Everybody’s watching
everybody else in today’s Gospel reading. The Pharisees, religious experts, are
“watching Jesus closely”. But Jesus,
we are told, is watching them too. “He
noticed how the guests chose the places of honour”.
We talk about living in a
surveillance society these days, but people have always watched each other,
noticing the subtle visual clues that help them make judgements about others.
Are they friend or foe? Rivals or allies? Wanting to talk, or wanting to be
left alone? Interested in what we are saying or dying to get away? Some people
are more observant than others, of course, and some people are easier to read
than others, but actions reveal what words may try to hide.
In Jesus’ case, the people-watching
was happening in the course of a Sabbath meal which he’d been invited to at the
house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees, a high-up, important person in
this particular religious movement. It was obviously a reasonably formal do,
with all sorts of etiquette to observe, and the first and greatest hurdle was
where you sat. How important were you? Where did you come in the pecking order?
Who got to sit at the top table? Who was on the host’s right and left hands? There
was no seating plan; you had to work it out for yourself. It sounds as if it
was quite entertaining to watch as people jockeyed for position, gave way to
others, or didn’t.
It’s the same in most
gatherings and groups. There are the Alpha males, the Queen Bees, the ones who set the trends and make the
rules, who head straight for the best seats, buoyed up by an indelible sense of
entitlement, whether they are really entitled or not. Then there are those who
aren’t sure they’re meant to be there at all, newcomers who hover by the door
watching for the slightest hint that they aren’t welcome so they can beat a
hasty retreat. Then there are those in between. There are the ones with “imposter syndrome”, who find themselves
a little higher than they are comfortable with, and can never quite relax in
case they get found out. And there are the “humble braggers” the ones who
ostentatiously insist that “no, no, I
couldn’t possibly sit there – you take that seat – I’m really not important
enough for it!”, while making sure that everyone else notices them doing
it.
Anyway, eventually the people
at this dinner settle down. Everyone has a place. The “imposters” have come to
the conclusion that if they’ve sat in the wrong place, they seem to have got
away with it, again. The humble-braggers are content that everyone has noticed
precisely how humble they are. The hoverers-near-the-door have perched
themselves on the end of a bench, and the entitled ones are surveying the scene
with satisfaction, congratulating themselves on being so important. All is well…until Jesus opens his mouth and
says what most of them have actually been thinking for the last half hour or so
anyway.
“Are you sure you’re in the place you are meant
to be? What if the host were suddenly to say, right now, with everyone looking
that you – or you – or you – had taken a seat which was meant for someone more
important than you? What if you – or you – or you – were suddenly told to get
up and go to the back? What if you’ve got it wrong?”
In any culture, in any group
of people, this would be very embarrassing; in Jesus’ culture, a culture where
honour and shame were the guiding principles, it would never have been forgotten.
You would probably never feel able to show your face again. His little parable
of the banquet where the guest is made to take that “walk of shame” would have
hit home very powerfully. How do you know you are in the right place?
How do you know that you have got the right measure of your own worth?
How do you know that you aren’t thinking too highly of yourself? Suddenly
everyone is unsettled, looking at each other out of the corner of their eye,
wondering if they are about to be humiliated.
This can all get very
confusing, though. Jesus says that those
who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be
exalted, but if you humble yourself so that you will be exalted, is that
really humility at all?
If we put others before ourselves,
are we just “virtue-signalling”, trying to look “holier than thou”? If we put ourselves down are we actually
“humble-bragging”, fishing for compliments and admiration? If we are proud of
our humility, how can it be humility?
And aren’t there times when
we should take pride in ourselves, take up our space in the world? Of
course there are.
We can end up going round and
round in circles, getting more and more self-obsessed, but if we do, I think
that might be because we have missed the point completely.
Jesus isn’t just trying to
upend the social norms, here, substituting a new pecking order for the old one.
He’s doing something far more radical. He’s telling us that it isn’t about us
at all. The problem is our self-obsession, which creates this burning need to
have a pecking order in the first place.
The guests at this dinner are
using other people simply as objects to measure their own worth against.
They aren’t looking at them as people in their own right, with fascinating
stories to tell, burdens or joys to share, who are either more or less
important than them, above or below them. That’s the only thing about their
fellows which matters; whether they make them look better or worse. It’s
like picking your friends because they are fatter and uglier than you are, so
that you look slimmer and more beautiful by comparison.
For Jesus, though, each
person, whoever they are, is precious, a unique creation of God, just as they
are. “Don’t invite those who can repay
you,” he says. Invite those who seem to have nothing to give you. Invite
those who are vulnerable and in need, because they are vulnerable and in
need, those who would have found it hard to provide for themselves in Jesus’
time, and still do today. Invite them for no other reason than that they are
hungry and you have food. Invite them for their sakes, not for yours, to meet
their need, not yours. Of course, when we do this, we may – almost certainly
will – end up feeling blessed, because we will discover that those we invite
are blessings in themselves, but if that’s why we do it, for our own good, then
it will always ring hollow. Jesus talks about God rewarding those who do this “at the resurrection of the righteous”,
at the end of time, but that it will be the reward of seeing the whole world made right,
not some special prize we can, or will want to, hug to ourselves.
The writer of the letter to
the Hebrews has the same message for the community he is writing to. “Let mutual
love continue” he says; love that is based on equality, on the assumption that
the other person is as valuable as I am. “Show
hospitality to strangers” – people you don’t know, so you can’t tell
whether they have anything you need. It’s about them, not about you. Identify
with those in prison or being tortured– don’t treat them as if they are some
other sub-human species who don’t need the same things you do. In marriage –
and remember this is a society in which women were treated as property – show
respect for each other. Don’t treat your partner as if they are just put there
for your own convenience, to be picked up and dropped as the mood takes
you. “Be
content with what you have”; don’t take more than you need because someone
else will miss out, and greedy acquisition nearly always rests on exploitation.
It’s a message we desperately need to remind ourselves of at this time, when
greed and self-seeking seem to be getting the upper hand.
Treating others as people who
are as valuable as we are is difficult though, which is why we so often fail to
do it.
That’s why I am glad that the
writer to the Hebrews doesn’t end there. “Be
content with what you have” he says, “for
God has said, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you’”. He’s quoting from
God’s words to Joshua, the Old Testament figure who led the people of Israel
from the wilderness into the Promised Land, a scary and daunting task. (Joshua
1.5) “So we can say with confidence”,
he goes on, “The Lord is my helper; I
will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?”
Why are we self-centred? It’s
because we’re anxious about ourselves and our security. It seems like a
dog-eat-dog world out there, if we don’t look out for number one, who will? We can’t live generously, confidently, open-handededly
unless we deal with that anxiety, that sense of being alone in a hostile world,
with no one to rely on but ourselves. As our first reading put it, it is when
our hearts have “withdrawn from their
Maker” that we get into trouble, and the consequences can be dire, not just
for us, but for everyone.
We need to remember what the
letter to the Hebrews reminds us of, that we are not alone. As well as the
other members of their community, with whom they are called to share that
mutual love, this writer points them back to the first Christian leaders – the
likes of Peter, Paul, James and John. They coped with the challenges and fears
they faced because they’d come to realise that God would always be with them. “Jesus
Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever,” That doesn’t mean that Christian faith can’t
change and develop, as some people interpret this verse; it means that God will
always be faithful to us. Jesus’ life, death and resurrection were the proof of
that. God doesn’t pick us up and drop us on a whim, when it suits him, like
some paranoid despot. He sticks with us, whatever happens.
That’s the key to living in
the way Jesus teaches. We need to learn to trust that the only opinion of us
that really matters is the opinion of God, and that his opinion is always that
he loves us with a never-ending love. If we can do that we’ll never need to put
others down in order to raise ourselves up, or measure ourselves anxiously
against them, because we’ll have nothing to be anxious about.
Amen
No comments:
Post a Comment