14^th Sunday after Pentecost August 29, 2010 “It’s Hard to be Humble” Reverend Michael D. Powell Luke 14:1, 7-14

Everyone knows who Ted Turner is. He’s a fabulously wealthy businessman who holds strong and often controversial opinions about nearly everything. I once read an article that quoted Turner calling Christianity a “religion for losers.” That sounds offensive and your first reaction might be to get a little defensive. But, think about it, he might be right. Our Christian values are subversive. They are counter-cultural in the best sense of the world.

Just think of the Magnificat, Mary’s song of praise that opens the Gospel of Luke, which is largely based on Hanna’s prayer in the Hebrew book of 1 Samuel: “God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.” There are a dozen examples of how Jesus turns the values of the world upside down, exalting the lowly and bringing the rich and powerful to their knees. It’s no wonder that a rich and powerful businessman would describe Christianity as a “loser’s religion.”

This morning’s gospel lesson from Luke is relatively mild. It could be taken as just another lesson on politeness, a biblical “Miss Manners” tip about social propriety. When Jesus goes to dinner at a Pharisee’s house and sees the guests scrambling for a seat of honor, he tells them a parable. When you’re invited to a wedding feast, he says, take a humble seat in the back. And, when you throw a party yourself, don’t just scratch the back of someone who will scratch yours in return, invite someone who really needs a good party. But then the punch line: “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted . . . [and] you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

When Jesus uses the image of a Wedding Feast, it’s code language. His listeners would have known that he was using a very familiar Jewish metaphor for the Kingdom of God. He was talking about how God intends for people to relate to one another, how God sees and values us, rather than how we evaluate and devaluate ourselves and others. Of course it’s a subversive teaching. It’s hard to be humble because humility contradicts the way and the wisdom of the world. Follow this kind of teaching and you lower your chances of getting ahead and succeeding in the world. It’s counter cultural!

I recently learned a really interesting fact that demonstrates just how, through all the changes of progress and technology, human nature and the values of the world remain unchanged. Rev. John Claypool, in a sermon entitled “God’s First Class,” tells about stagecoach transportation back in the days of the Wild West. It’s incredible how small those things were, holding only about six passengers. I grew up watching cowboy movies and I’ve seen stagecoaches, but I never once thought about how there might have been “classes” of passengers in those days. But what I learned is that tickets were sold just like today on modern airlines - first and second and third class. The distinction, however, didn’t have to do with the size of the seat, leg room or the kind of food that was served, but rather what was expected of the ticket holder in case the stagecoach got stuck in the mud or came to a steep hill.

There were three types of tickets. The most expensive first class ticket entitled the passenger to remain in the stagecoach no matter what conditions might be faced. They were exempt from having to put forth any kind of effort. A second-class ticket meant that if difficulty arose, you had to get out and walk alongside the stagecoach. The cheapest, third-class ticket required the passenger to not only get out of the coach when there was a problem, but also to engage in a little sweat equity, getting down in the mud and helping it get unstuck, or pushing it up a hill. The point is, by the value system of the world, we tend to understand “first class” as having to do with social status, privilege and being exempt from having to do the most menial kinds of work. (1)

But Jesus' turned the value system of the world upside down and dared to say that in the Kingdom of God (i.e. the Wedding Banquet) first class had to do with being humble. And he gave a powerful example. Even as the Wedding Feast is a metaphor for the Kingdom of God, so our Sacrament of Holy Communion is meant to model humble unity, the taking on of a servant’s heart, understanding the love and the interdependence of the Body of Christ.

Remember the context of that Last Supper, as recounted in the Gospel of John. Jesus and his disciples had been walking all day on the dirt roads, and their feet were filthy. And, do you remember how the disciples had been arguing about who would be greatest among them, who would get to sit next to Jesus when he came into his kingly power? Quietly, without making a big deal of it, Jesus rose, took a towel and a basin of water and began washing their feet. Talk about understanding! He was literally standing under them, lowering himself, taking on the form of a servant. Can you imagine their shock? He just got right down out of the stagecoach, knelt in the mud, and demonstrated how people treat one another, serve and help one another in the Kingdom of God. I cannot imagine Ted Turner doing such a thing. It flies in the face of everything we know about how to get ahead in the world. What was he thinking?

Listen to these words that introduce the foot washing scene, they speak volumes about who Jesus was, and where his strength and beauty, his power and his gentleness come from. The author of John’s gospel writes: “And during supper Jesus . . . knowing that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash their feet.” [John 13:3-5] And when he had finished, he said, in effect, “I have modeled for you who I am and who you are. This is the true secret of greatness, that you love and serve one another, as I have loved and served you.”

First-class status, according to Jesus, is not exemption from service or a sense of entitlement or privilege where if you pay the most you can do the least. It is, rather, the willingness to understand, to put yourself on the same level with another, perhaps even lower yourself to standing under, to being a humble servant, because our worth as human beings comes from God and not from our own competitive achievements. We, too, come from God and unto God we shall return.

Is it really so hard to be humble? Is it so hard to understand? If so, why? All it means is getting down out of the coach, perhaps standing in the mud and putting our shoulder to the wheel. All it means is cultivating a servant’s heart. Or, as Jesus puts it, “Love and serve one another, as I have loved and served you. May Christ be your shalom. Amen.

(1) "God's First Class," Rev. Dr. John Claypool, 2004.