“Come Up Higher” (Luke 14:7-14), February 22, 2009

When we meet Jesus, do we really think he will be saying, “Way to go, you showed those old people something by insisting on ubiquitous visuals and ear-splitting volume to reach today’s generation”?  Or will he say, “I’m so proud of you - you put those young people in their place and kept the forms of worship I value the most – quiet, dignity, liturgy”?

Travel week

It has been a different week for Linda and me – completely out of our normal routine.  Monday was a travel day, with a morning drive to Raleigh and an afternoon flight to Phoenix, Arizona.  From Tuesday morning through Thursday midday, we attended various workshops and lectures at a conference sponsored by “Church Solutions” in downtown Phoenix.  Thursday afternoon we drove up to the Grand Canyon, where we spent one night and then a night in the red hills of Sedona.  Yesterday was another travel day, starting with an early morning drive to the Phoenix airport, the flight back to Raleigh, and a drive back over on I-40.

One problem with being out of my routine all week is that when we arrive back home in time for church on Sunday, there’s still a sermon to be preached.  A number of times in my career, I have returned home from a vacation or professional trip on Saturday, and asked Pastor Bill or someone else to preach.  Why didn’t we do that this time?

Our first such trip at Corinth was about fifteen years, not long after we came.  That trip was also to Phoenix for a conference on church growth and health.  What I remember about that trip, though, was actually frustration because someone else was preaching.  When we go to these events, our bodies may be far away, but our minds are right here with you.  We can’t listen to a speaker or have a conversation without thinking about how it relates to Corinth.  We return full of energy and ideas.  We want to share them.

Still there is the matter of preparation.  Most of today’s sermon was written on the plane.  It wasn’t difficult to connect this morning’s Scripture to our experiences this past week.

Jesus’ world was quite different from ours.  The dinner parties Jesus attends – and there are many recorded in the gospels – bear little similarity to those we have in our culture.  I don’t go to dinner parties, for example, where seating is assigned based on rank.  The closest parallel might be a wedding reception dinner, where there are assigned tables for close family members and attendants.  Guests may even be grouped at certain tables to make the table conversation more comfortable, but it all has little to do with who is most or least important.

Something else captures my attention about the dinner parties Jesus attends.  In one way or another, Jesus usually disrupts the event.  He is always a guest, never the host.  I can only recall one dinner in the Gospels where Jesus hosted the gathering – and that was the Last Supper.  At all these other dinners recorded by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, he is a guest.

He never seems to be the prototypical southern gracious dinner guest.  He doesn’t bring a hostess gift.  He is inevitably the center of attention.  And he is often critical of the host or other guests, as he is in the passage before us.

We learn at the beginning of this chapter that Jesus is being watched by others (v. 1).  In turn, he himself observes what others do (v. 7).  That was typical in his day.  People noticed where dinner parties were held, who was invited, whether people washed their hands according to tradition, and who sat where (in addition to this text, see Luke 5:29-30; 7:44-46; 11:38).  And when they noticed, they commented.  We would be far more reserved – I hope!

In our time and place, I’m not sure Jesus would have been invited to very many dinner parties, once word got around about what happened when he came.  We are not particularly comfortable with people disrupting social expectations.

Jesus did disrupt, but with a purpose.  His purpose in this passage is to teach two important principles – humility and hospitality.

Humility (vv. 7-11)

When Jesus makes his point about humility, he does so with a reference to Proverbs 25:6-7, “Do not exalt yourself in the king’s presence, and do not claim a place among great men; it is better for him to say to you, ‘Come up here,’ than for him to humiliate you before a nobleman.”

Jesus observed that the Pharisees jockeyed for positions of prominence at the dinner party.  The event was hosted by “a prominent Pharisee” (v. 1), and included a number of other Pharisees and religious lawyers (v. 3).  One can picture these individuals trying to get there first and get the best seats.

I can relate.  Not so much to dinner parties, but to airline seats.  I like an aisle seat; Linda likes the window.  If you have flown Southwest, you know you are not guaranteed a particular seat.  You are assigned an order in which to board the plane.  I realized on the flight out how important this is.

You can print your Southwest boarding pass on line 24 hours in advance of the flight.  But no more than 24 hours.  So even though Linda and I were at the Grand Canyon Friday morning, I had scouted out where I could print my boarding pass – at the community library.  I made sure I was there at exactly 11:20 on Friday, sitting there at the computer.  In fact, I clicked one minute too early and was rejected.  The screen in front of me still said 11:20 when I got our numbers – Group A, #s 36 and 37 – meaning that in less than one minute, 35 people were in front of me!

There’s something about being in a church conference that conveys a certain “pecking order” as well.  Workshop leaders and even other attendees have a way of dropping numbers into the conversation.  It’s not at all unusual at these events to listen to or rub shoulders with people who lead congregations of two, three, five, or even ten thousand people.  It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking my importance or relevance is related to the number of people who listen to me speak.  What would Jesus say?

But the place that prompted more thinking for me about humility than anywhere else this week was the Grand Canyon.  It was our third trip – the first one being on that trip to Phoenix fifteen years ago.  Linda was hooked on the canyon the first time she saw it, and I love watching her there almost as much as I love seeing the canyon.  Time stands still for her as she looks out into its vastness.

When you stand on the south rim of the canyon, you’re looking down 5000 feet at the Colorado River, and across eight miles at the north rim.  More significantly, you’re looking at what geologists say are hundreds of millions of years of history.  More on that in a moment.  Anyone who feels important a sense of self-importance and self-reliance on the rim of the Grand Canyon is sick.

Yet there are those who do.  I picked up a book in one of the gift shops titled, Over the Edge: Death in the Canyon, and started reading it before bedtime Friday night.  I rather quickly realized it wasn’t good bedtime reading!  It is a book about those who have died at the Grand Canyon, including those who accidentally fell over the edge.

One story in the book is about Greg Gingrich, a practical joker who was at the canyon November 28, 1992 with his family and friends.  Most of the group headed for the car except for Greg and his daughter.  He was standing on the low rock wall that separates the path from the steep rock and dramatically called to his daughter, “Help, I’m falling….”  When he disappeared over the edge, his daughter thought he was joking and would quickly reappear.  He never did.  There was, indeed, a ledge just below the wall and Greg thought he would land on it – but he missed and fell 400 feet to his death.

It is surprising to imagine that there are those for whom that setting evokes arrogance instead of humility – those who walk along the ledges or hop over the rails or step back to capture a picture or be captured in one – and pay for their presumption with their lives.

Jesus said, “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”  One workshop speaker was convinced that our time is a hinge of history – not unlike the Protestant Reformation.  That seems to me a little generational self-exaltation.  We also had a conversation with a cutting edge thinker and author about church growth – but instead of a sense of self-importance, he conveyed humility and grace.

Hospitality (vv. 12-14)

Jesus had addressed the guests in the first part of this text.  In the second, he addresses the host.  Once again, he’s not a very gracious dinner guest – implying criticism of the one who had invited him.

But his criticism offers us food for thought.  He says that when we invite others to a meal, we should not choose those who will want to or be able to return the favor – friends, close relatives, rich neighbors.  Instead, we should choose those who cannot repay us – the poor and the disabled.

He quickly turns this point about table manners into an eschatological teaching.  “Eschatological” means the end of times, and it’s how we refer to the second coming of Christ, to the final judgment, and to heaven and hell.  He says that we should make these decisions about hospitality based on how they will play out in the end.

We need to ask ourselves this question a lot:  What will matter most when I see Jesus face to face?  Will some of the concerns and priorities I had make little difference at all?  What will he care about?

Since the conference Linda and I attended had a lot to do with church growth and evangelism (although there were many other subjects covered), this week afforded us many opportunities to think about how what we’re doing affects our growth – or lack thereof.  But it seems like almost stating the obvious to note that Jesus won’t be lining all of us pastors and church leaders up by rank according to how many people were in our churches.  “OK, if you preached to 10,000 or more, come up higher in line.  Those of you under a hundred, step to the back.”  I don’t think so, do you?

What may well matter is this point about hospitality.  Whom did we include and whom did we exclude?  One of the workshops we attended – in fact, it was the last one I attended – framed this through the lens of generations.

The speaker said there are five generations alive today – more than at any other time in history.  Whether the last statement is true and verifiable, I can’t say.  It may be a little generationally egotistical.  But here are the generations she mentioned –

Perhaps the greatest contrast is between a generation for whom John Kennedy’s words struck a chord: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” and a generation that has grown up from childhood believing they can accomplish anything and the world revolves around their pursuit of happiness – because no one has ever said to them, “You can’t.”

Here is the specific point that flows from Jesus’ text.  Who among these generations do you feel comfortable welcoming to church – not only to worship, but to serve, to make decisions, to teach and learn from?  Who puts you at ease?  Whom would you rather avoid?

The issues are far broader than whether you like organs or guitars in church.  We think differently.  The question is this:  Am I willing to welcome, love, and value the person who just thinks differently than I do?

I would give the same message to the young about the old as I give the old about the young.  When I see or hear about these churches that cater only to one generation, I think “How sad!”  When we meet Jesus, do we really think he will be saying, “Way to go, you showed those old people something by insisting on ubiquitous visuals and ear-splitting volume to reach today’s generation?”  Or will he say, “I’m so proud of you.  You made sure you put those young people in their place and kept the forms of worship I value the most – quiet, dignity, liturgy.”

I can’t picture either of those being his message at “the resurrection of the righteous.”  Instead, I believe he will ask, “Did you welcome those who had a different way of thinking and worshiping and loving and growing than you?  Did you embrace them like I do?”

Higher

It’s hard to read this text without thinking of the host’s words in verse 10 of Jesus’ parable. The NIV translates them, “Friend, move up to a better place.”  I borrowed my sermon title from a translation of this same text that read, “Come up higher.”

My mind goes back to the rim of the canyon they call “great.” I overheard one woman say to her husband, “You know, we visited the Royal Gorge.  But compared to this, the Royal Gorge is like one member of a marching band.”  The Grand Canyon is indescribably majestic.  It leaves one incomparably breathless.

Linda and I heard a 15-minute program on how the canyon was formed.  The speaker was pointing at a table top model of the Grand Canyon as she described the four steps to formation of the canyon.

The first is the “deposit” – hundreds of millions of years of sediment layers deposited, representing the history of the earth.  But those layers are everywhere on earth – they just aren’t visible like at the canyon.  How long that took I refuse to “take sides” on – with either the secular scientists or the creationists.  I wasn’t there, and I don’t know how long it took.  Nor does it matter.

The second step she called “uplifting.”  As the earth’s continents divided, moved, and collided across millions of years, the impact created mountains and plains.  One of those large, level plains was formed in what we now call the Arizona desert.  It’s amazing that the Sedona hills, the petrified forest, the painted desert, and the Grand Canyon are all within a day’s drive of each other.  One land mass pushed up underneath another to force peaks and valleys.  Here’s where I am a creationist, I suppose.  I have a hard time with the whole continents colliding thing – at least not without some help!  I see the hand of God pushing those land masses together as he created the mountains.

In the third stage of development, the Colorado River cut through the layers of sediment.  The Colorado drains what is now the western half of the United States.  Unlike the Mississippi, which falls only 1,000 feet as it drains the Midwest, the Colorado water plummets 5,000 feet as it drains the western states, creating a force for erosion that carved through the rock sediment layers, cutting a mile deep.

The fourth stage is “erosion,” a process that continues today with wind, water, and earthquakes continuing to change the topography and enlarging the canyon.  The result is what leaves one breathless on the edge.

But you also feel this sense of being “up high.”  It’s not that you are so high, I suppose – the land all around you is similarly about a mile in altitude for hundreds of square miles.  But you feel higher because you are so much higher than the canyon floor.

We live in a world that is often “low.”  That’s certainly true right now in an economic sense, but I mean in another sense.  We live in a world that, because of the fall complicated by our own culture of individualism, is so sure we are “right” and in tune with God that we often exclude those who are different.  We live in a world of arrogance and exclusion.

Jesus calls us to “come up higher,” to think differently about ourselves and others.  The higher place is one of humility, a place that extends the open arms of hospitality to whoever wants to seek and find the Lord among us.  Amen.

 (© 2009 by Robert M. Thompson.  Unless otherwise indicated, Scriptures quoted are from The Holy Bible,
New International Version, Copyright 1978 by New York International Bible Society.)