Hebrews 13.1-8, 15-16, Luke 14:1, 7-14
Whitegate, Trinity 14, Proper 17, 1/9/2013 [1] [2]
When I’ve preached here I’ve been keen to try to illustrate the strangeness of so many of the words which the gospels contain; not to leave them sounding strange, but to try to illuminate their meaning.
Sometimes the meaning of these ancient, but vibrant, texts, remains elusive, and so these sermons have been just fumblings towards a sense of how they resonate today.
You might feel ok about that - for after all, church is a place where we come partly to hear strange words said, and to speak strange words ourselves, words we never hear or say outside, which through their strangeness speak to our hearts of truths deep and intuitive to us.
Words like ‘The Lord is here / His Spirit is with us’.
Words like ‘The peace of the Lord be always with you’.
Last time I spoke the text revealed Jesus’ strange words about family, challenging our ideas about what we mean by Christian Family Values. This was not to say that I am somehow against traditional family values. I'm not! But I wanted to carefully suggest that Jesus came to embody values that somehow go beyond the traditional family values. Jesus came to establish a way of living together in peace that takes the traditional values and transforms them into something more.
In today’s reading we are again confronted by the same Jesus challenging us to move beyond our basic values. It may not be quite as flagrant and obvious as two weeks ago, but in today's gospel Jesus has subtly presented his fellow dinner guests, and us, with the same challenge. The text begins by telling us that Jesus' fellow guests, at the home of a leader of the Pharisees, were watching him. They were watching him because the Pharisees were the sort who staunchly stood for the traditional values of their day. They believed in eating sabbath dinners, for example, with a good measure of the proper decorum, grace, and respect. Jesus, on the other hand, already had a reputation of breaking the rules, especially the rules of purity and cleanliness. He worked on the sabbath, even when it meant reaching out to heal unclean, sick people. He and his disciples had the reputation for eating with dirty hands. And the biggest affront of all was eating with unclean people, with known sinners like tax collectors! So these keepers of traditional values were keeping a close eye on Jesus.
But Jesus turns the table by watching them. He carefully watches the way in which they lobby to take seats of highest position and honour, to sit at the head of the table, so to speak. And, then, with what must have come as something of a surprise, Jesus offers some sage advice to them:
"...do not sit down at the place of honour, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, 'Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, 'Friend, move up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you." (Luke 14.8-10)
“'Friend, move up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you.” - this phrase shows that Jesus could play within the rules, after all. It was really smart advice.
But Jesus' concluding remark reveals the real depth to his insight: "For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted." In other words, Jesus isn't just giving sage advice, playing along with the so-called traditional values, but he is also seeing right through the game they are playing. It is a game we all play, the game of justifying ourselves, the game of trying to look good before others. It is the game of building our reputations, usually at someone else's expense. Jesus came to fundamentally change the rules of that game. For none of us can ultimately succeed in that game when we come before God, our Creator. We will all have been found to fall far short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).
There's more. If his first words to the guests that day were at least sage advice, Jesus' final words to his host were anything but:
"When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But 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." (Luke 14.12-14)
These words virtually turned their whole enterprise upside down. This might not seem as much of a challenge to us as Jesus' words two weeks ago, but to his host they might have seemed even more blasphemous. If one was to be serious about keeping the traditional values of purity, one would never even think of inviting such people.
But Jesus is exposing their game. In essence, the games of self-justification, of building reputations, these are all human power games. And the results of such games are that some people rise to power and some don't. Some people become part of the in-group and some are left out. And this is precisely why so many of our so-called traditional family values need to be transformed and taken to another level. This is why Jesus challenges us to go beyond traditional family values: Because we can never truly claim to be family when some people are left out. Mixed with our power games of self-elevation, our traditional family values work out to be ones in which some families win and those who are left out lose.
Jesus came to expose and challenge all that. He came and took the very lowest place. He came and let himself be perceived as a sinner, a lowest of the low, a common criminal hanged on the cross. But his challenge to us, if we have eyes to see it, is a gracious one. For it relieves us of all that burdensome work of justifying themselves. His own resurrection was both the challenge to the world that only God can justify our lives and the promise that God does do precisely that: God mercifully forgives all who repent and claims them as God's own. Whether worshipping adults or baptised infants, God graciously forgives us and embraces us as children into his family, a family which seeks to embrace all of God's creatures.
'Friend, move up higher' - is another strange and memorable phrase from the pages of scripture, from the lips of Jesus, a phrase which might connect to the deep soul within us by reminding us of a time in our lives when we have been helped along by someone who has noted our humble position and graciously elevated us. 'Friend, move up higher' - may connect with a memory of when we have used our own elevated position to lift someone else higher than they had been before. Each of these instances are wondrous signs of the kingdom of heaven breaking through into our lives.
Now, with all this talk of strange words and changing values, we might think that we are falling apart in the twenty-first century, that there is no centre to hold us together. But there is a centre. The same one that has been offered to us since our Lord was raised from the dead, exalted as the Son of God from his place with the lowest of the low on the cross. So we simply cannot proclaim ourselves to have family values until we are reaching out to include all God's children. We must go beyond the so-called traditional family values by taking our place with the least of our brothers and sisters, extending to them God's promise of grace and love in Jesus Christ. He is the centre who can truly hold us together in one family. Amen
Notes
[1] This is substantially not my sermon, but a slightly modified version of Paul J. Nuechterlein’s sermon, Beyond Traditional Family Values, delivered at Emmaus Lutheran, Racine, WI, August 29-30, 1998. To whom, as always, I am immensely grateful.
[2] This was my final sermon preached as Vicar of Whitegate and Little Budworth, on the day I announced my resignation from that post.
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