August 30, 1998
To those of you who are preparing a guest list for your next dinner party, this is what my mother used to say, "you done quit preaching and gone to meddling."
There is no denying it, the lessons which confront us today are hard ones. The denunciation of pride, the call for selfless hospitality to those who do not carry a great closeness to us, the call for real personal concern about the poor and the dispossessed — all of these things run counter to the 20th century view of self actualization and ego strength, the twin watchwords of what it is to be a whole being in our funny little society.
We begin the scriptures today reading Ecclesiastes, one of the inter-testimonial books. He writes to us that arrogance is hateful and injustice is offensive. We move to the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews who tells us to show hospitality; to remember those in prison; to care for those who are subjected to mistreatment. He tells us to honor marriage and to be content with what we have, knowing that Christ is our provider. He tells us to follow the example of our Christian leaders.
Then we move to Jesus and the gospel according to St. Luke. Luke sets the stage by saying that Jesus was going to have a meal in the home of the Pharisaic leader on the Sabbath. He sets the stage and then he says some were watching him. Oh, they were! They were watching him closely because at another Sabbath, Jesus had affronted them by healing someone, by doing work, by performing a miracle on the day of rest! Such work is an anathema to the very strict understanding that the Pharisees had of what was appropriate and inappropriate on the Sabbath day. On the day when Jesus had performed that miracle, it turned the Jewish religion upside down — and so, they are watching him at dinner to see what he is going to do next.
Sure enough, he turned social convention upside down. First, he says to those who had come with all of their self-importance going to station themselves by the chair next to the host's, the place of honor, "That is not the way you are to behave. Instead of placing yourself there, place yourself in a lower place. Place yourself with everyone else in front of you." He then turns to the host and says, "Whenever you invite people, invite them with true selflessness. Think not about what they are going to do for you, how they will invite you to their homes or to their clubs, but instead think that you will simply provide a meal and good fellowship for those you invite, with no further thought of repayment."
As we read lessons like these, we, too, are uneasy about the same things we know Jesus says to us. It is, in fact, a crisis of faith. Now there are many people who consider a crisis in faith to be a really bad experience, but I have always seen it as an opportunity. A crisis in faith is an opportunity to make a new choice, a renewed choice for faith commitment in Jesus Christ. It is not the easiest thing in the world, but it is one of the more rewarding things in our lives. To be drawn to Jesus, but also to be afraid of what he may ask us to do next — to know the kind of fear that people know when they try something new, whatever that something new may be. Whether it is a 16-year old or an 18-year old learning to drive for the first time, whether it is the student pilot when the instructor gets out of the plane and says, "Give me three touch and goes," or whether it is one of those crazy people who jump out of perfectly good airplanes for sport — it is the kind of tension and fear that goes with trying something new. Whenever I find myself afraid of what Jesus may ask me to do next, it is to this kind of experience that I turn, to make sense out of what comes next.
All of us want the benefits of life in Christ, but we are afraid of the commitments of discipleship. We find ourselves in that same banquet with Jesus today. He is watching us, seeing how we will behave, how we will act. The difference between us watching him and him watching us is that we look for ways to say, "I always knew this was a crazy enterprise, Jesus is a nut case and I can walk away from this whole Christian business and go on about the way I would like to go." Jesus watches us in a very different way. He watches us to say, "How can I bring grace into this person's life? How can I open their eyes and their hearts to accept the love of God? How can I bring them salvation?"
As we sit at his banquet today, he is looking for opportunities to break into our conventional thinking, to open our minds and our souls to his salvation. The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews was right — Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He still is seeking to bring human beings into union with God. He is still working miracles in our lives. All we have to do is look around with the eyes of faith to see them. Jesus still heals people in body, spirit, soul and mind. Jesus still bridges the gap that we create between us and the Father.
Hospitality and humility are the watchwords of these lessons. The underlying assumption of hospitality is that I have something, I have a resource to be shared with you and I invite you into my presence in order that I may show you the grace of God. The underlying assumption of humility is that you have a resource to be shared with me. You, too, can teach me something. I come into your presence as an open student to be fed, nurtured and taught because the truth of the matter is that the resources each of us have are the gifts of Christ. The truth about the gifts of Christ is that they are meant to be shared, to be given away. We discover in our Christian pilgrimage that the more we give, the more we have. As we give with our one hand, we are receiving with the other. We give to one and they give to another so that all the gifts and the glory of Christ are spread, multiplied and grown within our hearts and our lives.
Let us not fear confrontational scriptures
as we have read this morning. Let us not fear Christian discipleship.
Let us, instead, approach our discipleship with the questions
of
hospitality and humility, assuming as we must, that Jesus has
a purpose for us as individuals and as a community of faith. Let
us approach our life together at St. Margaret's parish asking
the question of hospitality, "What is it that I have that
Jesus wants you to receive?" Let us ask the question of humility,
"What is it that you have that Christ wants me to receive?"
If we can live with the answers, we can live our lives as an answer
to those two questions and in doing so we, too, will entertain
angels unaware.
AMEN
The Rev. Dr. Robert Certain
rgcertain@stmargarets.org
30 August 1998