Pride was not made for humankind

Text: Luke 14:1, 7-14

I’d like to talk today about quantum mechanics and Ramadan and how they help us think about discipline and humility. Which is what Jesus talks about in this parable today in Luke. These four things are both familiar and odd to us. And that’s how it is with parables, too. When Jesus tells a parable, he uses familiar situations to present what are, to his listeners at least, odd conclusions.

So, for example, the familiar notion of a meal shared with friends and neighbors. You invite the people you like. If it is a formal meal, you also invite the people who count. If it is a very formal meal, you make sure that the people who count sit in the right spots. In a wedding, who sits with the bride and groom. Who with the parents. Who has to sit with all the old folks. Being at the head table was then and is now an honor to be valued and coveted. No one wants to sit at the last table.

But Jesus makes this odd by telling folks not to rush for table number one. To hold back, to be humble, to ask for less, to expect little. Why does he say that?

What is odd is that we mostly don’t find this parable to be odd. It is the kind of thing Jesus says all the time. You know, the last shall be first kind of stuff. The one who loses his or her life will save it. We are so accustomed to hearing this kind of talk from Jesus that it is not shocking. But it should be. Jesus intended it to be.

Partly what has happened is that we are no longer disturbed by what Jesus says. There is a little rule in our heads: Jesus is good and kind. We follow Jesus. We therefore approve of what Jesus says. Sometimes without paying too close attention. Or feeling under any obligation to do what he says. It doesn’t shock us because, you know, it is our Jesus. Doing his Jesus thing.

And partly what is happening in this story is that we modern western people have ambivalent feelings about social and financial inequality and stratification. We admire the poor but don’t want to be poor. We approve of the people who sit at the lowest place but we ourselves neither want to nor expect to sit there. People who are wealthy have too much power, money, and arrogance. But we would love to have that much ourselves. We want to be ordinary but special.

The role model for many is the underprivileged and passed over person who gets lucky or who is discovered and becomes famous and wealthy. A kind of American Idol or Slumdog Millionaire or Sarah Palin variant. We like ordinary people who become celebrities. So when we hear this parable, we think: right. The ordinary person who is assigned the lowest table is discovered by the host and brought forward to sit at the head table in a place of honor. It is the American dream, and right there in scripture.

One problem with this is that we know it hardly ever really happens. In the world, most poor people stay really poor. The last stay last and the first stay first. Or more so. It is a joke when Garrison Keillor says “all are above average” because we know that that is as socially unlikely as it is mathematically impossible. There is only room for one number one.

So if we want to sit at the top table, we had better go for it. Waiting around for someone, for the host, to see us languishing and to come invite us forward—it’s just not going to happen. We believe in competition. We think it is natural. We think it is inevitable. And we think it is admirable. We might resent those who in the banquet rush to be seated in the best spots. But at least we understand them and give them credit. As for those who sit meekly, who stand about, who accept less—they are pitiful. This parable of Jesus—it’s not realistic. That’s not how things work around here.

But it is how God works.

When we say that all are saints and sinners, when we say that God forgives us our sins, when we say that Jesus loves you, when we say we are all God’s children, we are obliterating the distinctions that normally seem so active and obvious. One of us does not have to crowd out another. It is like quantum mechanics, an equally unintuitive and odd way of thinking about the world that allows, if I understand it right, for many things to occupy the same spot at the same time. The advances of some of us do not undo the position of others. Someone else’s gain does not have to be matched by your loss.

It is not easy to believe this in our hearts. It seems unnatural. It goes against our fears. To not push forward is therefore a discipline. That is, it is something that we have to practice. It is a spiritual practice. Spiritual practices are things that turn out to be good for you to do but that are often difficult to do.

As you know, we are in the middle of Ramadan, for Muslims a month-long time of fasting and alms-giving or acts of charity. It is a spiritual discipline similar to what Christians used to practice and sometimes still practice during Lent. No one thinks it is fun to skip food and drink all day and few people think it is fun to give away money and time to others.

Disciplines like those of Ramadan and Lent are exercises in humility. In being humble. In doing exactly what Jesus talks about in this parable. Of standing back, not pushing up to the front. Of being little, of not trying to be so grand.

Krista Tibbet is a radio interviewer who gets people to speak about matters of faith, and usually about their own faith. In a recent interview with newly-converted young American Muslims, she asked about their experiences with the discipline of fasting and charity. What was remarkable was that they rarely spoke about the difficulty of the discipline. What they spoke about was their joy. The joy of being humble. They used words like: mindfulness, peace, surrender, trust, contentment, holiness.

This is what we seek as Christians and as humans. To be present in our surroundings and to others. To be at peace. To give up our worries to God. To know contentment. To feel blessed.

The benefits claimed of a competitive life, a competitive culture, are wealth and security and power. Are these what we really most want? Is this what we were made for? Is what we hope from life? Don’t we long instead for the blessings that seem to come with humility? As often, Jesus is not commanding us. He is making us an offer.

At the end of this parable, Jesus gives us some advice. He speaks to us as hosts this time, not as guests. Our roles are reversed from before, and we are doing the inviting. But as before, the scene is familiar and the conclusion odd. Invite the most unlikely and perhaps unlikeable people to your house for dinner. People you don’t want to see. Who maybe make you nervous. Whom you don’t want to be seen with, either. You will be blessed, says Jesus. The message is similar to the parable: taking pride in yourself, in this case because of your nice friends, is not what Jesus is talking about.

One of the suggested alternative readings for today is from Sirach, a book from the apocrypha. (These are books in some Bibles that Martin Luther said were not “equal to the Holy Scriptures, but are useful and good to read.”) The reading speaks about pride as the beginning of sin. And at the end, it says “Pride was not created for human beings, or violent anger for those born of women.” [We should put those words on a plaque and hang it in our houses.]

There is a lot of pride, anger, and general self-aggrandizement going around in the world. I cannot see this stuff fitting into the teachings of Jesus, who walked, after all, humbly to the cross. We are not designed for it. It does not suit us. It is making us ill, and it is making us crazy.

Jesus is a healer. He says odd things—like the blessings of being humble in an arrogant and self-centered world—he says odd things that shock the world. By this, he offers the world another way to be and think and live. By this, he offers a healing way.