Trinity 13 Sunday 29th August 2010

How do you make the best of who you are and the gifts you’ve been given?

We do so day by day not so much by choosing between black and white but through choosing the lesser shade of grey. We do so as Christians also with an eye to more than self advancement.

The Gospel and its matching first reading hardly need a commentary. Pride was not created for human beings, we heard from Ecclesiasticus. Later on we heard from Luke Chapter 14: Go and sit down at the lowest place…for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

The Gospel is no hand book on dining etiquette. It’s a parable, Jesus says, a story with a moral. The moral is aimed at those who saw their obedience to God earning them a place at God’s side. Jesus announces in both his words and his deeds a revolution in religious thinking. To be at God’s side you need to renounce any worthiness you think you’ve got to be placed there.

This quality of humility isn’t passive however, or a matter of speaking hollow words like the ritual ‘yes man’ Uriah Heep. Its an active quality. Humility is a call to downward mobility with Jesus. This is the thrust at the end of the Gospel. When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbours, 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. (Luke 14v12-14)

When we look at how Jesus managed power he seems to have made a point of giving it up wherever he could, passing praise for his healings on to his Father, emptying himself for others to suffer and die. He is supremely the humble one who has been exalted by his glorious resurrection.

Christianity isn’t a straight forward sort of religion. It’s full of paradoxes, things that contradict in logic but that God shows us we have to hold together in the practice of faith and life.

God is the be all and end all - yet human beings can live without him. Jesus isn’t God and he isn’t man - he’s God and man. Ultimate reality has three persons - but they are also one God. Believers live by God’s providence - but they live their own lives. The bread and wine we share taste like bread and wine - but they are the body and blood of Christ.

I could go on. The paradox of today’s scripture is that God is the same as us and yet he’s different from us. He’s a personal being who made us like himself. He’s also out of this world and can’t be fitted into worldly standards.

Here’s a parable that tries to explain the paradox in today’s Gospel.

Each year the President of the nation had a banquet in the palace for all his employers at which ministers and the accredited diplomats sat side by side with civil servants, cleaners and gardeners. As the meal got under way one of the gardeners, overwhelmed by the occasion and a bit thirsty, picked up his water filled fingerbowl and drank from it. People laughed. Quick as a flash the President realized both the error of his gardener and the cruelty of the mocking laughter. The President took hold of his own fingerbowl, though put there to clean diners’ fingers and not for drinking, and drank from it himself. This wiped the smiles off the faces of those who had mocked the poor gardener. Some of them felt so awkward they followed the President and drank themselves from their finger bowls.

How slow we can be as Christians to see the central paradox of our faith - the way to God is through seeking humility. The Pecking Order isn’t at all like the pecking order most people identify.

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. Philippians Chapter Two (v5-8).

In making the best of who we are and the gifts we’ve been given, through all the choice of shades of grey we choose between, unless we have that over arching desire to be with Jesus who descends to greatness all we do is nothing worth.

What are you doing with your life that will last forever? That’s the question we need to be asking ourselves – and Jesus asks it in the Gospel when he challenges those who seek upward mobility.

Christ’s humility was rewarded, as that passage from Philippians confirms, by his being highly exalted… and given the name that is above every name. So it is for us as we choose from time to time a lower pathway in worldly terms.

In the course of my ministry I have met people who have chased a dream of success and power over relentlessly. Their neglected families had paid the price for this so that the people they thought they were working for in the end got literally divorced from them. They were left emotionally and physically broken. Their worldly achievements actually mocked them rather than rewarded them.

As Christians we worship a God who is far from this sort of dis-connectedness. The God shown us in Jesus has no ‘better faster alone than slower together’ upward mobility about him at all.

'The Word became flesh and dwelt among us'. He came, and in coming announced his 'downwardly mobility'. Eternal Truth came to be fleshed out in a stable so we could know him and flourish as people loved by him. He comes to us to this day in the humble obscurity of bread and wine

As Christians we have truth, words to share but they are most effective when fleshed out in a loving and authentic way. People today, especially young people, need witnesses before they need teachers in the strict sense. They look for integrity. When they see humility in action it can be intriguing to them, even if they can also exploit it. As people exploited Jesus they will go for us to!

I want to end with a quote from Henri Nouwen that rejoices in the God who is 'downwardly mobile' and can be encountered in the service of the needy. Nouwen was an academic priest who chose in his last years to work among the mentally handicapped. This is the quote from his memorial volume, 'The Road to Daybreak':

People seek glory by moving upward. God reveals his glory by moving downward. If we truly want to see the glory of God, we must move downward with Jesus. This is the deepest reason for living in solidarity with poor, oppressed and handicapped people. They are the ones through whom God's glory can manifest itself to us. They show us the way to God, the way to salvation.

As Jesus says to us this morning When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed… Go and sit down at the lowest place…for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.