Pentecost 15C
August 28, 2016
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Luke 14:1, 7-14
Five years
ago today, I was ordained into the ministry of Word and Sacrament. It happened
in the church I grew up in, where my dad was pastor for nearly 30 years. My
mom’s brother Daniel, also a pastor, was there as well – he was the assisting
minister for the service – and he wore the red stole that belonged to my
Grandpa Dick. The big moment in an ordination service is the laying on of
hands, where all the ordained clergy gathered lay hands on this new ordinand
while the congregation sings a song summoning the Holy Spirit, and the bishop
says a prayer over this new pastor. My dad’s hands were there, and my uncle’s,
and just beyond this sphere, my grandpa’s, and my two great-grandpas, also
pastors, and my great-grandmother’s, who was a deaconess. A couple weeks ago we
heard in Hebrews this wonderful verse, “Since we are surrounded by so great a
cloud of witnesses, let us run with perseverance the race that is set before
us…” It’s one of my favorites, and always makes me think of the cloud of
witnesses that laid hands on me on my ordination day.
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| "Surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses..." |
Today in
Hebrews, we hear another of my favorite verses: “Let mutual love continue.”
Especially on this fifth anniversary of my ordination, I have been thinking a
lot about what these words mean and look like, both in my life as an ordained
person, and in my life as a baptized Christian. I think these four words state the
hardest thing about being a Christian. In fact, I think the author of Hebrews
is very optimistic to say, “Let mutual love continue”
– it implies we already are doing it, and to keep up the good work! Well, I
sometimes find loving others to be very easy – and what a joy it is when that
happens! – but it is just as often very hard, indeed. Living a life of mutual
love is certainly the most challenging aspect of life as a Christian, even as
it is also the most rewarding.
What makes it so hard? Well, let’s ask
it this way: what is required to “let mutual love continue”? I think a big part
of it is one of the major themes in our Gospel reading today, and that is
humility. In the Gospel story, Jesus advises not to assume you deserve the
highest seat, but rather, sit at the lowest seat and wait to be asked to move
up. It’s sort of simplistic advice to our modern ears, and taken literally it
isn’t very often applicable to our lives like it would have been to the
original audience. But thinking of it more broadly in terms of our
relationships with others, especially our Christian, mutually loving relationships with others, it
becomes much more poignant and convicting.
Now, it wouldn’t be convicting, if
living in Christian community were all rainbows and sunshine all the time. But
the thing about living in Christian community is that it is an awful lot like
living in a family – and we all know that families, well… don’t always get
along. People disagree, or get annoyed with one another, or disappoint each
other, or don’t meet each other’s expectations. When that happens, when
conflict erupts, fighting often follows, and it is in those moments that Jesus’
advice about humility becomes very difficult to hear. Think, if you are gearing
up to fight, whether you fight with actions or with words, what is good
strategy? Generally, you want to find yourself in the more powerful position,
right? Even animals do this – the hair on their back goes up,
or their feathers
fluff, or their tails wag high and fast. Just ask my Dachshund: twelve pounds,
and he thinks he’s the biggest dog in the neighborhood! We want to look and act
bigger and more powerful than we are. We want to do the opposite of Jesus’
suggestion to “take the lowest place,” because that sort of humility is exactly
what will cause you to lose the fight! So when faced with a conflict, we will
be inclined to: insist our way is right, disregard others’ opinions and
perspectives while we puff up and applaud our own, put others down, resist
admitting to being wrong, whatever we need to do in order to stay in that
higher, more powerful position, and be sure that we win the fight.
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| This is how big my Dachshund thinks he is. |
Humility won’t help that effort at
all. No, humility has no place in winning a fight.
But remember, we are not talking
about winning a fight. We are talking about living in community, and letting
mutual love continue in that community. With that as our goal, we can’t look
for a winner, because if there is a winner there is also a loser, and having
winners and losers is not the way to remain in community with one another. That
is not the way to let mutual love continue.
This is where humility comes in. What
if, instead of trying to get to that highest seat at the banquet, we took
Jesus’ advice, and sat in a lower seat? What if we listened to the concerns of
the other, to what is true for them, and even “tried on” their ideas before
disregarding their perspective? What if instead of looking for points about
which to say, “You’re wrong!” we looked for ways to say, “I agree with you on
that”? What if we made the effort to consider where our own perspectives might
not encompass the whole truth? What if we asked for forgiveness when we realize
we were wrong?
Suddenly Jesus’ advice isn’t nearly
so simplistic. Suddenly it is very challenging. It is not just swallowing our
pride and waiting to be invited up to a higher seat, it is actively working at
loving someone, at honoring them and their opinions, at viewing them not as a
stranger or outsider or enemy, but as an angel whom God placed in your path to
show you something about what it means, what it takes, what it and looks like
to live in a mutually loving community. Have you had people in your life
fulfill that role? I know I have.
And that brings me to the second
thing that is necessary if we want to “let mutual love continue.” GRACE.
Certainly, it is grace for ourselves, because putting ourselves in such a
humble position is very vulnerable, very dangerous. You could very well be
trampled, especially if both parties don’t agree to be similarly humble with
each other. And because we are animals, we often resort to those basic animal
“fight or flight” instincts, and we don’t behave like we intended, like God
would have liked us to behave. We need to acknowledge that reality, and trust
that God will forgive us for those times.
We also must have grace for the
other, because it is just as hard for them: we are all humans, after all, and
we all make mistakes, we all fall short of the glory of God, we all are captive
to sin and cannot free ourselves, no matter how hard we try.
But above all, what is required to “let
mutual love continue,” is the very grace of God. And this has been, for these
past five years of ordained ministry, my most frequent thanksgiving: that in
all the ways I fall short of this strange and wondrous calling, all the
missteps I take, all the times I didn’t live up to expectations of God, myself,
or others – I still walk in the grace of God. Jesus still died for me, for this sinner. Jesus still defeated fear
and death for me. Jesus still claimed me in baptism, 33
years ago today. I
still come to worship and get to hear someone say, as they hand me that sacred
meal, “The body of Christ, given for you.”
For me! For you! God’s grace is given for
us!
And with this, God’s amazing grace, I
believe that we can let mutual love
continue. It still won’t be easy, and it still might be messy at times, and it
still requires the hard work of humility and vulnerability and loving honesty,
with ourselves and with each other. But we can do it, because God’s grace makes
it possible. As we continue down this road of ministry, whether it is ordained
or lay ministry, that grace of God is all that keeps us afloat. Let us cling to
that gift with all that we have and all that we are.
Let us pray… Gracious God, you call us to let mutual love continue, and to be humble
in our relationships with others. This is hard work, God! But we give you
thanks that you have entrusted this task to us, even as you have given us the
grace to work at it. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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