September 2, 2007
The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 17, Year C)
Sirach 10:12-18; Psalm 112; Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16; Luke 14:1, 7-14
The readings for today are all in tune with one another, which does not always seem to be the case. So I’m always impressed when it happens. And as I see it, the very first sentence of the passage from Hebrews sums it all up, “Let mutual love continue.” These readings are about relationships, corporate as well as individual, person to person relationships, and about entitlement.
Sirach in the first reading talks about human pride and how its beginning lies in forsaking God. The pride he is talking about is that which we take upon ourselves when we put ourselves above and beyond God, when we forget that who and what we are we owe to the grace of God. It may be better defined as arrogance, haughtiness, conceit, vanity. It is not the very legitimate pride that a person can take in a job well done, anywhere from a clean house to a dream house, fence painting to a Mona Lisa, a child’s first piano recital to a her later performance in Carnegie Hall. No, it is a self love, an inward looking absorption, obsession even. (It’s what got Adam and Eve into trouble.)
In contrast the psalmist says, “Happy are they who fear the Lord and have great delight in his commandments.” And that is not to say that they don’t take pride in what they have done or what they are doing but the key is “their heart is right; they put their trust in the Lord.”
Then we come to the gospel. (I’ll pass on the epistle for the moment. Look at it this way, the epistles were written mostly by Paul in response to the gospel, to communities that were in many cases struggling with their faith. They might be considered a “how-to” of what Jesus had taught). So, to the gospel – Jesus told them a parable, Luke says. That should immediately alert us all to the fact that we must look beyond the actual words he is going to say. And what is the underlying theme? Yes, it is, in reality, again the sin of pride and how not to and why not to. That is the bottom line.
The scene is a wedding banquet. I can just imagine the chaos at a reception today if there were no place cards. Where do we sit? They sure negate the scenario that Jesus is painting. Although even with place cards, I know from personal experience, one has to be careful whom you sit with whom, and what about Great-aunt Mary and her wheel chair, and who should sit far from the band, etc. But the point is those problems are hopefully worked out ahead of time today. But not so in Jesus’ time. It sounds as if it’s a bit of a free for all, doesn’t it? But as he said, this is a parable and the story is just a facade for a deeper message.
In our comfortable, suburban society it is only too easy to feel pretty good about oneself and even to think we may be are a little better than the next guy. That, inadvertently or otherwise, creates a spirit of competition in our society that pushes so many of us to want the best lawn, or the fanciest car, or the kids in the best soccer programs, to take the grandest vacations or, as we watch merger after merger, to be the biggest company. Unfortunately that spirit of competition very often transforms itself into a sense of entitlement. We have it so we deserve it. We forget what Jesus taught about who should be first – remember the scene with James and John and their mother’s request for them to sit one at Jesus’ right hand and one at his left in his kingdom (Matt. 20:21)? It is not ours to determine, not if we are going to follow Jesus. As he said in our gospel, “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
So here we have individuals or corporations, maybe some you know either personally or through the media, maybe some even in the church, who think they have it made. Think of the old days when people bought their pews. The so-and-so family sat there in the front pew; it was theirs; they had paid for it. If you recall the historic services we did a few years back, the “riff-raff” just milled around in the back, with no pews! But if we understand what Jesus is saying we know that attitudes of entitlement and self-righteousness are not what reap the rewards from God. It is rather the person who says, “Holy God, I am unworthy; let others go before me.” Or “Dear God, I am a sinner, forgive me.” Or as Jesus in this passage directs the invited guest, “Go and sit down in the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’”
That is only half the message for today, however. Once Jesus has got the invited guests all seated according to
“Instead,” Jesus says to his host, “when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." In other words get away from what makes you comfortable, from what is easy, and make the effort to do that which is right and good in God’s sight regardless of what the neighbors may say. That can be tough to do!
The setting of the banquet is a metaphor for life. Jesus liked to use that every day occurrence of a meal to make his points. The meal, the table, is the center of the family and society’s activity and in Jesus’ eyes for it to be truly God’s table it must include everyone. And today he would expand that list to include not just the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, and the tax collectors he often ate with, but also the gay, the educationally challenged, the unemployed, those in prison, those with addictions, women and children, all colours, and, I believe, all creeds. There would be no exceptions; there would be no outcasts.
And as he offended those of importance in his own day, so does he offend them today. But to live in his kingdom is to be not afraid of following his lead, of doing his will, of loving one another regardless of who that “other” is and regardless of whether we agree on every little thing.
Yes, we are human and want, at least figuratively, to give the best parties and get the headline in the society pages, but that won’t impress Jesus.
So now I come to the passage from the letter to the Hebrews, the epistle reading I passed over earlier. This letter, referred to as an “exhortation” in its final verses, is, like Sirach, full of words of wisdom, words of guidance for daily living. More like a sermon than a letter it was according to the scholars probably directed to a group of second generation Christians, possibly in Rome, who had become disappointed that God’s promised kingdom had not yet come and as a result they were falling away.
The anonymous author of the letter assures his readers that Jesus said, "I will never leave you or forsake you." In contrast to human leaders “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Yes, the message that Jesus brought to his world by his living among the people, teaching and healing, eventually dying, but then breaking the mold that death is the end, by rising again to a new life, that message is unchanged today and will remain so forever.
And what is that message? The first words of this passage are, “Let mutual love continue,” which is just another way of reiterating Jesus’ commandment, “Love one another!” So, put aside the pride that, as Sirach said, causes the heart to withdraw from God, and following Jesus, “do not neglect to do good and to share what you have” whether it is from your material abundance or a smile, whether it is providing a ride to the doctor’s office or raking the neighbor’s leaves, whether it’s something big or something little, whether it’s from your treasure or from your time, for such is what is “pleasing to God,” and is the fruit of mutual love.
As you leave this place today, carry with you the thought of mutual love and how you might bring those you meet in the coming days to the table, to God’s table, to God’s banquet.
Amen.
Sonia F. G. Stevenson, M. Div.
Church of the Good Shepherd