Let Mutual Love Continue

Sunday, August 31, 2025

Proper 17, Year C, RCL, Track 2

Sirach 10:12-18

Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16

Luke 14:1, 7-14

The Book of Sirach is apocryphal, meaning it is appended to the canon of the Bible. The church recognizes that this book has merit, in this case, wisdom. Yet, as Apocryphal, the book is not held in the same esteem as the canonical books of the Bible. With this in mind, this book presents a vision of God that many of us dislike. A God, seemingly, of vengeance, annihilation, and love only toward the faithful. However, this book is not intended to present an accurate portrayal of God. Much like the Psalter, it is comprised of poetry. We, in life, would not hold poetry about the Civil War to the same level as we would in a history book about the war. Or, for example, if someone wrote a poem about the Constitution, we would not hold that poem up in a courtroom as we would the actual document. A poem may give us insight that we would not otherwise see. It may tap into our emotions in a way that no legal document can. We may even use a poem to help us understand other texts on the subject more clearly, but it does not replace them.

This is a long way of saying that there are views of God, in which God is portrayed in rather ugly ways. As such, we shouldn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak. There is wisdom within this writing, even if we don’t like the portrait of God that we find within.

Our passage tells us that “the beginning of human pride, is to [ignore] the Lord.” We see this all the time. When people ignore or forget God, we tend to think we are the ones in charge, or that we are blessed by luck or fate. If I asked you to guess a number between 1 and 100, and you guessed the correct number on the first try, well, that is luck. It is a random occurrence that ended up in your favor. Fate, on the other hand, is an event that is predestined to happen. No matter what you did, this event was going to happen no matter what.

Blessings are different. A blessing is given from God to us or from us to one another. A blessing is a gift that is undeserved. We can accept or reject a blessing. Sometimes we find the blessing of protection from a bad event, such as a car accident. And unfortunately, there is no way to prove whether you survived the wreck due to luck or a blessing. But this is where faith comes in.

When we turn to the Lord God and we put our trust and faith in God, then we acknowledge God’s hand in our lives. We begin to understand that everything we have and do comes to us through God. This is the view of God as the sustainer of life. Without God, life could not continue. The universe would fall apart due to entropy.

(By the way, a curse is a type of blessing. A curse is to bless someone with illness, or bad things, or to remove divine protections.)

If we attribute ALL goodness in life to God, then where do the bad things come from? Some denominations would say the “Evil” in the world comes from the Devil.” This view gives a lot of credit to Devil. It shifts the blame from our actions to a mystical being, making it a scapegoat. Although there may be evil in the world, we can see that most of this “evil” comes from us, human beings. School shootings, drunk drivers, falling when we don’t use our canes; these tragedies do not come from some outside force but from within ourselves or the relationships that we have neglected.

Our passage goes on to say that pride is sin, and a prideful person pours out abominations. We can look around, we can read other passages in the Bible, and see that prideful people can do a lot of good, but in the process, they cause a lot of harm. They may end up in leadership and become very wealthy. Prideful people may give little credit to those who helped them achieve their current status. Or those who do the manual work of manufacturing the widgets which brought them their wealth. Yet, whether in the Old Testament or New, we find that such a person may become numb to the needs of the world around them. The poor and suffering are meaningless, even if this person employs them and builds wealth off their backs. God tells us over and over again that their behavior has brought them their reward here on earth. Still, this reward will not continue into the next life to come.

The society in which this book was written was based on honor and shame. If you do good things, good things will come to you and your family. The opposite was equally true. If you are poor, born with a disability, or have misfortune, it is because someone in your family is or was not a good person. This shame or honor goes from one generation to the next, until, for whatever reason, you appease the Lord God. Even though the people believed this back then, Christ knows this is not how things work. And we understand that this is not how life works. So, in his usual fashion, Christ offers us a parable.

Jesus tells us that a prideful person will sit at the tables held for honored guests. But sometimes this pompous fool has to be told to go down to one of the lower tables. If this were to happen to any of us, Jesus rightly says, we would be humiliated. So, he says, sit at the lower tables and wait for the host to bring you to a higher one. This makes sense to us, and we can’t really argue with this thought. But Jesus doesn’t leave the story here.

To follow God, we have to go deeper. If you really want to demonstrate humility, don’t invite your friends and relatives; invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. Not only can they not repay you for your generosity, but you have also lifted them up, revealing their humanity that the rest of the world would rather ignore.

The first part of the parable is not so hard to follow. However, in the second part, inviting strangers — those in desperate need of help, and those who society sees as unfit for company — is a much more difficult task. I can think of the times when we have a banquet before us, such as Thanksgiving or Christmas. What would it take for us to invite one or two people into our homes and offer them hospitality?

I know that we fear for our safety. We feel vulnerable around people we don’t know, especially those that the news portrays as dangerous. One of the best ways to remove this fear in our lives is to build a relationship with those we don’t know. I’m not saying becoming BFFs, but just knowing one another’s names is a good start.

In the last few weeks, one of our parishioners, who usually doesn’t attend Meal and a Prayer, told me, “What a friendly group of people this is.” And it is true. Some of our guests participate in the liturgy and offer appropriate feedback. They want to shake your hand or have a hug. In part, I think this is out of appreciation for what we do. Generally speaking, few of our Tuesday night friends would ever be able to repay us. But as Jesus tells us today, this is not why we do this. We do this because they have needs and we can meet some of them.

When we first started Meal and a Prayer, some of our regular volunteers were a little standoffish, as were our guests. Yet, now, we have built a community. We know many of their names. We can embrace one another, and we no longer have discomfort about “what might happen.” I don’t think any of us are naive. We know there is a certain amount of unpredictability. But we no longer live in fear of one another. We see much more of our full humanity in each other, and we can genuinely offer consolation when they have problems. And affection for who they are.

Meal and a Prayer is just one way we touch the lives of those who society would rather forget. It is what this church, your church, is doing. But the church can only carry YOU so far. Sometimes you need to participate to grow. Being humble enough to recognize the humanity on our streets is as vital for spiritual growth as is Sunday School, Bible study, and prayer time. This is the way the path Christ shows us. And the way Christ shows us is the way to salvation. As the opening verse from the Letter to the Hebrews tells us, “Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”