SPEAKER_01: A reading from Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_01: Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: Thus says the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they went far from me and went after worthless things and became worthless themselves?
SPEAKER_01: They did not say, Where is the Lord who brought us up from the land of Egypt?
SPEAKER_01: Who led us in the wilderness, in a land of deserts and pits, in a land of drought and deep darkness, in a land that no one passes through, where no one lives.
SPEAKER_01: I brought you into a plentiful land to eat its fruits and its good things.
SPEAKER_01: But when you entered, you defiled my land and made my heritage an abomination.
SPEAKER_01: The priests did not say, Where is the Lord?
SPEAKER_01: Those who handle the Lord did not know me.
SPEAKER_01: The rulers transgressed against me.
SPEAKER_01: The prophets prophesied by Baal and went after things that do not profit.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, once more I accuse you, says the Lord, and I accuse your children's children.
SPEAKER_01: Cross to the coasts of Cyprus and look, send to Zadar and examine with care.
SPEAKER_01: See if there has ever been such a thing.
SPEAKER_01: Has a nation changed its gods even though there are no gods?
SPEAKER_01: But my people have changed their glory for something that does not profit.
SPEAKER_01: Be appalled.
SPEAKER_01: O heavens at this, be shocked.
SPEAKER_01: Be utterly desolate, says the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: For my people have committed two evils.
SPEAKER_01: They have forsaken me the fountain of living water, and dug out systems for themselves.
SPEAKER_01: Craft resistance that can hold no water.
SPEAKER_01: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: A reading from Hebrews.
SPEAKER_02: Let mutual love continue.
SPEAKER_02: Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.
SPEAKER_02: Remember those who are in prison as though you were in prison with them.
SPEAKER_02: Those who are being tortured as though you yourselves were being tortured.
SPEAKER_02: Let marriage be held in honor by all, and let the marriage bed be kept undefiled.
SPEAKER_02: For God will judge fornicators and adulterers.
SPEAKER_02: Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have.
SPEAKER_02: For he has said, I will never leave you or forsake you.
SPEAKER_02: So we can say with confidence, The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid.
SPEAKER_02: What can anyone do to me?
SPEAKER_02: Remember your leaders, those who spoke the word of God to you.
SPEAKER_02: Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
SPEAKER_02: Through him, then let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess His name.
SPEAKER_02: Do not neglect to do good and share what you have, for such pleased sacrifices are pleasing to God.
SPEAKER_02: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable.
SPEAKER_00: When you're invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host.
SPEAKER_00: And the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, Give this person your place.
SPEAKER_00: And then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place.
SPEAKER_00: But when you were invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, Friend, move up higher.
SPEAKER_00: Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you.
SPEAKER_00: For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
SPEAKER_00: He said also to the one who had invited him, When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid.
SPEAKER_00: But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.
SPEAKER_00: The Gospel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: There was a book that was written about 30 years ago, The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan, and she writes about this experience of first-generation Chinese coming to America and a little bit of the cultural melee that can ensue.
SPEAKER_00: And in one of the stories, there's an American-born boyfriend that comes with his Chinese girlfriend to a Chinese dinner at home.
SPEAKER_00: And the mother has worked for days to find and properly cook some soft shell crab.
SPEAKER_00: And in Chinese culture, apparently, according to Amy Tan, the way you do this as a host is you purposefully put yourself down so that others can then raise you up.
SPEAKER_00: So the mother says, This crab is really not that good.
SPEAKER_00: And the American boyfriend does not know the practice.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, Well, it's okay, just put some butter on it.
SPEAKER_00: And this is a disaster in the home that results in, well, anyway, disaster.
SPEAKER_00: What's funny is that it's not just this thing that happens in a novel about first-generation Chinese having lived in the South most of my life.
SPEAKER_00: This is a time-honored Southern practice called self-deprecation.
SPEAKER_00: And it is, I want to tell you, extremely calculated, and it goes awry when not everybody knows about it.
SPEAKER_00: So when you say, Oh, you know, I just threw this dinner together, what we mean is, lavish praise upon me.
SPEAKER_00: I have spent days on this banquet.
SPEAKER_00: And if somebody said, hey, it's alright for just a few minutes, then it's a disaster, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is this is sort of the deal.
SPEAKER_00: We could, I suggest to you, read Jesus' parable as sort of civic advice as a good southerner, which is look, purposefully take a seat that is lower than you deserve so that your host will see your self-deprecation and pull you up to a nicer spot.
SPEAKER_00: If you think about it, um I guess that's a conservative way to operate.
SPEAKER_00: Um, it could go awry in a couple of ways.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, the host may not see you at all, and maybe you would sit.
SPEAKER_00: But you know, um I do some weddings often, and if the bride uh if the maid of honor or uh the best man chose to not sit at the head table, it actually would really put the bride and groom out to have to go look for them, right?
SPEAKER_00: It kind of would be a disaster in the other way.
SPEAKER_00: Now you know, when you're the fourth cousin twice removed, that you are not going to be sitting at the head table, right?
SPEAKER_00: So if you were to sit there, that would be a disaster too.
SPEAKER_00: But I want to suggest it can go the other way.
SPEAKER_00: And so we get this interesting advice from Jesus: whoever humbles themselves will be exalted, and whoever exalts themselves will be humbled.
SPEAKER_00: And so the church that I grew up in and nourished me spiritually sort of said, everything we do before God, we're supposed to sandbag ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: So, okay, I did this and that to the church, but I could have done more.
SPEAKER_00: Or I'm not that good at this particular thing.
SPEAKER_00: It was the way we avoided having too much pride, because after all, if our pride offended God, then God would get even with us.
SPEAKER_00: I was delivered from this presumption by a professor in college who was very, very averse with uh sorry, he was very well uh acquainted with the writings of the desert fathers.
SPEAKER_00: These are the people who literally live out in the desert.
SPEAKER_00: And the definition he gave me for humility was like sort of shocking because I'd grown up that humility means putting yourself down.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, he said, according to these monastics, that humility means being exactly who God made you to be.
SPEAKER_00: No more and no less.
SPEAKER_00: I was really good at the no more part, to the expense at the no less.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to suggest one invitation, I think, from our scripture today, quite honestly, is to claim to claim the gifts that God has given us.
SPEAKER_00: And how this works, I think, since we're talking about banquets, is that if nobody will essentially claim the gifts God has given to us and bring them to the banquet, there won't be much to eat.
SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, if we will live into the gifts and the graces God has given to us and bring them, then there will be quite a bit to be nourished by at the table.
SPEAKER_00: You know, two or three weeks ago we got to hear Jesus say, love your neighbor as yourself.
SPEAKER_00: And something we often fail to realize is that if we don't love ourselves, we cannot love our neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: That is to say, if we cannot see and appreciate what God has given us, then when we see a gift in another person, I don't think we'll be grateful, I think we'll be jealous.
SPEAKER_00: I will tell you, there are gifts that Christine Alexander has that I don't have, and there are gifts that James Blaine has that I don't have, and isn't that what makes a potluck fun?
SPEAKER_00: There's different things on the table.
SPEAKER_00: If, however, I said, gosh, I wish I was just like James, so what I have is no good, what will I bring?
SPEAKER_00: Nothing.
SPEAKER_00: Something poorly contrived, but I want to be like what James has to offer.
SPEAKER_00: No, I think Jesus is inviting us today to consider what real humility is instead of what we settle for.
SPEAKER_00: And frankly, how we often pervert humility into put myself down, I'm no good.
SPEAKER_00: And the extension of that, in case that sounds like I'm making too much of it, has to do with what Jesus tells the host, uh, which is to put it succinctly, not everything we do has to be an investment.
SPEAKER_00: We can actually just give stuff sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: The difference between the two things.
SPEAKER_00: When I invest something, I expect a result.
SPEAKER_00: Now, it doesn't have to come back directly to me, but quite honestly, I'm the one keeping the register.
SPEAKER_00: And if I give resources or time or money and I don't get the results that I was expecting one way or another, well, you're a bad investment and I will no longer invest.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, that's fine, and there are many areas of our life where that is exactly appropriate.
SPEAKER_00: I want to tell you that unfortunately, what I internalized in my youth was that God was an investor in us.
SPEAKER_00: So we heard about grace, and God was investing grace in us.
SPEAKER_00: I was pretty sure I was a bad investment most of the time.
SPEAKER_00: Because I always could have done more.
SPEAKER_00: I could have been more grateful to God.
SPEAKER_00: I could have gone to more Bible studies.
SPEAKER_00: I could have been a missionary to Botswana.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you fill in the thing.
SPEAKER_00: I could have done more and rewarded my investor with outcomes.
SPEAKER_00: Try investment parenting is the most miserable way to live your life.
SPEAKER_00: I will tell you, horseback riding lessons are darn expensive.
SPEAKER_00: And so are skating lessons, and so are toys that you know your child is going to break within five minutes of getting them, and they ask for them anyway, and you think that is a bad investment.
SPEAKER_00: And when we operate that way with human beings and relationships, I want to suggest to you what we do is not give anything at all.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, what we offer to somebody is an obligation.
SPEAKER_00: Here is a present that you are now obligated to me to do what I think you should do with.
SPEAKER_00: It is, again, about the most miserable way to live because very few people are happy to wear that yoke of my expectations.
SPEAKER_00: Unless we've been completely socialized to do it.
SPEAKER_00: So I would tell you: if you were like me, when someone gives you a gift, the sooner you can write the thank you note, the better.
SPEAKER_00: And if you don't write a thank you note, you have failed.
SPEAKER_00: And you should feel guilty and miserable.
SPEAKER_00: And then you will write a thank you note.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I am still a big believer in handwritten notes.
SPEAKER_00: I am, I'm a big believer in them.
SPEAKER_00: I just want to say there are times, and maybe it's just me, where I take this a little bit too much in the area of investment, outcomes, and strengths.
SPEAKER_00: And what Jesus says to this host is invite people who could never, ever pay you back.
SPEAKER_00: And then you'll get to enjoy giving them something instead of being disappointed when they don't use what you gave the way you wanted.
SPEAKER_00: There are times in our life where investments are appropriate.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, my 401k had better be making some investments and not just giving money away.
SPEAKER_00: I think what Jesus is inviting us to consider, though, is that not all infrastructure works that way.
SPEAKER_00: There is something called human infrastructure.
SPEAKER_00: There are relationships.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, I kind of remember seven years ago the US president saying, look, we like to sometimes think that we're islands unto ourselves, and when we succeed, we did it.
SPEAKER_00: But consider infrastructure we use, frankly, not only to do our job, but to have our relationships.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't build NASA Road one.
SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad someone did, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it was a boondoggle, but I'm grateful for that boondoggle every day.
SPEAKER_00: I really am.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't build it, and I expect it to be there for me to go visit people at the medical center, or so I can go to the Costco quickly and not have to deal with the Webster police, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that was sort of a gift.
SPEAKER_00: Infrastructure really is a community gift.
SPEAKER_00: And now this, I know it's an investment too, it has outcomes, but really, roads and bridges and things like that in some ways are gifts.
SPEAKER_00: They're not things that we do ourselves, and they're things that we rely on.
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, I mean, Jesus just as well could have said, look, when you give backpacks, give them the kids at McWurder, because they don't even know who gave them.
SPEAKER_00: You can't expect every kid at McWurder to be grateful to you.
SPEAKER_00: No, you give them because I hope it's great to give somebody a gift.
SPEAKER_00: When I was a teenager, we went around talking about grace, and I think I misunderstood it most of my life.
SPEAKER_00: So I would go to people in laundry mats and try to get them to believe in the same God that was making my life miserable so that they could go to heaven when they died.
SPEAKER_00: And what we would say to people is listen, God uh wants to give you salvation, it's like a wrapped-up gift.
SPEAKER_00: All you have to do is open it.
SPEAKER_00: And that's completely wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Gifts don't work that way.
SPEAKER_00: When someone gives you a gift, you don't have to do anything.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to keep it wrapped up the rest of your life, it's yours.
SPEAKER_00: Do whatever you want.
SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, you'll choose to unwrap it and enjoy it, but it's it's yours.
SPEAKER_00: I grew up with the God of investments.
SPEAKER_00: And what Jesus is asking us, I think, to consider is that instead we have a God who gives.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to tell you, there's a way we can hear Jeremiah today.
SPEAKER_00: The God who gives offers us things like abundance and life.
SPEAKER_00: We can take that and crack the cistern that holds all of that living water and turn it into a whole bunch of obligations, or we can keep it intact and worship a God who gives.
SPEAKER_00: We hear today in Hebrews, sometimes we think people made their own beds or let them lie in it, and we forget.
SPEAKER_00: We forget that there's room for gifts.
SPEAKER_00: So listen to the people that got named today.
SPEAKER_00: There's people in prison, there's people being tortured, there's people who are married.
SPEAKER_00: They all made their choices.
SPEAKER_00: They made them to let them deal with it.
SPEAKER_00: Gotta remember those people.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the author of Hebrew says.
SPEAKER_00: Remember those people.
SPEAKER_00: Remember them honestly and think about what it is we can give to them.
SPEAKER_00: I think part of the deal is that when we go to a banquet, like a birthday party, and let me tell you, uh, as a parent, I am really good at the quid pro quo birthday party.
SPEAKER_00: If you're unfamiliar with this, let me explain it to you.
SPEAKER_00: Someone in your child's class is having a birthday party and they have invited your child.
SPEAKER_00: You attend.
SPEAKER_00: Now it is your child's birthday.
SPEAKER_00: You must invite that person to the party.
SPEAKER_00: Even if your child says, I don't want them to come.
SPEAKER_00: Well, they invited you.
SPEAKER_00: Now, listen, I'm not saying we shouldn't be quick quo people at some time.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just telling you, it has nothing to do with giving whatsoever.
SPEAKER_00: I kind of wish the authors of the lectionary had put this for next week or two weeks when we actually start talking about stewardship.
SPEAKER_00: But this just isn't about money.
SPEAKER_00: I think this is a whole orientation, frankly, we're being invited between ourselves and God, between ourselves and one another.
SPEAKER_00: And whether or not, frankly, we've taken something that could be about grace and about giving and turned it into mutual obligation and honestly just another yoke on our backs.
SPEAKER_00: I might just be talking about myself.
SPEAKER_00: I might.
SPEAKER_00: That's okay.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for putting up with me.
SPEAKER_00: But I do want to suggest that tomorrow is this interesting day, that we kind of had lost the whole uh tradition of Is Labor Day, and maybe a way we could spend it is just thinking really hard about what Desmond Tutu offered.
SPEAKER_00: This I think is the epitome of grace.
SPEAKER_00: God's standards are really low.
SPEAKER_00: Really low.
SPEAKER_00: There is nothing we can do to make God love us any less.
SPEAKER_00: There is nothing we can do to make God love us anymore.
SPEAKER_00: And if we could get just an iota of our being around that a little bit more, I think I think we'd be invited into what it means to give instead of what it means to earn and invest and obligate.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason that matters, don't you see, is not because we have to earn God's gifts, it's so that we can actually enjoy them.
SPEAKER_00: So that we can receive that kind of love and grace that God gives to us.
SPEAKER_00: And then we can do what I have found to be the most enjoyable part of human life.
SPEAKER_00: And I mean it, the most enjoyable part of life.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't happen every day.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it only happens to me every once or twice a year.
SPEAKER_00: I don't mean give an obligation or an investment.
SPEAKER_00: I mean give a gift cheerfully.