Penelope Bridges
All our Scripture readings today have something to say about what has worth and what doesn’t. The prophet Jeremiah is appalled at the way his people have thrown away their close relationship with God, for the sake of pursuing idols that are no better than a cracked water vessel. They have changed their glory, he says, for something that does not profit. Jeremiah calls upon all that is holy to lament this terrible choice. Our Psalm echoes the same sentiment, as God cries out, “My people did not listen to my voice; Israel would not submit to me.”
The letter to the Hebrews reminds us that “Some have entertained angels unawares”, referring to the story in Genesis when three strangers visit Abraham and Sarah at their camp in the desert. When you are trekking through the desert, your priorities can become very focused: a cup of water, a place in the shade: these things take on enormous worth.
Abraham doesn’t know who these strangers are but he goes to great lengths to offer hospitality. It was the fundamental value of the ancient world, when travel of any length was filled with peril, that one must offer hospitality to strangers who show up on your doorstep. There was no expectation whatsoever that these travelers would ever have the chance to repay the generosity, but Abraham didn’t have to think twice about it. As it turned out, the strangers were messengers from God, angels, perhaps even the Trinity in human form; and after they had been taken care of and well fed, they promised Abraham and Sarah that, as old as they were, they would yet have a child to carry on their name. Now that is worth something more than a meal and a chance to wash your feet. A small act of hospitality led to one of the great promises of our story of faith and to the saga of the people of God, a saga that continues today in us.
How do we know what something is worth? As most of you know, I play the viola. I have had this particular instrument ever since my mother bought it for me over 50 years ago. She got it for a ridiculously low price, given its quality and history. But this instrument is priceless to me, not only because it is a very good instrument, but also because of the way it connects me to my parents and childhood. A musical instrument is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. There is no definitive, objective value, as there is on currency or gold bars.
Some types of commodity or gift lend themselves to transactional relationships, others not so much. I might offer you a batch of home-baked cookies in return for a bushel of Meyer lemons from your tree. That’s a clear transaction. But what about less concrete things, like compassion, fidelity or hospitality, the things that were encouraged in our Hebrews reading?
Do you ever worry about how you are going to repay a friend, for the time they spent with you at the hospital, or the guest room they offered when your house was under repair? Do you feel pressure to offer some kind of compensation? Does your friend expect it? There is a pervasive sin in our society, of believing that everything has its price, that anything at all can be bought, including silence and loyalty. But Jesus points us to a different way, a non-transactional way of life, based on giving without expectation of return. And that brings us to the Gospel.
Jesus has been invited to a dinner party. The host is a Pharisee, a prominent Jewish lawyer, one of the Judean 1%. Some scholars believe that Jesus was a Pharisee too, which might explain this invitation; but we are at a point in Luke’s Gospel where the hostility of the Pharisees towards Jesus is building, as he moves ever closer to Jerusalem and the Cross. Jesus has preached against the Pharisees’ hypocrisy. He has warned against the accumulation of wealth. He has predicted conflict. He has broken the letter of the Jewish law by healing people on the Sabbath, when no work is supposed to be done. So the Pharisees, the people who stand to lose power if the Jesus revolution succeeds, are watching him closely, waiting for an opportunity to trip him up.
But Jesus is watching too. He looks on with amusement while the other guests try to keep their dignity as they scramble for the seats of honor closest to the host. There’s an old saying, about sitting “Above the salt”. It’s a hangover from historic times when salt was a commodity as valuable as gold. In the Middle Ages it was often presented in large, ornate salt-cellars, and placed in the middle of the long community dining table, indicating the point at which the “gentry” were separated from the “commoners”, above the salt vs below the salt. You can imagine a mean-spirited lord watching his guests arrive, ready to humiliate anyone who sat in the wrong seat.
In Biblical times the guests would recline on couches set in a circle, and the seats nearest the host or the guest of honor were the coveted ones. So Jesus, watching the competition, reminds them of the value of humility. Luke calls it a parable, but it is really a direct teaching, with no attempt to disguise its target. Don’t risk embarrassment imagining you are more important than you are, he says. Practice humility, sit at the end, and wait to be invited up. And we might remember, by the way, which seat Jesus himself ultimately chose on Good Friday.
Even though we rarely attend formal dinner parties these days, there are lots of ways to pump up our self-importance: we dress for the job we want to get, not for the one we have; we might enhance our names with titles and degree initials; we might drive expensive-looking cars; exaggerate our achievements; compare ourselves favorably with others based on race, profession, education, language, or function. There are many ways to inflate our self-image and give the appearance of being smarter, richer, or more powerful than we actually are. My parents in law lived in a quite humble development of duplex homes built for coal miners and their families in the 1970’s. I remember how amused they were when their neighbors bought a pair of large, impressive stone lions and fixed them to the top of their gateposts, as if they lived in a stately home. We can often look ridiculous when we strive to be something that we are not. What deep-seated insecurity drives us to do this? Can’t we just be content with knowing we are beloved children of God? What could be more valuable than that?
Perhaps the purest form of humility is being entirely unconcerned with what people think or how you appear; not to the extent of being callous, but being totally confident in your own self, like the old woman who wears purple, with a red hat that doesn’t match, in Jenny Joseph’s wonderful poem, Warning. If you don’t know it, I recommend it.
Jesus doesn’t just berate his fellow dinner guests: he goes on to instruct his host about whom he should invite to future parties. To be honest, Jesus isn’t my idea of the ideal dinner guest: he is a bit too confrontational, a bit too outspoken. But the teaching is sound.
Don’t take a transactional approach to hospitality, he says. Don’t invite people over for appearance’s sake, or as repayment for the hospitality they have already shown you: be hospitable to those who can’t return the favor: offer your abundance with no expectation of reward or repayment, a free gift, no strings attached. This is how God loves us, even though God knows that human beings will rarely live up to that love. God sees the worth in us, even when we don’t see it in ourselves. Every human being has infinite worth, because we all carry the image of God.
It’s pretty cheeky of Jesus to tell his host that he has invited all the wrong people. But in Luke, Jesus makes it very clear who he wants to hang out with: the poor, the lame, the blind, the despised … When Jesus comes back, he won’t be sitting at our dinner tables. He will be with the starving families in Gaza and Sudan. He will be at the bedsides of ICU patients. He will be on death row. He will be in the refugee camps and the homeless shelters, where nobody cares what your social status is. The letter to the Hebrews invited us to practice compassion by imagining ourselves in the predicament of prisoners or torture victims. We are so bombarded these days with horrific images of suffering that we are in danger of being overwhelmed with grief and despair. To practice compassion, which is rooted in the idea of suffering with someone, is to risk our own peace of mind, our own sense of security.
So, what can we do? As Mother Theresa once said, we can do small things with great love. We can pray. We can make donations. We can vote. We can protest. We can give blood. We can invite the “wrong people” to eat at our tables and at God’s table. And in doing these things, in making selfless love our highest value, we will know the blessing of God.
Amen.
