{"id":1428,"date":"2016-08-28T11:00:49","date_gmt":"2016-08-28T15:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=1428"},"modified":"2019-09-24T14:21:52","modified_gmt":"2019-09-24T18:21:52","slug":"a-special-guest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2016\/08\/28\/a-special-guest\/","title":{"rendered":"A Special Guest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here to listen to the full service<\/a><\/p>\n

Luke 14:1, 7-13<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here to listen to the meditations\u00a0only<\/a><\/p>\n

We have a special guest with us today. \u00a0He has made his way into our midst, through a long and arduous journey. Our guest over a great expanse, has come our way. \u00a0Because his presence has come at significant expense in time, labor and effort, and because his presence is precious to us, in ways both known and unknown, both speak-able and unspeakable, we pause to honor him.<\/p>\n

Many thousands of miles separate us from his homeland. \u00a0In fact to travel here, he travels over land and sea, over continent and sub-continent, over mountain and valley and hill and molehill. \u00a0The very fact alone that we have him here is cause for delight, wonder, celebration, reverence, awe and joy. \u00a0Many hundreds of years separate us from his family of origin, from the time and times of his time. \u00a0To travel here he has to engage in a sort of time travel, like that involved in every day, in every hour, in every moment, in every memory and in every hope. \u00a0Here is the future: \u00a0ah, it has slipped into the present. \u00a0Here is the present: \u00a0ah, it has slipped into the past. \u00a0Here is the past: \u00a0ah, it has slipped into memory. \u00a0Here is memory: \u00a0ah, it has been lost, or reborn in hope.<\/p>\n

Peer into his eyes for a moment, eyes aware of a numinous divine humility. \u00a0Our visitor awaits your recognition.<\/p>\n

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.<\/i><\/p>\n

Can one acquire humility without enduring humiliation? It is a serious question. \u00a0Discomfort, we ignore. \u00a0Pain, we obey.<\/p>\n

Our visitor emerges from the strange world of the Bible. \u00a0In these weeks, in case we might have tried to avoid the mysterium tremendum<\/i>, in worship, we have had the lava flow of Hebrews to terrify us, the ringing prophetic voice like no other in Jeremiah to rivet us, the heart wringing prayer of David in the Psalms to stop us in our tracks. \u00a0Our visitor emerges from this kind of strange world\u2014Hebrews, Jeremiah, Psalms\u2014the strange world of the Bible. \u00a0Strange. The Bible is very different, up to and including its most distinctive different difference, the Gospel of John.<\/p>\n

Yes, wee have a special guest with us today. \u00a0He has made his way into our midst, through a long and arduous journey. \u00a0Because his presence has come at significant expense in time, labor and effort, and because his presence is precious to us, in ways both known and unknown, both speak-able and unspeakable, we pause to honor him.<\/p>\n

Our guest began life as a story told perhaps among shepherds and wanderers. \u00a0His is the kind of story beloved of the poor, the maimed, the halt, and the lame. \u00a0His is the kind of story beloved by you, at 3am, with troubles. \u00a0His is the kind of story audible to the mortal, the sick, those in need, and those beyond help in need. \u00a0\u00a0Our guest brings a Sunday story. \u00a0Six days shalt thou avoid your impending death and your ongoing fragility and your endless fault lines, but the seventh shall be a Sabbath unto the Lord.<\/p>\n

Allow me to present him to you, if you will. \u00a0You may greet him with a Methodist handshake. \u00a0He already knows you, as the Bible knows us where and when we know ourselves not, as God knows us, though we were to know ourselves not at all\u2014what sweet truth! \u00a0\u00a0That is, you need no introduction to you. \u00a0He knows you. \u00a0But allow me to present him to you, perhaps for the first time, but more likely for the first time in a long time. \u00a0Isn\u2019t it happy to have such a guest today?<\/p>\n

In his younger days, he was a story told along the highways and byways of life. \u00a0It may be that he was a Palestinian. \u00a0The fifty by one hundred and fifty mile rectangle of ancient Judea was probably his home in his growing up days, though as for that, we cannot be entirely sure. \u00a0\u00a0As a story goes, he is an old one, from the time of his youth until today. \u00a0\u00a0Remember we piped to you but you did not dance, we wailed to you but you did not weep?<\/i> \u00a0That account earlier in the gospel of children playing games in the marketplace, one group wanting to play the game called \u2018weddings\u2019 the other wanting to play the game called \u2018funerals\u2019? \u00a0Pipes? \u00a0Wails? \u00a0\u00a0Of course life is much more than weddings and funerals, isn\u2019t it? Or is it? \u00a0Our guest was in the mix of these sorts of stories and games and reposts and conversations and imaginative utterances.<\/p>\n

As a Palestinian, spoken in Aramaic, our guest found his way to Jesus, or to someone close to Jesus, or to Luke, or to someone close to Luke (by then translated if that is the case, into simple\u2014koine\u2014Greek). \u00a0\u00a0You see he has quite a pedigree (Lk 11:43, 20:46). \u00a0What an honor for us to have him here. \u00a0\u00a0(Note: \u00a0if I were presenting to you a human guest who is 2000 years old, who has traveled from the ancient Middle East to us in our modern experience of the ongoing middleeastification<\/i> of American life, who has consorted with Jesus and Luke and all, who has been a compinche, compadre, companion to Teresa of Avila and Julian of Norwich and Georgia Harkness and Mother Teresa and Mother Olga and your Momma and mine, who has been spoken and spoken of since before Polycarp was a pup\u2014would you not be astounded?) \u00a0We venerate the venerable, in worship: \u00a0ringing out for us are sturdy words, millennia old.<\/p>\n

Greet him please. \u00a0Our guest is our Gospel reading, an ancient manuscript. \u00a0\u00a0We rightly stand, at his reading in the service, to honor him. \u00a0\u00a0In worship, he stands among us, VERBUM DEI, the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, St Luke, Chapter 14, vss. 7-11, though before his life in ministry he was simply an ordinary businessman, walking the dusty trails of Bethlehem and Nazareth and Capernaum and Jerusalem. \u00a0\u00a0He is the everlasting account of a wedding banquet, which, like all social moments, is one full of both treasure and treachery, a feast to which you\u2014YOU!!!\u2014have been invited.<\/p>\n

Peer into his eyes for a moment. \u00a0Our visitor awaits your recognition.<\/p>\n

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.<\/i><\/p>\n

Can one acquire humility without enduring humiliation? It is a serious question. \u00a0Discomfort, we ignore. \u00a0Pain, we obey. \u00a0\u00a0The preaching of the gospel is the utterance of the word of faith in the hope, and in the trust, that such a word may become, by God\u2019s grace, an intervening word, a saving word, a word that enters and changes the course of life. \u00a0\u00a0Can humility so conveyed and so acquired protect us from humiliation, learning the hard way, learning from experience?<\/p>\n

You may be curious about our guest\u2019s features, temperament, personality, and resume. \u00a0His extended family includes a hero from Proverbs: Claim not honor in the presence of the King, Nor stand in the place of great men; it is better for you to be told, \u2018Come up hither\u2019, than to be humbled before a noble (25:6)<\/i>. \u00a0\u00a0The question of whether you are seated \u2018below the salt\u2019 or not abides. \u00a0His face is present also in Luke 18: 14 (everyone who\u2026) and Matthew 23: 12 (everyone who\u2026) and James 4: 6 (God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble). \u00a0He has a second cousin or two in Luke\u2019 \u2018sermon on the plain\u2019 (Lk. \u00a06). \u00a0\u00a0His is a familiar face, one you recognize even though you cannot place it immediately: \u00a0Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted.<\/i> \u00a0Our guest has many colleagues in traditional Jewish wisdom literature, and shares its characteristics of artistic language, hyperbole, paradox, metaphor, and (here) similitude. \u00a0<\/i>Our guest is not really a parable, though Luke kindly affirms him so. \u00a0He is a simple tale, with a proverbially twist. \u00a0The story he tells warns about humility, in the mode of a wedding feast. \u00a0The twist, at the end, announces a turning in the world, from high to low and low to high. \u00a0And here, he shows his true colors. \u00a0He is an introduction to the Christ of God. \u00a0Luke 14: 7 intimates, whispers, a reverence for the divine humility, the hiddenness, silence, absence of God.<\/p>\n

Luke has included, here, a wisdom saying fit to the voice of Jesus. To honor others, to count others in higher esteem, to give credit where credit is due, to develop a capacity for wonder and vulnerability and self-mockery, to take ourselves lightly that we may fly like the angels, to acquire a capacity for humility\u2014such a process of development in life, here, in this wisdom saying, fit to the voice of Jesus, is offered us as a way of life, of health, of salvation, of peace.<\/p>\n

Peer into his eyes for a moment. \u00a0Our visitor awaits your recognition.<\/p>\n

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.<\/i><\/p>\n

Can one acquire humility without enduring humiliation? (repeat) It is a serious question. \u00a0Discomfort, we ignore. \u00a0Pain, we obey.<\/p>\n

For us, as part of a national culture now careening toward and into an apotheosis of hubris, the similitude of Luke 14 hits home. \u00a0The way of the long future is along the path of humility. \u00a0But we get tired of humility, because it is a tiring and tiresome talent to hone. \u00a0We get tired, and if we get scared when we get tired, if a portion of fear is laden into a potion, poisonous potion, of pride, and if that fear potion is potent enough to carry us, we forget who we are. \u00a0We forget Emma Lazarus and prefer demagoguery. \u00a0We forget Lincoln and support nativism. \u00a0We forget King and accept narcissism. \u00a0We forget Jesus the crucified and cleave to the cry of triumphalism, out of fear and out of exhaustion and out of amnesia. \u00a0We forget the advice of the author of Hebrews: 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. \u00a0<\/i>We turn aside from the prophetic voice of Jeremiah, Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods? But my people have changed their glory for something that does not profit. <\/i>Can we acquire a modicum of humility, that measure we will minimally need as a people, without enduring humiliation? \u00a0Can we learn without learning the hard way? \u00a0Can we see the pending consequences through the lenses of humility, without needing, in order to learn, a full experience of humiliation? \u00a0Or, as so often in history, will we need to drink the bitter cup of full cultural and national humiliation, in order for humility to return? \u00a0I would like to be optimistic\u2026 Sometimes people just have to learn the hard way. \u00a0To learn what? \u00a0Pride goeth before a fall.<\/i><\/p>\n

For us as individuals, who have known more than our share, as our guest reminds us, more than our share of elbowing our way to the head of the table, the similitude of Luke 14 hits home. \u00a0Narrow is the gate and straight is the way that leads to life, and few there be who go therein. \u00a0We all, one way or another, get born on third base and think we hit a triple. \u00a0We all see a turtle on top of a fence post and think he got there by climbing. \u00a0We all preach our version of the sermon, Humility and How I Achieved It<\/i>. \u00a0We all have one set of arithmetic for our own deeds and misdeeds and another for others, one abacus for our own intentions and another for those of others. \u00a0We all can stand a little and more than a little house cleaning when it comes to the rooms marked off by what we think we did when we didn\u2019t and what we think we didn\u2019t when we did. \u00a0There is, that is, still a place in the pilgrim faithful heart, for the quiet Yankee voice of self-criticism. There is still a value in the teacher who began every class bowing to the students, not knowing what range of genius might already be present. \u00a0H R Niebuhr in the evening hunted up a student whom he had chastised in the morning, asking forgiveness. \u00a0Can we learn without learning the hard way? \u00a0Can we see the pending consequences through the lenses of humility, without needing, in order to learn, a full experience of humiliation? \u00a0Or, as so often in history, will we need to drink the bitter cup of full personal humiliation, in order for humility to return? \u00a0I would like to be optimistic\u2026 Sometimes people just have to learn the hard way. \u00a0To learn what? \u00a0Pride goeth before a fall.<\/i><\/p>\n

Mahatma Ghandi, whose favorite Christian hymn we have just sung, in sandals and Sari, walked four miles a day, among all his people. \u00a0He knew the English court, the banks of the Thames, the style and rhythms of British life, but went home. \u00a0Ghandi reminded us that for the hungry God will present, if at all, in bread. \u00a0To listen to the hurt in others, to pause before the hidden courage of others, to accept the grace to celebrate the good in others, to spot the one thing needful in the need of others\u2014herein, behold, a humility, a divine humility\u2014today\u2019s special guest. \u00a0\u00a0Shakespeare: \u00a0There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will. <\/i>(He) \u2018who came not to be served but to serve\u2019\u2026who today occupies the supreme place in history\u2026to whom has been given the name that is above every name\u2019. (So E F Tittle, Commentary on Luke 155).<\/p>\n

Lead kindly light amid the encircling gloom<\/i><\/p>\n

Lead Thou me on<\/i><\/p>\n

The night is dark and I am far from home<\/i><\/p>\n

Lead Thou me on<\/i><\/p>\n

Keep Thou my feet, I do not ask to see<\/i><\/p>\n

The distant scene, one step enough for me<\/i><\/p>\n

So long thy power hath blessed me, sure it still<\/i><\/p>\n

Will lead me on<\/i><\/p>\n

O\u2019er moor and fen, o\u2019er crag and torrent till<\/i><\/p>\n

The night is gone<\/i><\/p>\n

And with the morn, those angel faces smile<\/i><\/p>\n

Which I have loved long since, and lost a while<\/i><\/p>\n

Sursum Corda: \u00a0Lift up your hearts! \u00a0Great this Lord\u2019s Day a Special Guest, Luke 14: 7, and shake his hand: For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.<\/i><\/p>\n

– The Reverend Doctor, Robert Allan Hill, Dean.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to listen to the full service Luke 14:1, 7-13 Click here to listen to the meditations\u00a0only We have a special guest with us today. \u00a0He has made his way into our midst, through a long and arduous journey. Our guest over a great expanse, has come our way. \u00a0Because his presence has come […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[6],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1428"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1938,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428\/revisions\/1938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}