For those who were not able to attend services at Advent, the lessons and/or sermon from this past Sunday appears here, as made available by the Rector and the Church Secretary.

The Lessons for the Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Sunday, August 29th, 2010

Celebrant:  The Lord is with you.
People:  And also with you.
Celebrant:  Let us pray.

COLLECT:  Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in us the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen.

FIRST LESSON:   Sirach 10:12-18   
 The beginning of human pride is to forsake the Lord; the heart has withdrawn from its Maker.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 brings upon them unheard-of calamities, and destroys them completely. The Lord overthrows the thrones of rulers, and enthrones the lowly in their place. The Lord plucks up the roots of the nations, and plants the humble in their place. The Lord lays waste the lands of the nations, and destroys them to the foundations of the earth. He removes some of them and destroys them, and erases the memory of them from the earth. Pride was not created for human beings, or violent anger for those born of women.

Reader:  Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people.
People:  Thanks be to God.

PSALM   Psalm 112
1  Hallelujah!  Happy are they who fear the Lord *
     and have great delight in his commandments!

2  Their descendants will be mighty in the land; *
     the generation of the upright will be blessed.

3  Wealth and riches will be in their house, *
     and their righteousness will last for ever.

4  Light shines in the darkness for the upright; *
     the righteous are merciful and full of compassion.

5  It is good for them to be generous in lending *
     and to manage their affairs with justice.

6  For they will never be shaken; *
     the righteous will be kept in everlasting remembrance.

7  They will not be afraid of any evil rumors; *
     their heart is right; they put their trust in the Lord.

8  Their heart is established and will not shrink, *
     until they see their desire upon their enemies.

9  They have given freely to the poor, *
     and their righteousness stands fast for ever; they will hold up their head with honor.

10  The wicked will see it and be angry; they will gnash their teeth and pine away; *
     the desires of the wicked will perish.

SECOND LESSON: Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16   
Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured. Let marriage be held in honor by all, and let the marriage bed be kept undefiled; for God will judge fornicators and adulterers. Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, "I will never leave you or forsake you." So we can say with confidence, "The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?" Remember your leaders, those who spoke the word of God to you; consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Through him, then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

Reader:  Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people.
People:  Thanks be to God.

SEQUENCE HYMN   #656

Celebrant:  The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Luke.
People:  Glory to you, O Christ.

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 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."

Celebrant:  The Gospel of the Lord.
People:  Praise to you O Christ.

The Sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Sunday, August 29th, 2010

Reverend Robin Martin

I gotta tell you, in spite of myself, I can't help but feel a bit of sympathy for Jesus' host in the gospel reading for today.  There's no indication that the Pharisee has invited him to dinner so that they might entrap him somehow.  Even though tension has been developing as Jesus gets more and more direct and specific about what God demands of those who would be faithful, enough tension that people are watching him closely, Luke still doesn't indicate that Jesus was invited to dinner on this particular Sabbath  to this particular home for any other reason than you or I might invite someone to dinner at our house...because we want to spend some time in fellowship and conversation with our guest. 

So in he comes, and proceeds to take note of how people are behaving, especially as it regards finding a place at the table.  Then he presumes to lecture them about their table manners.  I don't know about you, but I sort of assume that guests in my home will go with the flow.  I mean, can you imagine a group of people sitting around your dining room table and one of them taking it upon him or herself to lecture the others about how to behave?  And then, can you imagine that guest turning to criticize you about the guest list you worked on so diligently?  But that's precisely what Jesus did.  And since I identify so readily and thoroughly with the Pharisee host, it only helps me a little to know that these comments were made for a divine purpose by a divine guest.

And then there's the matter of the parable itself.  On the surface at least it seems to advocate the most self-serving kind of humility imaginable.  This admonition not to assert ourselves in order that someone else might show us honor seems, in our rather more egalitarian day and age, an act of hypocrisy and manipulation.  Why not just ask our host where he or she would like us to sit.  It's much more direct and to the point.

Now, having got that out of my system, I need to say that I do find these rich readings we have this morning in spite of how difficult they are.  What strikes me most forcefully is the strength of the first statement in the passage from Sirach about arrogance being hateful to the Lord and to mortals and injustice being outrageous to both; that and the emphasis on hospitality in the first line of the passage from Hebrews and in the gospel story.  I wonder what might be the relationship between arrogance and injustice and hospitality?  When I looked up the words arrogance and hospitality in the Oxford English Dictionary I discovered that arrogance derives from the Latin verb "arrogare" which means "to claim for oneself."  What that means is that whenever you or I or anyone is arrogant what we're doing is claiming an undue or undeserved authority or importance for ourselves.  Arrogance is about being aggressively and publicly conceited.  When we're arrogant we are presumptuous and haughty and overbearing.

Hospitality, on the other hand, derives from the Latin word "hospes" which simply means host.  According to the dictionary, hospitality is the act of offering welcome and entertainment to...strangers.  When we're hospitable we extend, or at least we're inclined, to extend ourselves generously for our guests and visitors.  We are receptive.

I didn't bother to look up injustice, but it was interesting to me that the same Latin word, hospes, is also the root for our English word hospital, that place where those in deep physical and, perhaps, emotional distress are supposed to be welcomed and cared for.  We'll save the discussion about whether or not health care as it now exists in many places is hospitable or not for another time.

Arrogance, injustice and hospitality.  It seems to me that what Jesus is saying is that the hospitality of God as it is and will be expressed in the kingdom of God does not distinguish between people in terms of their status and worth.  You and I might appear to live in a much more egalitarian world and society than the one in which this dinner party Luke reports was held, but the reality is that all people are not equally welcome and comfortable in every social situation.  And in spite of our best intentions we're all subject to a kind of arrogant disregard for the social practices and table manners of people who do it differently than we do.  And that disdain can run both directions.  Whether we tend to be casual or formal, we can be and are very dismissive of those who are not like us.  And regardless of how casual or formal we might be there are certain groups of people who don't seem to be welcome anywhere.  None of us wants to be with people who are significantly poorer than we are, unless of course they can handle their poverty genteelly, because to be around them makes us feel guilty.  And crippling disabilities like lameness and blindness, deafness and mental illness tend to create awkward situations which we'd just as soon not have to deal with.

What Jesus is saying when he criticizes our carefully constructed guest lists for our dinner parties…and the “guest list” for our lives is that we regularly and intentionally disregard and exclude the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind.  We regularly exclude everyone who makes us feel uncomfortable and guilty while we regularly include those from whom we hope to gain something.  And what we hope to gain is usually not just a return invitation, but rather an affirmation that somehow we are acceptable, that we belong, that we are not like "them," the sick, awkward ones.

One other thing about that definition for the word arrogance.  One of the usages the dictionary gives for the word is from the author, Aldous Huxley, who wrote that a certain man "gave his orders in the sharp, rather arrogant and even offensive tone of one who does not feel himself too secure in his superiority."  The arrogant tone of one who does not feel herself too secure in her superiority.  I wonder if the root of our lack of hospitality is plain old fear. Fear that if we're not somehow better than someone else then we are nothing.  I wonder if the root of our lack of hospitality is our inability to see and know ourselves as God knows each and every one of us, as a creature of absolute uniqueness and infinite value.  We cannot offer the hospitality God requires of us without some certainty that we are indeed loved and cherished.