Eleventh Sunday after Trinity
“For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.””
Summary
This morning’s gospel, Luke 14:1, 7-14, starts out looking like the kind of etiquette lesson we find in Proverbs and Wisdom: it is bad manners to seat yourself at the head of table. Instead, we should “know our place”. Then Jesus takes it further: we should not only know our place but also the place of others, “when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.”
If we do, Jesus tells us, we will “be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous”. But what exactly does this mean? Does it mean that we still expect a reward for our generosity only from God rather than our peers?
Yes and no. Jesus is not suggesting that any of us, rich or poor, have anything to offer God. He acknowledges that in the world’s economy some of us are valued more than others but not in God’s economy. We are all equally in need of God. If, instead, we believe that we have more to give and less to receive we will separate ourselves from others and from God. In the words of Ecclesiasticus 10:12-18 “the beginning of pride is to forsake the Lord, the heart has withdrawn from its Maker.”
If we think that we are the ones with all the gifts we will miss the chance to let others give us the gifts God is offering through them: we are not the hosts in God’s economy we are the guests and, if we let them, our fellow guests will teach us, heal us, love us, and remind us that we are all equally in need of God’s grace.
FIRST READING
Ecclesiasticus 10:12-28
The beginning of human pride is to forsake the Lord;
the heart has withdrawn from its Maker.
For the beginning of pride is sin,
and the one who clings to it pours out abominations.
Therefore the Lord brought upon them unheard-of calamities
and destroyed them completely.
The Lord overthrew the thrones of rulers
and enthroned the lowly in their place.
The Lord plucked up the roots of the nations
and planted the humble in their place.
The Lord laid waste the lands of the nations
and destroyed them to the foundations of the earth.
He removed some of them and destroyed them
and erased the memory of them from the earth.
Pride was not created for human beings
or violent anger for those born of women.
GOSPEL
Luke 14.1, 7-14
“On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the Sabbath, they were watching him closely.
When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, 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. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers and sisters 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.”
