The Rev. Canon Dr. Brett Cane, August 29, 2010
14th Sunday after Pentecost; 8:30 & 10:00 a.m., Holy Communion
“Our Attitude towards Ourselves”
Luke 14: 1, 7-14
Opening Prayer:
Lord Jesus, you exhorted us to humble ourselves; teach us now, by the power of the Holy Spirit, how we can work this out in our lives, to the glory of God the Father. Amen.
Introduction
Many of us are familiar with the very popular BBC comedy series, Keeping Up Appearances. The main character, Hyacinth Bucket (or “Bouquet”, as she prefers to be called), manages to involve her long-suffering husband Richard, and any other person whom she can manipulate, into making herself look good in the eyes of anyone she thinks she should impress. The church women’s group groans and the vicar runs when they see her coming; she goes to great lengths to keep her unsophisticated sister Daisy and her uncouth husband Onslow out of view. I think a lot of us like the show because we see ourselves in Hyacinth. Like her, we spend a lot of time, “keeping up appearances.”
“Keeping Up Appearances” is one way of describing the theme of our Gospel passage today – which I have more formally titled, “Our Attitude towards Ourselves.” The story of Jesus at the Pharisee’s dinner party and their picking “the places of honour at the table” (verse 
looks like a first-century prototype to that British TV comedy series. The parable of choosing the places of honour at a wedding banquet comes from the master of observation of human nature – Jesus himself. In verse 1, it says that “he was being carefully watched”, but in verse 7, the tables are turned – Jesus was watching them: “When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honour at the table, he told them this parable…” Today we will use this story to help us look at our attitude towards ourselves and the dangers of “keeping up appearances.” We will look first at pride and humility and then at Jesus’ description of a practical way to demonstrate humility.
Humility and Pride
In the parable, Jesus uses a familiar home-truth about good manners to convey a religious lesson.[1]
When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honour, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this man your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honoured in the presence of all your fellow guests. (Luke 14:8-10).
The lesson hinges on how you choose your place at table. Now you might think that if only they had had place cards, then none of this would have happened! Well, I was told of wedding reception where four guests walked out because they were not seated where they thought they should be! I was also told the story of an older lady getting on a bus and sitting beside a youth with long hair but keeping her back to him. The young person was so uncomfortable, he got up and moved somewhere else. I also know of a situation where visitors coming into a church were asked to move because they were sitting in the seat of a regular parishioner! Choosing where you sit is not an outdated example.
But what is the lesson Jesus is trying to get across? It has to do with the most serious sin of all, pride, and its opposite virtue, humility. “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (verse 11). The people at that dinner party were obviously preoccupied with keeping up appearances. By choosing the better seats, they wanted to look good in the eyes of others. They were exalting themselves to boost their self-image. Their pride dictated their actions.
Why is pride the first and greatest sin of all. ? Because it is the violation of the first and greatest commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). “Pride puts self before God. Pride loves your self with all your heart and soul and mind and strength rather than God.”[2] Pride says, “My will be done.”
The opposite of pride is humility. Humility says that I can’t do it all by myself. Humility is that poverty of spirit spoken of in the Beatitudes. Humility says, “Thy will be done.” Humility is a detachment from power or adulation or possessions to tell us who we are and an attachment to God, to hear him say who we are. Humility takes the focus off ourselves and onto God and others.
William Barclay describes humility through the example of a famous university figure of an earlier day (Principal Cairns of Edinburgh): “He would never enter a room first. He always said, ‘You first, I follow.’ Once, as he came on to a platform, there was a great burst of applause in welcome, he stood aside and let the man after him come first and began himself to applaud. He never dreamed that the applause could possibly be for him; he thought it must be for the other man.”[3] G.B. Caird says, “True dignity is always unconscious dignity and true honour, whether conferred by man or God is always unexpected.”[4] Another saying which illustrates this goes “Humility – a strange thing; the minute you think you’ve got it, you’ve lost it.”
But today, we are afraid to speak of humility because we feel it adds to our already low self-esteem! “We need encouragement and self-affirmation,” people say. However, this objection is due to a misunderstanding of humility. “Humility is thinking less about yourself, not thinking less of yourself.”[5] Humility is not self-hatred; Leanne Payne has said that “Self-hatred is a (false) substitute for humility.”[6] We need to renounce both self-hatred and unhealthy pride in order to receive the true affirmation we need. We do away with false attempts at self-acceptance. We neither wallow in the mires of the false humility of self-hatred nor in the false affirmation sought by pride. These are wrong attitudes towards ourselves.
The right attitude that leads us to a healthy humility is to be open to hear from God about who we are, that our true worth comes from being loved by him. We need to have our minds renewed: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:2). This renewing of our minds happens through Scripture, worship, and obedience, along with good teaching and helpful counselling. We listen with our hearts to his affirming word, not the approving or humiliating word of others. There is no instant healing; it is a process. It begins with acknowledging we are sinners in need of God’s love; we accept God’s view of ourselves, not our own – in this way we can negate our unhealthy pride with its need for earthly recognition and embrace a healthy humility which will result in our “exaltation.”
Peter Kreeft summarizes the difference between humility and pride when he says,
Pride disguises itself today in our attempts to be “adult”, “mature”, and “take-charge”, “responsible for our own lives”…Remember what adult suggests in our culture. Remember what adult books, magazines and movies are like. Remember that Jesus never told us to be “adult” but instead said, “Unless you…become as little children, you will by no means enter the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 18:3). Heaven’s gate is too tiny for any but a child. It is the eye of a needle. Large adult camels must go home to die or be born again as little children.[7]
One Practical Way of Demonstrating Humility
Children have a knack of showing us adults up for what we really are. A child will freely associate with someone of a different cultural, racial, or social group; they might even invite them home to supper. We adults cringe at the “inappropriate” choice they have made. But this is the practical example Jesus gives us of demonstrating humility – looking at whom we entertain:
When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbours; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous. (verses 12-14)
On hearing this, you might at first be distracted by Jesus telling us not to invite our friends or relatives to dinner – it seems a little harsh; but this is the same manner of speaking Jesus used when he said we were to hate our parents and so on (Luke 14:26). It is a way of making a contrast. Of course we are to care for our families, but how much more are we to take seriously the need to entertain those who are excluded and marginalized – those different from ourselves, those who could not possibly pay us back.
Jesus’ main stress here is our motivation – what lies behind the choices you make when you socialise with others? Do we invite people back because they have invited us? Do we look for opportunities to boost ourselves up, to expand our pride, for what we can get out of it? Jesus says that our motive in socialising should be generosity – what we can give, what others can receive from us – not what we get back from them.
However, in addition to not seeking a return on our hospitality there is also an element here of setting aside our pride by entertaining those we would not normally associate with – perhaps people we would not want others to see us with for fear they would think we were like them – in other words, giving up appearances! I have often thought that, if the Titanic had not been sunk, most of us would have liked to have gone first class with the rich and famous. As hinted at in the film and as Jesus says here, “Go third class…those people might be more fun to be with, anyway.”
In the context of our church family, whom do you invite to your dinner parties at home or to share lunch at a restaurant with you? We are a mixed congregation – this is great place to try out this principle of humility; there are lots of opportunities! Practice random acts of kindness! We have young and old, rich and poor, sophisticated and unsophisticated, abled and disabled, those from your background and those who are not, and so on. Those of you who are more wealthy, take out those on welfare or low incomes; those who are younger and popular take out someone who is older and lonely. You will not necessarily be repaid, but you will be practising humility. Your ultimate reward will come later, “at the resurrection of the righteous,” but Jesus also speaks of being “blessed” – which I take for this life. The blessing comes not in return invitations but in living out the life of humility – a right attitude towards yourself – which brings spiritual and emotional health here and now.
Conclusion
This is generosity of spirit – not calculated giving, as we saw last week. God did not give in a calculated fashion: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10). We can be generous in Spirit because we ourselves have received abundantly. We can give without needing the approval of others because our approval rests in our acceptance by God. Have a right attitude towards yourselves – don’t base your giving on “keeping up appearances.”
[1] G. B. Caird, Saint Luke. (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, U.K.: Penguin Books, Ltd., 1963), pg. 175.
[2] Peter Kreeft, Back to Virtue. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), pg. 97.
[3] William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of Luke, Rev. Ed. (Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press, 1975), pg. 190.
[4] Caird, ibid., pg. 176.
[5] Kreeft, ibid., pg. 100.
[6] Leanne Payne, lecture during Pastoral Care Ministries School, Wheaton Illinois, June, 1998.
[7] Kreeft, ibid., pg. 101.
