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Sermon - September 2nd, 2007
The Servant's Entrance
Rev. Gwen Drake
Scripture: Luke 14:1, 7-14
Here is a story about George Bernard Shaw. He was invited to a woman’s house for high tea. The woman was hoping to become an important person in the British society by association. So she sent a card to George Bernard Shaw which read, “Lady so-and-so will be at home Thursday from 4 to 6 p.m.” Shaw wrote a note on the card and sent it back, signing it, “Mr. George Bernard Shaw, likewise.”
Here is a story about Winston Churchill. It’s a rather famous exchange between him and Lady Astor. One day, Lady Astor said to Winston Churchill, “If I were your wife, I’d put poison in your tea,” to which Churchill replied, “If I were your husband, I’d drink it.”
Now, here is a story about George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill. Shaw sent Churchill two complimentary tickets to his new play with this note: “Here are two tickets for the opening night of my new play, one for you and one for a friend, if you have one.” Churchill sent them back with this note, “I cannot attend opening night. Send me two tickets for the next night, if there is one.”
We live in an interesting world where all the focus seems to be on the rich and famous and the rest of the world is living vicariously through them, thanks to the media. The world is full of status seekers… finding way to be being validated, a way of feeling like we have made it, that we belong, that we are somebody. We can poke fun of the Churchill and Shaw and the British high society, but F. Scott Fitzgerald challenged us Americans in his novel, The Great Gatsby, with our own system of class and status. In America, it is not necessarily family or property that moves us up in society; it is money. Money will buy you a seat in high places in America.
Jesus was the guest of honor at a very fancy banquet put on by a prominent Pharisee, a man of considerable influence. Jesus was the celebrity whom the others had come to dine with. The host had invited some of his friends to the dinner to meet Jesus, the man from Nazareth who had gained sudden notoriety as a preacher and miracle worker.
It was a grand affair, in the back courtyard, catered with the finest foods, lawn sloping down to the water’s edge. Just lovely. The guests were well-dressed, servants well-groomed, everything was going perfectly. Then the host got up and gave Jesus a most gracious introduction. As was expected, he then asked Jesus to say a word, after all, he was quite well-known for his stories and wisdom. However, I think the host probably regretted his invitation to Jesus. For Jesus stood up and began, “I couldn’t help but notice the way all of you maneuvered for your seat at the table. You can get away with that here, but I tell, you, when you are invited to a marriage feast, do not sit down at THE place of honor, lest a more eminent person arrive, and the host has to come over to you and, in front of everyone, say, ‘Give your place to this person.’ Instead, when you are invited, go to the lowest place, so that when the host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move on up higher;’ for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and everyone who humbles himself will be exalted.’”
You just have to love Jesus. Not only is he insulting all those people who have already chosen their place at the table, he is doing it with a parable that doesn’t make much sense. In fact, on the surface, it reads to me as a recipe for how to get ahead in life by pretending to be humble. Now that is disturbing.
Well, Jesus meant it to be disturbing, as usual. His guests were smart enough to know better than to equate true humility with the act of humbling themselves outwardly, especially while hoping to be promoted later. We know it as well. We know that taking the lower seat so that we will not be embarrassed later if someone better comes along, is not an act of real humility. We know that the pretense of humility is not humility.
So what is Jesus up to? Well, I think this is not so much a parable about what humility is, as it is a parable about how we can make room in ourselves for humility to come about. It is very difficult to actively put humility into practice—humility is rather strange that way. We can’t really work at being humble or strive for humility. Humility is not something we can control or determine. Someone who stands up and proclaims, I am a humble person—is not a humble person. Rather humility is something that, by the grace of God, comes upon us. Frank Lloyd Wright described it this way, “A shadow falls. I feel coming on me a strange disease, humility.”
Jesus is not teaching us how to be humble in this parable. Jesus is showing us how we can open ourselves to the grace of God so that we might be granted humility. There is a very subtle difference. Humility is a gift straight from God. A gift that probably will make us uncomfortable. Humility is strange that way. So how do we open ourselves to such a gift as humility.
By the way we approach life. Life is like the choices we make at a wedding banquet, Jesus says. We can approach life looking for what we can get out of it for ourselves, or by looking for what we can give to it for the sake of others. We may strive for the best place, the highest place, the place that makes us feel important, worthy, and respected, or the place where we believe we will get the most advantage, which are not bad things in and of themselves, but if we strive after such things only for our own sake, rather than the sake of others, then it is going to be lonely and empty and exhausting at the top, and when we fall from the top, we will fall alone.
What Jesus is saying is make way for love to sit in its rightful place at the wedding feast. Love is the most honorable guest. Love offers without hesitation all the best seats in the house. Love is the guest that must be honored within us all if we are ever going to be able to truly honor one another.
It was Mother Teresa who said it so well, “We do no great things, only small things with great love.” I have found myself reflecting on Mother Teresa and the very recent revelation that she spent years and years not feeling the presence of God in her life. I describe this as having the gift of humility. No one I know doubts that Mother Teresa gave the world the very real and tangible presence of Christ. Would she say that about herself? No, but many others have said it. She embodied Christ in the world. No one doubts that. Yet, she doubted it. I find that SO hopeful, so incredible, so honest, so amazing.
Humility isn’t about putting ourselves down or letting others put us down. Humility is about lifting others up. Humility is about believing deep inside yourself that you are of priceless worth without having to prove it at someone else’s expense. Humility is about having the space and the room in ourselves for God’s Spirit to flow through us.
The Letter to the Hebrews, Chapter 13, for today says it this way: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some have entertained angels without knowing it.” This means we are to look for the servant’s entrance in life instead of the red carpet. We are to be as servant. The Apostle Paul said the Phillipians, “Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves.”
Humility is the miracle of being able to get outside of your self and into right relation with others. When we become humble, given the gift of humility, our eyes are opened. And when our eyes are opened, we see our true place in the scheme of things and we are not threatened or disappointed, we are grateful. We finally realize that this thing we are part of called life—it isn’t all about ME, ME, ME, thank you, Jesus!! It is so much more, so very much more.
Wayne Mueller, a Lutheran professor and pastor wrote a whole chapter on humility which I will only share one thing, “It is good at times to retreat from the illusion of our own indispensability. We are important in that we are part of something larger. We are part of the family of the earth, members of the body of Christ, part of the dharma and the sangha of the Buddha. Our power comes not from ourselves, but from the enormousness of which we are a part. True freedom comes when we become as Zen teacher Sazuki Roshi said, ‘nobody special.’ We do our work not for glory and honor, but simply because we must, because we believe in the value of right action and good labor.” (Sabbath, Wayne Mueller, p 175).
When we approach life with a heart willing to honor others, with a mind that searches creatively to care for those around us, with hands that seek out ways to be of use to the larger good, we are opening ourselves up to the gift of humility. Wayne Mueller says this is “the blessing of knowing that we do very little at all by ourselves.” And you know what, that is not just okay to admit, it is a relief to contemplate. Thanks be to God! Amen.