Luke 14:7-15

Relative Honour or Radical Equality?

Luke 14:7-15  -  Humility and Hospitality

Though his listeners would hardly have been in learning mood, Jesus continued to challenge them.

Luke referred to Jesus’ teaching as a parable. Certainly it was hardly a moral teaching to be taken at face value. Such pseudo-humility designed to acquire greater honour would have been manipulative, even deceptive.

Jesus was inviting his listeners to redefine their sense of the place of honour. In the culture, honour was little more than illusion, the external acclaim of others, gained through smartness rather than virtue.

Jesus called always to genuine interiority. True honour flowed from the truth of self, from authentic integrity.

The literary use of the passive voice was understood as referring to the direct action of God. 

Jesus’ comment echoed that made by Mary in her inspired hymn of praise to God who pulled down the mighty from their thrones and exalted the lowly.

Talk of repayment was readily understood in the culture. Effectively, honour was traded among peers. Any generous action made to a peer called for equally generous response. Honour was maintained, and no one rose or fell in the estimation of the collective.

Again the use of the passive voice inferred that God would repay the generous at the resurrection of the righteous. Resurrection of the just was a key dogma in Pharisee circles. They would know well what Jesus referred to.

The lesson was directed originally to the Pharisees. Luke recounted the stories for the sake of his own community. He was reflecting on attitudes proper to disciples of Jesus. For him, they were the ones being taught. 

The Unasked (and Unanswered) Questions

Luke had clearly indicated that the two stories were parables. There was something not quite right about them. They were not to be taken at face value, but were meant to stir questions.

What might those “hanging questions” have been?

1. Was Jesus counselling disciples to act manipulatively? Was he suggesting that they at least might act out of delayed self-interest?
2. How can one honestly take the lower place?  What is humility?
3. Where does genuine honour reside, if not as described in the story? In what ways might God repay the generous?
4. Who are the “they” and the “you”? And if you regard yourselves as superior to “they”, how can any generous outreach be other than patronising?

1. To deliberately choose a lower place in order to secure a higher one is to place honour above integrity. Despite the general collective mentality of his peers (where virtue was more a factor of being seen than of simply being) in Jesus’ mind the estimation of others was insignificant in relation to personal integrity.

Whereas delayed self-interest might indicate a higher level of moral development than immediate self-interest, to act generously for the sake of an even greater reward, from God or from anyone else, still manifested in Jesus’ mind a childish and self-centred mindset. 

Jesus’ point in telling the stories was to stimulate people’s own questioning. The significant issue for Jesus was that people act conscientiously from an appreciation of true value. Issues of relative honour or personal gain were irrelevant.
 
2. People can only honestly occupy the lower place when they have a sense of their basic solidarity with others and share the equal human dignity of everyone. In such a vision there is really no intrinsically lower or higher places. They exist only in childish estimation.

True humility is not acquired by humiliations, voluntary or imposed. Voluntary humility is essentially something self-made, a construct of the Ego. Its motivation is almost inevitably, and paradoxically, pride. With regard to humiliations imposed on others, no one can form another person’s virtues. Imposed humiliations are more likely either to destroy a genuine sense of self, serving to render a person a non-person, or to generate a sullen resentment. 

Genuine humility is not so much acquired as received as a gift. It is a consequence of a growing insight into truth; and such enlightenment is always God’s gift. It involves a clear knowledge of one’s own and everyone else’s propensity to sin, balanced by an equally clear knowledge of God’s unconditional acceptance of and love for everyone. Such genuine insight, and practical personal adjustment to it, need a lifetime of experience, reflection and dying to self-interest if they are to take root and flourish.
 
3. Honour is basically irrelevant. The esteem in which others hold a person can be due to that person’s genuine virtue and dignity; but it can also be severely affected by the clouded and incomplete vision of others and their system of values.

God’s creative love is the source of all true human dignity, and so of honour. God’s rewards do not come as gifts from outside, but are experienced in the actual process of acting with integrity. Such action is accompanied by an inner sense of harmony and peace at the deepest levels of one’s being, whatever be experienced closer to the surface of awareness. It is experienced in this phase of life. It will be appreciated even more when people experience the fullness of life (or, as Jesus put it, “at the resurrection of the righteous”.)
 
4. To divide people into “you” and “they”, or “you” and “us”, or “them” and “us” is always dangerous. It is more so within the Christian community, especially a Eucharistic community, where all are brothers and sisters. When there is a true sense of human solidarity, based on a clear vision of everyone’s equal dignity, distinctions between classes are insignificant. Yet, even within the one Christian community, there are some who are financially wealthier than others, some who have greater human gifts, some who have broader experience, some who have grown closer to God. What matters is that people accept their own dignity, be clearly aware of their gifts and weaknesses, and share what they have for the good of all.

Further questions suggest themselves. In the Christian community, particularly when gathered for the Eucharistic dinner, who do the inviting? Do some belong more than others? Who might come under the heading of “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind”?

Jesus’ fellow-guest at the dinner was right. Yet Luke was not particularly interested how the Pharisees of Jesus’ time behaved. He was concerned with the pharisaical attitudes latent in his own community.

The sharing of a meal in the kingdom of God was already beginning to be lived by the members of Luke’s community. In Jesus’ mind the reality of Christian community was of life in the kingdom; the reality of Eucharist was bread shared now in the kingdom of God.

Next >> Luke 14:16-24