Sermon for Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, "Seating Arrangements," Luke 14:1, 7-14 (Proper 17C, Ordinary 22C)
Sermon 8/28/16 Luke 14:1, 7-14 Seating Arrangements I’m a big fan of Jane Austen novels. I have a small collection of favorite books that I tend to read and reread, and Austen’s novels are among them. As a woman of the twenty-first century, I certainly find it difficult to imagine how I could ever live under all the constraints and rules, particularly those placed upon the proper behavior of women. But society and behavior were highly structured in the Regency era, and most areas of life functioned according to very particular rules, especially for upper class men and women. And so, the drama can be heightened in many scenes of Austen’s work because of something as simple as this: who got to escort who to the dinner table – because people could only walk into dinner in a certain order, according to social rank, age, and marital status – and who ended up sitting next to who at the dinner table – because it wouldn’t have been appropriate to try to speak to people who weren’t