysfunctional and badly – what does that tell us about God’s kingdom?

And so on and so on and so on….

But this morning, here in Luke chapter fourteen, we are told that this simple bit of common sense etiquette advice to help you avoid a socially awkward moment is not just a tip about how to behave in front of your elders or betters… It, too, is a parable.

It could be easy to ignore this, or regard it as a slip of the evangelist’s pen – but that would be a mistake, because Luke does not use language casually. Luke is a profound wordsmith, and if Luke is clear that Jesus intends the remarks we just heard to be understood as a parable, then that is emphatically what it is.

Because, of course, Jesus isn’t merely offering a first century equivalent of a Sunday newspaper advice column on how to avoid a social  faux pas. Yet again, Jesus is doing nothing less than teaching about how things work in God’s kingdom. Jesus is saying that humility and not ostentation is at the heart of the kingdom of God – something which, manifestly, he does not see exhibited by his fellow dinner guests.

And then this conversation-cum-parable turns, pointedly, to the host – to this senior religious figure. And to the face of this influential religious leader, Jesus makes clear how he believes people are called to live out the demands of generosity, of grace, and of love.

Just over ten years ago, in Cleveland, Ohio, ten Republican hopefuls who aspired to receive that party’s nomination to run for President, took part in the first televised debate of the primary campaign. Alongside Donald Trump were a number of well-established politicians, and – as you may recall – at that point Mr Trump was considered to be an outside candidate whose campaign was bound to fail alongside the political heavy-weights running against him.

During the debate https://rollcall.com/factbase/transcript/donald-trump-first-gop-debate-august-6-2015/, Trump was accused of having financially supported  – horror of horrors – liberal policies. Specifically, of liberal policies pursued by Hillary Clinton. Trump’s reply was fascinating:

“I gave to many people… I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And do you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me…

…with Hillary Clinton, I said be at my wedding and she came to my wedding. You know why? She didn’t have a choice because I gave.”  [My emphasis]

So – if you should find yourself invited to dinner at the White House or at Mar a Lago – understand you are there for a purpose that is utterly transactional and reciprocal – you are there to be part of a quid pro quo. Which is – of course – as even the principled Sir Ed Davey admits, the reason that President Trump will be visiting this country next month: “I argued last January that we should use the offer of a state visit – something Trump so desperately craves – as leverage to persuade him to do the right thing.”

And, lest anyone think I am painting Mr Trump in an unfair or bad light, let me add that – having explained to his Republican rivals exactly why he sometimes supported ‘liberal policies’ and just what he gained by doing so – he said, with simple and perfect clarity: “that’s a broken system” – and, about that, I think he is totally correct.

Sir Ed Davey and President Trump are not the only people whose positions on Gaza have been in the news this week, however. On Tuesday the two most senior church leaders in the Holy Land – the Latin and Greek Patriarchs of Jerusalem – issued a joint statement about the worsening situation in Gaza City https://www.lpj.org/en/news/statement-by-the-latin-patriarchate-of-jerusalem, which is where the miniscule Christian community in the Gaza Strip is to be found – and, since the war began, to be found sheltering in the church compounds of their respective churches in that city.

As you will be aware, Israel has announced that it intends fully to occupy Gaza City, and is demanding its entire population of hundreds of thousands relocate to the south of the Strip – which, to offer context, is pretty much the equivalent of ordering the populations of Leeds or of San Francisco to up sticks and move.

In response to this, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch, explained that for many of the sick, weak and elderly sheltering in the church compounds, an enforced flight to the south would, quite simply, ‘be nothing less than a death sentence’…. and for that reason, his clergy and nuns would ignore the demands of the Israeli military, and stay put to feed and care for their flock. To offer what one English theologian called ‘the interruptive hospitality that says no to force’…. to host meals in which there is no leverage – no quid pro quo, but, quite simply, to offer the grace and love of Christ.

Jesus offers this parable-cum-lecture to the leader of the Pharisees, because he recognises that this man is a man of substance and influence; he is man who has capacity – a capacity with which, if he so chose, he could feed the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind. He could host a meal motivated not by the quid pro quo mentality of reciprocity, but the pro bono motivation of grace and love. But – to Jesus’ dismay – that has not been his choice. It is not how he wishes to use either his influence or his resources.

In a few minutes time, you and I will gather to be fed at the ultimate pro bono meal. The meal where the ever disruptive figure of Christ is present not as guest but as host, offering, out of grace and love nothing less than his own self, in a body broken on the Cross, and in blood spilled for the world’s salvation.

As we feast on this uniquely holy and transformative food, it is incumbent on us to ensure that we do not change the glory which it confers on us into something that, as Jeremiah so forcefully put it, ‘does not profit’.

And as Christ sends us onwards, out of the doors of this great cathedral, into a world in which there is so much suffering, need and deprivation, I pray that, as members of Christ’s own body, we will use our capacity to share God’s love without stooping to the self-interest of that ‘broken system’ that ultimately will profit nobody – least of all ourselves.

Amen.