Trinity 17 – The Bands of Pride

Ephesians 4:1-6       St. Luke 14:1-11

“When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast…
go and sit in the lowest place,
so that when your host comes he may say unto you,
‘Friend, move up higher!’”

Trinity season is about following Jesus’ call not to just to attend to our outward actions, important as they are, but, in more recent Sundays, to the very inward thoughts of our hearts, to our inner motivations – our inner fears, our inner anger, our inward love of all that is worldly.  All of this prepares us for our souls to be raised up, like the son of the widow in last week’s Gospel, who sat up from death and looked upon God – face to face.  It is something that is promised as our minds are freed by God from being completely absorbed in our activities in this world.

Our regular worship together each Sabbath day is a gift from God to rest from our daily work and to practice together looking up.  It is about resting in God like the angels in adoration.  It is about recovering the hidden capacity of our souls to look upon the face of God.  Our experience of rest here is one that should spread more and more into our daily lives.

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To look upon the face of God, to know God and to be known, is the end, to direction of the Christian life – it is the spiritual marriage of our souls with God.

How will this happen?

It all started by humbling ourselves under God – the breaking down of our self sufficiency, to turn to God to ask for help.  Yet that same pride or self sufficiency that first held us apart from God, can reassert itself again and again in the spiritual life – and it will hold us back from growth unless we are completely healed of it.

This spiritual pride reveals itself in at least two ways:

(1) First, in our individual approach to God in prayer, and

(2) second, in our approach as Christians to one another.

This is shown to us in today’s Gospel and Epistle.

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In our Gospel today, Jesus is eating bread in the house of one of the chief Pharisees, and it is significant that this is happening on the Sabbath day.  God would also have us enter into His rest, the Sabbath rest.  It is the third spiritual stage in Trinity season that we’ve reached.  First it was purgation of the passions, then greater illumination by the Holy Spirit and now it is – union with God, Sabbath rest in God, the contemplation of God – all expressions describing the same spiritual state to which we are being led in our ascent.

There is something in us that prevent us from this simple enjoyment, of being able to rest in a loving beholding of God.

In today’s the Gospel, we heard that at this Sabbath feast, behold, there was a man before Jesus who had dropsy.  Dropsy is a disease that makes a person swell up with fluid.  It is a wonderful physical image of the spiritual state of a soul swollen with pride.  When we come before Jesus and simply wait in His presence on the Sabbath day or in times of rest throughout the week, humbling ourselves before Him, he promises to heal us of our remaining pride and make us ready to be lifted up in contemplation of Him.

After Jesus heals the man, he tells a parable of how we are to respond to an invitation to a wedding.  The Pharisees were not at a wedding feast, so why does he suddenly bring up this image of marriage?  When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast… He uses this image, because the Messianic Age has begun with his arrival – the wedding union of our souls with God – long promised from the opening chapters of Genesis, and with increasing frequency in the Prophets and Wisdom books – that promise is now possible in Jesus Christ!

Jesus tells us to pray, to read God’s Word, to fast, he shows us the way of virtuous living, and how to love our neighbour, and we are to follow these disciplines.

We are to attend to these things.  But at a certain point, we can become confused that it is my doing that is needed to go higher.  But Jesus is telling us this morning that in the spiritual life, the mystical marriage with God, also requires a simple humble waiting upon the Lord to be lifted further into the heights.

Jesus says, if we want to be united with God, we must humble ourselves, by taking the lowest seat, and waiting to be told, “Friend come up higher.”  Our old way of thinking, our old habits of self assertion must be put off.  We are to be patient, it is only by a gracious movement of God towards us, that we are lifted more fully into the life of God, we cannot force it, we cannot think our way up into heaven, we cannot attain it by ourselves.  We must wait for God to lift us.

This is what the Christian mystics through the ages have taken seriously – the call to take time to wait in a room by themselves for God.

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This practice of humbling ourselves before God has a parallel in our outward life towards others in the Church.

In the Epistle today, St Paul

[urges us] to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which [we] have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace…

We can get a test of our humility by reflecting on how we are relating to one another.

Think of what was required when you fell in love with another person.  You could not demand that the other person love you, there was a time of waiting, it was a mystery.  Sometimes there was no response, or even a rejection, and sometimes if we humbly waited there was the utterly astonishing response of love requited.  It is like this also with friendship with others.

In Ascension Church we are a small group so far.  But even in this small group we are a wonderful mix of church traditions – of Anglican and other church backgrounds, a mix of rich and poor, and we are a mix of races, of languages and culture.  Our life stories and how we came to follow Jesus Christ are all quite unique.

How will we respond to that – will we feel threatened by the other, or will we see this strange mixture as a gift.  Will we sit patiently in each other's company long enough to learn from one another, rather than simply seeing the faults and focusing on that?  Will we wait in each other’s presence as we are called to wait before God?

Think of the Pharisees in today’s Gospel.  They were the spiritual leaders in Israel – they found themselves before God Incarnate – and yet their own spiritual pride was getting in the way of learning or growing in their faith.  Instead of a humble curiosity about what they might learn from this stranger in their midst, instead the Gospel notes that “they were watching him carefully” – not to learn from him but to find fault, so they could assert the rightness of their position.  They were stuck in their assent to God by their spiritual pride.

On our spiritual journey, let us take time to rest in one another’s presence – in a kind of contemplation – waiting to learn something – not asserting first our own way, but waiting long enough to hear something that may result in us being lifted higher, allowed to come closer to one another’s hearts.

So in conclusion:

1. Our call today is to humility before God – we can’t force God to give us a vision, a word, even consolation or comfort from God – that’s God’s decision. We can ask, and we can do our part to quiet our souls, by each going into a room by ourself, using practices of prayer and maybe fasting as well, but these steps do not guarantee a response, we must be humble and wait for God – and accept His silence or, if He should choose, to give us a Word.

2. And we are called to have humility before one another (each of whom bear that image of God) – eagerly seeking to maintain the unity of the Spirit, so we continue to learn from one another and grow as a community of faith.

This morning each one of us has been invited to the wedding feast.  We are being made ready – through the Word and through the Liturgy – for the feast.  And we do this together.  We are hearing together, making our confession of faith together, and drawing closer to one another as we spend time together, before God.

Jesus will surely touch us inwardly this morning with His Body and Blood and heal us of the swelling of any unhelpful pride.  We will wait upon him, patiently, because love is patient.  We will wait for that voice we are told that we can all expect, saying, Friend, move up higher.  And let us expect likewise that we will be drawn closer to one another, as we humble ourselves before one another, and hear and accept invitations to a higher friendship, coming to know and love one another better. 

Amen +

Ancient Collect for Trinity 17:

O LORD, we beseech thee, absolve thy people from their offences; that through thy bountiful goodness we may be delivered from the bands of those sins, which by our frailty we have committed: grant this, O heavenly Father, for Jesus Christ’s sake, our blessed Lord and Saviour.  Amen.