Pentecost 15/Proper 17C 28
August 2016
The Rev. Maurice C Frontz STS St Stephen Lutheran Church
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord
and Savior Jesus Christ.
Back in the days of the Cold War, American intelligence
agents would always pay close attention to the photographs taken of the Soviet
leaders in the grandstand at the parades commemorating the October revolution.
The General Secretary of the Communist Party was always in
the center, of course, but he was not the interesting person. Everyone knew
that he was going to be in the first place.
The more interesting people were the ones who surrounded
him, the ones to his right and to his left, the ones closer to him and the ones
farther away. From the position of the people in the photographs, our
intelligence services could tell which apparatchiks
were most in favor in the Communist party, and who was falling out of
favor. They could tell who was on his way up and who was on his way down; who
was influential and who was not.
Of course, the ultimate sign that a Party man had fallen out
of favor was when the photo in which they appeared was re-touched so that they
no longer appeared in the official photograph. Not only had they been jailed,
or even murdered, but they had literally been erased from the historical
record.
If only the Soviets had known about Photoshop.
In government, at school, at work, there are always people
jockeying for position; they are trying to get a higher place and avoid being
put down to the lowest place. Often they tear people down in order to build
themselves up. Some of them are
ruthless.
But there is a more subtle sort of seeking after position,
because if you’re too obvious, you can be called out on it. So there is
something these days called the ‘humblebrag.’ It is a way of modestly calling
attention to one’s accomplishments or one’s attributes without seeming to.
Something like, ‘I really didn’t deserve that award.’
Well, people can see through that, too.
But the point is that we all do this; we all want to put
ourselves up, and to do this, it seems often we have to put people down. We do
this because we want to be secure, we want to have influence.
Jesus puts the lie to our pretensions. He sees the religious
leaders maneuvering for position, trying to take the seats closest, perhaps to
the one who is throwing the dinner for Jesus; perhaps closest to Jesus himself.
And so he tells a parable which brings this behavior to
light. It is not likely that he ever said anything negative about the people
themselves, but the point he makes is clear.
As far as the first parable goes, it is much the same as the
reading we heard from the book of Proverbs. We want to avoid being shamed and
we want to be honored. To put oneself forward as someone important is dangerous
and can lead to being put to shame. As far as the first parable goes, it might
be interpreted as simply a more subtle way of seeking honor from other people.
Perhaps it is a ‘humblebrag’ for someone to just hang around the circle, to
seek a low place, hoping that someone will notice.
(from agnusday.org)
But then Jesus tells another parable, one that cannot be
mistaken for a way to get recognition by human standards. By this parable, we
recognize that we are not in the realm of human wisdom at all, but God’s
wisdom, which turns all human wisdom on its head. Jesus talks about throwing a
party not for the important people, as the Pharisee is throwing a party for
Jesus (perhaps hoping for a commendation or an endorsement!) but for the forgotten,
the handicapped, and the poor. One will gain nothing by doing this. The
forgotten cannot improve your position in society. They cannot repay with
favors later on. They cannot give you a recommendation for a job or float a
loan.
But in doing things this way, one is not looking for human approval,
but God’s approval. Maybe a better way to say this is that in doing such
things, one is not seeking self, but seeking God.
Perhaps we think that the more religious one is, the less
likely one is to do this sort of thing. Perhaps this story ought to make us
think again. Jesus told these parables to religious people. The truly faithful
among them recognize themselves in the mirror Jesus is holding up to them, and
respond not with anger, but with repentance.
This parable isn’t necessarily about parties, either. We
will still invite our families and our friends to birthday parties for our
children and grandchildren. It is, however, about how we act at work, who we
invite to church, who comes to the backyard barbecue, and where a lot of our
money goes; whether all of it goes to extravagances for ourselves and those we
deem worthy, or whether much is given for the work of God to spread the Word
and to come to the aid of those who are in need.
But most of all, in this parable we are led to the heart of
God. For we are not only the ones who throw the parties. In fact, perhaps we
aren’t the ones who throw the parties at all. Perhaps we are the poor, the
blind, the lame, and of course in some ways we are so literally as well as
figuratively. We have nothing to commend ourselves, no right to put ourselves
forward in the presence of God, to receive honor from him as from a fellow
human being. To be in the presence of God is to know our own humanity and to
know that humanity as a truly humble thing. No ‘humblebragging’ here, no
seeking of self, because when one knows oneself to be in the presence of God,
selfhood shrinks to insignificance.
Instead, God comes to us and celebrates his love with us,
pouring out his own self in Jesus Christ, saying to us, ‘Friend, come up
higher.’ To know this is to know that the honor given us is simply to be
clothed with God’s honor, it is to have the selfhood granted back to oneself,
not for self alone, but for God.
Here at this
celebration, we kneel side by side, not one of us in a higher position than the
other. Even those in the center, the pastor and the assistants, are not clothed
with self, but clothed with the garments of baptism, and stand in the place of
servanthood. At this table, God himself in Christ is the host and the meal. We
cannot repay him in any way; we are sent forth to imitate his serving love
among all people, empowered by the Holy Spirit. What we experience at this
table is the vision for our lives and for all lives.
May God by his grace capture us by this vision and call us
to cast away self-seeking behaviors, and instead to seek him in all people. We
can do this because we know that Christ did this for us, embracing the cross
for our sake, humbling himself so that he, and we with him, would be exalted.
Amen
