August 31 | Pentecost 12, Year C
Jeremiah 2:4-13 or Sirach 10:12-18 or Proverbs 25:6-7
Psalm 81:1, 10-16 or Psalm 112
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Luke 14:1, 7-14
Pride separates while humility connects. Our pride is usually behind our refusal to learn from others. We have all the knowledge, so what could we possibly learn from someone else? It is impossible to teach someone who knows it all until we can demonstrate the person’s lack of full knowledge. Of course, those who are proud are often blind even to such a demonstration. The usual result of such an interaction is a pride-driven attack upon the person making the challenge. The division caused by pride is not only between student and instructor, but also between the learner and the knowledge. Only those who have the humility to admit that they do not possess complete knowledge are in the frame of mind necessary to learn.
The problem of pride is that it blinds us to the truth and cripples our ability to learn. Our entire world becomes clothed in our skin or the delusion that our experience is the totality of reality. Only humility opens us to accessing new knowledge and new sources of knowledge.
Pride is also a great divider of people. When we think of ourselves as more important than others, we begin to disregard them. The “humility” of the proud is a practical obsequiousness toward those who will help them become more important. In my pride, I become the fulcrum of the balance that determines who is and who is not important in the world. Like a typical middle-school student, I will eagerly accept the invitation to the party of a “cool kid,” but will reject, without any thought, attending that of an unpopular classmate. And how crushed we are when we work hard to be in the circle of friends of a popular student and then do not receive an invitation. All our prejudice is based on our pride.
Hospitality is a good antidote for this type of pride. Hospitality is other-centered. When the guests arrive, we seek to serve their needs and make them feel at home. There is no room for pride when we are serving the needs of other people. Jesus practiced a radical form of hospitality when, while we were yet sinners, he died for us so that those who would believe in him might respond and be welcomed by the Father. The offer of salvation through the cross was made to all people without prejudice. Although we do not often think of the cross in terms of hospitality, it really fits the definition.
There is nothing in the definition of hospitality that refers to the worthiness of its recipients. Rather, the generosity, cordiality, offering, and receptivity, and openness of the host are front and center. Here there is a giving of oneself for the good of the guest—invited or a drop-in.
On the cross, Jesus offered us reception into the eternal pleasant and sustaining environment of God’s presence. As his offer is universal, so too should be our announcement of his offer. If there is no one that Jesus counted unworthy of his dying on the cross, then there is no one in all creation who is not worthy of being told of the saving grace of God. Our proper response to the cross is not to proudly rejoice that we are in Jesus’ circle, but rather to consider ourselves his servants who are sent out to the highways and byways, gated communities and tenements, to indiscriminately distribute the Father’s invitations to the wedding banquet.
Look It Up: Jeremiah 2:1-13
Think About It: Pride is declaring your independence from the One who sustains you.
The Rev. Dr. Chuck Alley, former rector of St. Matthew’s Church in Richmond, Virginia, teaches anatomy at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical School.
