There is a popular term that I would like us to consider: “comfort zone.” A person’s comfort zone refers to any place where the person feels comfortable, safe, free from threat or even challenge. Life there is marked by ease and familiarity.
It’s natural to like one’s comfort zone, but most of us would admit that we should not remain there indefinitely. People do not become better or more mature if they stay in their comfort zone. That just doesn’t happen.
“Comfort zone” seems to be a modern term for what concerns Jesus in today’s Gospel. The passage divides easily into two parts.
In the first part, Jesus cautions against sitting in the place of honor at a wedding banquet and advises taking the lowest place instead.
In the second part, he urges us to invite the crippled, lame, and blind when we give a luncheon or dinner, rather than friends, relatives, and rich people.
There’s advice here for us when we are the guest, as well as when we host an event.
Jesus is not simply offering suggestions about etiquette. What he advocates is not for social occasions only, but is meant to shape our entire lives. Choosing the seat of honor for ourselves sounds wanting to stay in our comfort zone. The best seat is where we want to be because we think we deserve it, will be comfortable, and recognized. Jesus cautions us against moving into our comfort zone. He also advises against staying in that comfort zone once we are there. Rather than limiting our guest list to people who are clones of ourselves, people with whom we’re comfortable, who don’t threaten or even challenge us, we need invite those who are different, people who make us uncomfortable, but whose difference may bring with it a blessing.
In other words, don’t move into your comfort zone, or stay there, so that you can experience those parts of life that make you expand your world.
Jesus not only tells us this, he demonstrates it. His entire life, his public ministry, the passion and resurrection, is full of one episode after another of not remaining in a comfort zone, or trying to enter one. Repeatedly he takes the low seat and invites unlikely types to be his guests.
Finally, he takes the worst seat of all—on the cross—and those who come to his banquet make it through the door because they claim no merit of their own. He leaves the comfort zone of earthly life and a narrow grave to experience ever-expanding resurrection. Jesus leaves comfort zones behind forever because he is now present.
Religion comes in two kinds.
1. One kind encourages us to stay inside our comfort zone, a well-defined, nice, safe place, where everything is predictable, nothing threatens, no one thinks. This comfort zone is not a passionate place. It draws people in, satisfies them on some level, but never leads them to change and never sends them forth.
Religion of this sort resembles taking the seat of honor at a feast. At last you are where you deserve to be, you are in with the ‘in crowd’. Those who are different, those who are simply themselves, need not apply.
2. The other kind of religion may find itself in the comfort zone, but always steps outside. The safe place, the preferred seating, the predictable crowd is not enough. God keeps appearing in the low places, among the unlikely.
The ways we move out of this comfort zone have different names:
• deeper spirituality,
• costly service,
• thinking about our faith,
• helping others on their journey,
• saying “no” to the ways of the world and “yes” to the ways of God.
All of these are ways we end up quite outside our comfort zone, though this new place could become a comfort zone as well if we don’t keep reaching out.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus asks us that we not keep ourselves, our religion, trapped in some comfort zone. Refusing to linger in any comfort zone, no matter how well comfortable, but looking for the low seat and making room for the unseemly guest, moving always past safety to encounter unexpected challenge—this is what it means to follow Jesus. This is what it means to live the life of faith.
But does your comfort zone include humility?
What is ‘humility’?
According to the dictionary, ‘humility’ is ‘a modest or low view of one's own importance; humbleness’.
The opposite of humility is ‘pride’: ’ a feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one's own achievements’. Let’s talk about the types of pride:
• There is a childish kind of pride where you brag about your accomplishments while everybody else tries to be polite enough not to roll their eyes while you are talking.
• And then there is also the grown-up version of that childish pride, the pride of the self-made man. A multi-millionaire who explains that he has gotten where he is all by himself. He has failed to notice all the gifts he has been given that have helped him get where he is. He thinks he alone is responsible for the good he has.
• A more complicated kind of pride can be found in a person who knows that all his good comes from the grace of God. But he is sure that God has given such grace to him and not to his neighbors, because God knew that he, unlike his neighbors, would make good use of God’s gifts. This is the pride of a self-righteously moralistic person who believes himself superior to other.
• Finally, the worst and most sophisticated kind of pride is found in the Pharisee who thanked God that he was not like other men, especially not like that sinner, the publican, praying next to him in the Temple. The Pharisee knew that every good in him was a gift from God. But he was glad that he had God’s gifts and that the publican didn’t. The Pharisee liked looking down on the publican.
Here is what humility is; it is recognizing that every good in your life is a gift from God and is meant to be given back by being shared with others.
So, you can’t get humility by racing for the least honorable seat. If the least honorable seat is the best place to be seated, then true humility requires your sharing it with others.
Our scripture says:
“when you have a reception, invite beggars and the crippled, the lame and the blind.” (Luke 14:13)
Does our ministry bear any resemblance to the God we worship?
Do we provide shelter to homeless children?
Do we stand up for the lonely, the elderly?
Do we lead prisoners to prosperity?
Do we make our church a home for the poor?
Do we invite the helpless to our party?
Today’s Gospel challenges us to a different lifestyle, one based on forgiveness, love and faith, humble living, the following of Jesus, peacemaking and suffering persecution, and service to others.
We know that we have responded to this challenge when we begin to resemble the God we worship, the
“God who has made a home for the poor.”
It is hard to measure up; we admit this.
Henri Nouwen occasionally expressed these feelings:
There is a nagging sense that there are unfinished tasks, unfulfilled promises, unrealized proposals. There is always something else that we should have remembered, done or said. There are always people we did not speak to, write to, or visit. Thus, although we are very busy, we also have a lingering feeling of never really fulfilling our obligations. A gnawing sense of being unfulfilled underlies our filled lives.
When we are in touch with ourselves, we can relate to these words, these expressions of inadequacy. At the end of the day, we cannot measure up and can not help but disappoint others and ourselves. Generally, the fault is not that we are not sincere or that we do not put out the effort. The fault is that we are human. We have limited resources, we get tired, we experience feelings we cannot control, have only 24 hours in our day, have too many demands on us, have wounds and weaknesses that shackle us, and thus we know exactly what St. Paul meant when he said:
woe, to me, wretch that I am, the good I want to do, I cannot do; and the evil I want to avoid, I end up doing! (Romans 7:24)
That may sound negative, neurotic, and stoic, and it can be those things, but it can generate hope and renewed energy in our lives. Saint Paul points out that none of us are perfect. Nobody does anything perfectly and accepting this, can bring us to a healthy humility and perhaps even to a healthy humor about it.
We need to look at ourselves and determine whether we are humble in our following of Jesus.
Do we stay in the honored seat, refusing to see the worthiness of others?
Do we exhibit the worse type of pride that we are better than others and deserve the best of life?
Do we forego inviting those ‘less desirable’ people into our circle – the homeless, the sick, the children, the prisoners?
I ask you now:
Where is your comfort zone?
Do you act in a humble, loving and forgiving way?
Are you permanently in that comfort zone or willing to move out of it to serve Jesus?
Amen.
Delivered at Saint John’s Episcopal Church, Columbus, OH; 28 August 2022
