Mt. Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church
Hebrews 13:1-8,15-16
Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so, some have entertained angels unawares.
Luke 14:7-11
On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the Sabbath, they were watching him closely. When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor at the table, he told them this parable: “When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor in case one more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this man your seat.’ Then, in disgrace, you will have to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so your host may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humbles themselves will be exalted.
Lay Preacher: Vince Prantil
“I Must Be in the Front Row …”
Bob Euker
I was very fortunate this past year to have been in the presence of an angel … unawares.
His name was Stewart Clark. I only met him two times. The first was at a classroom function in my daughter’s 1st grade classroom. Her teacher was Debbie Clark, Stew’s wife. Stew had attended the festivities.
The second time was at a fundraiser for our kids’ daycare. We were blessed that Deb and Stew joined us on that Friday evening in late March. As often happens when teachers get together, lots of stories got told. Stew mostly sat behind us, careful to allow the teachers their moments. When he did speak, it was to ask whomever he was with about them. My memories are only of a very quiet man.
On Monday next, Stew died very suddenly of a heart attack. That Saturday, Laurna and I attended the funeral. Only then, did I learn about the man who sat behind all of us on Friday evening.
Stew was the CEO of DigiCorp in Milwaukee. He played guitar at the Community United Methodist Church in Elm Grove where he was instrumental in creating their contemporary service. Testimonials by family, friends, and colleagues told the story of a caring brother, a successful businessman, a dynamic and Christian leader, a gifted musician, a wonderful father and husband, a humble servant. His stories were about a man who was content with his place in the grand scheme of things, and, without fanfare, seemed at peace with who God intended him to be.
In Rembrandt’s painting Night Watch, he chose to use whispers of yellow around the edges that naturally guide the eye to the center of the painting where brighter reds, blacks and whites illuminate a Captain and his Lieutenant. Stew’s funeral had me wondering … if we were colors used by the artist, would we, as humans, not seek to be in that place to which all are drawn? Or would we be content to be the subtle, oft not recognized yellows that, without credit or mention, play their part & point the way?
At the Youth Work Camp this summer, Mike Naumann approached Laurna and I one evening. He said he had been approached by a young girl on his work crew. She said, “Mr. Naumann. I know we don’t come here for the credit or for the mention … but it’s just good to know sometimes that it makes a difference.”
I was reminded in that moment:
As human beings, we have many needs, and often, these needs come in conflict with one another.
On the one end, we want to know that our being here, what we do and contribute makes a difference, that, on some level, we matter to the world. At the other end, we have a tugging on us to “do the right thing” … even if that means our good deeds goes seemingly unnoticed, not unlike Rembrandt’s yellow brushstrokes. Some will say that we can do BOTH. But often it is hard to do one well without sacrificing the other.
Rabbi Harold Kushner writes:
“Each human life is like 2 slightly blurred images rather than a single clear one. Much of our lives will be spent in this struggle (between two often conflicting needs) – to close the gap between the longing of the soul and the scolding of the conscience, between the assurance we need that we’re good and the satisfaction that we have mattered … In our quest for significance, we litter the world with our mistakes, more than we bless it with our accomplishments. Our souls are split ….”
We, as humans, live in the continuum between these two places. Jesus, maybe, is warning us to be watchful over our desire to matter, a desire that may lead us to become overly ambitious to make our mark on the world. He warns us that, in trying so hard to make a difference, we can lose our way. We are all in a constant struggle between accepting with humility God’s intended role for us and wanting to make our mark, even if that means we force fit another role onto ourselves.
Today’s text is sometimes referred to as the Parable of the Ambitious Guest.
I’m not so sure Jesus is saying anything at all about where you sit in Church or a daycare fundraiser, for that matter. He was talking about how we each come to understand our spiritual gifts in Christ. From the moment of our conception, God forms us for a high purpose. Perhaps if we are too ambitious with our own goals, we run the risk of not fulfilling that purpose.
The metaphor of “a back seat” is a good one … it illustrates the example of humility lived by Jesus, a humility I came to know only too late in the life of Stewart Clark.
Maurice Boyd, Minister of the 5th Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York once said of ambition:
“We must recognize in ambition just how ambiguous it is. We say of him ‘He’s sooo ambitious’ and of her ‘Problem is, she has no ambition’. Ambition can be a good thing … so we should praise it, but not over much. For in excess, it can become demonic. The dishonesty it can engender has a particular twist to it. Is it good to be ambitious? Well yes … and no. If we are ambitious, we need to be aware of it, to keep it in check and keep it consistent with our personal integrity, morality and dignity.”
God help you if there’s something you want so much, you’ll do anything to get it. It can drive you to do things that you really don’t want to do. In our conflict between knowing what is the right thing to do and wanting to matter, humans can and have exaggerated their virtues, compromised their values, forsaken their integrity, betrayed confidences, abandoned their morality, neglected family and rationalized it all away “for a cause that was deemed worthy”.
Political candidates compromise their values to raise money and gain votes. Salesmen exaggerate the virtues of their wares. Athletes pump performance enhancing drugs. Doctors, lawyers, and businessmen neglect their families in the pursuit of professional and financial success. We often will rationalize away such behavior by saying “that’s the way the world is” … “it’s what ya gotta do”. God must remind us to live a humble life that is based more in the Spirit and less in this Earthly world and its definition of success.
Stew Clark walked in what Thomas a Kempis called “a multitude of peace”. He had Earthly success, but he had no need for you to know what he’d accomplished, no need for “a front row seat”. If we are at peace with who we are, we will be content with a lower place, even the lowest place. If we take the lowest place, we’re only doing what Jesus did. Children of God don’t need to prove who they are to themselves or anyone else.
“The humble walk in a multitude of peace”, not the ruthlessly competitive. The trouble with being inordinately competitive is that eventually it is never enough to have enough. You want to have more than everybody else. And you never can. Carl Jung points out that “chapter one in a young person’s life is their setting out to conquer the world.” After some wisening up “chapter two is their realization that the world is not about to be conquered by the likes of them.” Lots of learning going on between Chapters 1 and 2.
In the movie “A Man for All Seasons”, Richard Rich was ambitious for power and to get it he lied. For his perjury, he was rewarded & made Attorney General of Wales. Sir Thomas Moore had earlier told him that he couldn’t handle power, and shouldn’t have it, but that he would make a fine teacher. But Richard didn’t want to teach.
He said “Even if I taught well no one would know it”.
Sir Thomas replied, “Richard, your students would know it; Richard, you would know it … and God would know it”. He thought that was a good audience.
Pastor Johnson has reminded us from this pulpit that God often chooses the humble to be his prophets. He picks them out of the back row where they lie in wait to be called forward to serve their high purpose with very special gifts. God will call us forth when the time is right for us to fulfill our high purpose. And he will not call you because you’re “better than someone else”. Our high purpose doesn’t make us higher than anyone else … …
Like all good parents, God loves his children uniquely, not equally.
Don’t your children vie for your attention, compete with one another to show you how good they can be? And, don’t you, as a parent know that they only have to be themselves to matter? Are there any of your children in “the front row” and others in the back?
Humility, then, requires the strength and wisdom to accept our unique roles in spite of our own desires. We will, in fact, matter MOST when we add to His magnificent tapestry in the way He guides us. And, despite a seemingly human need to matter that leads us to compete, we’re surrounded by more and more evidence that there is a real and true cooperative spirit to the universe.
A physics professor, Eric Mazur, at Harvard University wrote that there are three distinct parts to evolution: mutation, selection, and, only now we are beginning to realize … cooperation. And the patterns we observe in nature owe themselves to individual parts cooperating for the greater good of the whole. In Mazur’s computer model of cell growth, behavior of cancerous tumor cells results from a breakdown in cooperative behavior.
In the movie “A Beautiful Mind”, John Nash unfolds his Nobel Prize winning Nash Equilibrium in the halls (and bars) of Princeton, wherein he states that he and his cohorts, if they are to meet the blond, must do what is best for them individually AND for the group.
“Adam Smith”, he proclaims in a moment of epiphany, “ was wrong!”
So maybe competition alone … or to the extreme, is not the answer.
There is an old Indian saying that goes
“Western man struggles in climbing a mountain because he views the mountain as something to be conquered. He should, rather, become one with the mountain and allow the mountain to raise him up.”
Too often, we view ourselves as “outside of it all” rather than as part of something bigger.
Life is not a zero sum game, in the end. Jesus knew that. He believed we don’t win, ANY ONE of us, until we ALL win. He knows we each have a gift within us that is ours alone, a passion, a longing, a calling at which we were masterfully created to excel. But becoming overly ambitious to a calling that is not our own can undermine our true nature. So Jesus warns us.
“Undertow is extremely strong. Swim with caution.”
The warnings are direct, blunt, to the point, and attention-grabbing. Because the undertow, like ambition, is often more powerful than we are; it is easy to approach it unaware; and be overcome by it in the end. In so doing, the line one crosses is nebulous. It’s foggy, grey, not always clear. And, like the undertow, by the time we realize or admit we are in its strong grasp, it can be a very long and hard road back to a safe place. So a stern warning is not out of line. Think of your own children again. Sometimes it takes the direct message to gets their attention.
Jesus, I think, is only warning us of the dark side of becoming too ambitious.
He might be saying:
“Don’t jump the gun. Take a seat in the back. I have a plan for you. I’ll be calling you.”
“Do you want to matter? The good news is … you already do!”
You matter so much Jesus died for you. You matter so much because you are a child of God. There is no higher purpose than the one God created you for. Revelations reminds us “He has made us all kings and priests”. Just this morning, I turned to my son, Lorin, when he shared something with his sister. I said Lorin “You’re a prince”. He quickly replied, “No, Dad … I’m a King!”
As the Desiderata reminds us:
“If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Be yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, the universe is unfolding as it should.”
Humility is many things. One element is walking in that “multitude of peace” where you recognize you are a child of that Universe, a child of God and you already make a difference whether anybody knows it or not …
… but, in the end, only those you humbly serve may ever know it,
only those who share your gifts and passions may ever know it,
maybe only you will ever know it
but know this … God, who will choose you out of the back row, will know it.
And Stewart Clark reminded me … that’s still a mighty good audience.
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