Twenty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time More often than not when you are invited to a wedding and you go along to the wedding reception afterwards you find that the tables all have the names of guests on them. You go to a board and see where you are and then take your place at the table. When someone has already decided where you are to sit, it takes the pressure off having to decide for yourself. I am sure that deciding who sits where and with whom, must be a challenging task for the couple or their families. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus is the guest at a meal hosted by a leading Pharisee. The reading says that he was invited because the Pharisee and his confreres wanted to take a close look at him; they wanted to suss him out. At table, Jesus speaks a parable to them. On the surface the parable is about the seating arrangements at wedding feasts. The parable presupposes the situation where guests are not assigned a seat but choose their own seat. Some people who think more of themselves than they should find a place of honour as near as possible to the married couple, what we used to call, ‘the top table’. The parable suggests that this is a risky strategy because they may find themselves being asked to go further down the line. On the contrary those who are low key about themselves and who take a corresponding low key seat may find themselves being invited to take what would be considered a more honourable place. In the parable Jesus is depicting a scene that would have been very recognizable at the time. People could imagine it happening. All of Jesus’ parables are stories about day to day life in his culture and time, but at another level they say something about our relationship with God. That is hinted at in the very short comment Jesus makes following on from the parable, ‘everyone who exalts himself, will be humbled (by God), and everyone who humbles himself will be exalted (by God}’. The parable then is calling on us to humble ourselves before God, rather than exalt ourselves before God. It is probably true to say that ‘humility’ is a virtue that is not really in vogue today. Maybe that is because humility can easily become identified with attitudes that are not humility at all. Humility is certainly not putting ourselves down or denying or making little of our gifts and abilities. It is not about pretending that we do not have some gift when in fact we do. Real humility is about truth, the truth about ourselves, and the truth about our relationship with God. Humility is first of all, clarity and honesty about ourselves, the gifts and talents we have, and the gifts we don’t have, our limitations. Humility is also about the truth of our relationship with God. We recognize that the gifts, the abilities, the strengths we have are ultimately gifts from God. They do not make us boastful but grateful and responsible, recognizing that those gifts have been given to us for the service of others. Those who exalt themselves, in the language of today’s gospel reading, are those who are so full of their own abilities and virtues that they lose sight of their ultimate dependence on God. Humility calls on us to recognize who we truly are - God’s creatures who have been greatly blessed and gifted by God and who are completely dependent on him for everything. It has often been pointed out that the word ‘humility’ is derived from the Latin word ‘humus’ which means earth. So when we are advised to humble ourselves, it is an invitation to be grounded, to be attentive to our connectedness with the Earth, and with everyone on it, and with God the Creator of all. Humble people recognize that everyone, regardless of their circumstances, and the whole created world, share in an interconnection of life given by God. It was above all Jesus who was humble in that sense of being earthed and grounded and connected to all who are on this earth and of this earth. He tried to connect with all sorts of people and he invited them to connect with him. In this morning’s gospel reading we find him sharing table with wealthy Pharisees. He also shared table with people the Pharisees would run a mile from, tax collectors and sinners, the poor and the disabled. At the end of the gospel reading Jesus goes on to call on his Pharisee host to invite to this table not just his own rich neighbours and friends, his own kind, but the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind. The humble person recognizes the truth of our interconnectedness under God and relates to others and to the earth out of that awareness. In spite of our many differences, we all have a common humanity, we are all children of the one God, we are all made in God’s image, and we are all equally loved and esteemed by God. Indeed, according to the second reading, our ultimate destiny, beyond this earthly life is to belong to a universal community in which everyone is a first born and a citizen of heaven.
Posted on: Sun, 01 Sep 2013 07:09:24 +0000