Where Is Your Comfort Zone?

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.