12th Sunday after Pentecost

​In a hierarchical society like our own:
And like the one that Jesus lived in:
We are constantly bombarded with being told in one way or another,
to know our place.

Know your place.
Don’t go beyond it.
Stay where you’re supposed to stay.
Be in your own place, and not in someone else’s.

And as usual:
Jesus disrupts this standard.
To those with status and authority who crave more:
He stresses humility.

And for those at the bottom of society’s ladder,
He offers a glimmer of promise saying,
“Come up here!”

All of this, under the invitation and hospitality of a great and loving God who does
not live in the same hierarchical society that we live in.

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Sure:
We’ve heard these stories before.
We understand them.
We know that we should live with humility:
And that we should invite others in.

But if we’re really honest with ourselves:
We know that it’s easier said than done:
That we still:
Far too often:
Follow society’s rules for knowing our place.

Too often, we slip into the places that society makes for us.
Rather than the places that God made for us:
And endlessly offers to us.

This Sunday also comes around at the beginning of the academic year.
In lunch rooms and dorms,
Athletic fields, and activity fairs,
Young people are scouting out a new place for themselves.

For many students:
Efforts to obtain the best seat in the house will leave them exhausted:
And even discouraged.
Because of society’s urging to know our place and stay in it.

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And so our readings today remind us of how true of a reality this is.
That we scramble for the best seat:
And it rarely ends well.

Our lesion from Proverbs today gets right to the point.
We don’t usually get a reading that is just two verses long!
But maybe that’s the point:
To make it super clear.
Proverbs says “Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence or stand in the
place of the great; for it is better to be told, “Come up here,” than to be put lower
in the presence of a noble. “

The race for the best place doesn’t actually make us feel good.
But being INVITED to the top does.

So rather than racing to the top:
We should remember that there is a place:
That God inhabits:
A place that God invites us to:
Where real security, and real joy reign supreme.
And we can’t get there by pushing others out of the way.

While we are scrambling to the top:
God is hunkered down in the depths:

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Sitting at the end of the lunch table with all those kids we don’t think about sitting
with.
God is calling us from the depths,
And inviting us to join.

As Jesus enters the house of the Pharisee:
He stands back and notices how the guests choose the places of honor.
Jesus observes that the guests choose to race to the top.
So he casts an alternative vision:
A picture of a feast inhabited by those at the bottom.

Disrupting the nature of our human systems of security:
Whereby you are only as secure as the chair you have chosen.

And in the letter to the Hebrews we are warned not to:
“Neglect to show hospitality to strangers.”
The author points us to a reality where an encounter with the stranger might yield
an encounter with angels.

The writer is recalling the story of Abraham and Sarah:
Who met and welcomed three strangers:
Feeding them under the shade of a tree.
And it turned out that they were messengers:
Angels:
Bringing the good news that even in their old age Sarah would bear a child.

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Jesus tells us to invite not our friends:
But the poor, crippled, lame and blind to our dinner tables.

The letter to the Hebrews urges us to invite the stranger,
And to remember the prisoners as if we ourselves were prisoners:
To not worry about our own place:
But to stand in someone else’s.

Why?
Because deep in the heart of our encounter with the lowly:
We meet God.
Just like Sarah and Abraham.
This is precisely where we will find the secure place that we were seeking all
along.

And we can look ahead:
Knowing that by the end of Luke’s gospel:
Jesus isn’t going to anybody’s fancy dinner parties:
Talking to people about where they should sit.

Instead, he becomes the lowly stranger:
Bearing the scars of the one that the author of Hebrews encourages us to eat
with.

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And even later:
After the Resurrection:
On the road to Emmaus:
Jesus mirrors that story of Abraham and Sarah:
When he is invited in to break bread:
And his hosts suddenly discover that they are entertaining even more than an
angel:
They are hosting the Son of the Living God.

At the heart of their encounter with this stranger:
They encounter the life of the living God!

As we search for a secure place:
Jesus calls to us from the underside.
He calls to us from the end of the lunch table:
From the lowest rung of the economic ladder:
And from beneath the surface of the waters of baptism.

Jesus is hidden:
Hunkered down in the depths.

God is there:
At the bottom of the pool:
With a voice bubbling up from below:
Calling our names.

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It’s not what we had expected:
It’s not what society says our place should be:
But lodged there with God in the depths of that water is our only secure place.

In the depths of that water is the promise of a community that will not leave us:
And a table where the food will not run out.

In that fountain all our insecurities are hollowed out as our lives are stitched to
the lowest of the low:
The crucified one:
And together:
With him:
We are called up: “Come up here”
And we share in the feast of life.
And when we share in that feast:
It doesn’t matter which chair we choose.

Amen.