Jesus is encouraging humility in this Sunday’s Gospel. The word humility is derived from humus, meaning of the earth. It describes our way of being grounded, of being in touch with reality. Humility means we know who we are as children of one human family. We know this same truth of others. Humility, therefore, describes a way of relating together in communion.
Jesus is encouraging humility as a personal virtue and, more importantly, as a communal or social one. Humility does indeed include the personal practice of declining seats of honor, as the Gospel shows. It includes personally reaching out to others who are, because of others, not so much humble but rather humiliated. Jesus encourages reaching out to those who are humiliated because they are “poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.” It is unfortunately the case that living in the U.S. means living with many humiliated people. So many that we are not just periodically reaching out to a few isolated cases of a few such individuals. Rather, we live in a culture that has a great and growing multitude of people poor humiliated people. In a nation that calls itself Christian, it can be proposed the U.S. culture, like many other cultures from ancient times onward, does not live Jesus’ witness of humility. It operates instead as a hierarchy. This means the U.S. culture operates as a social system of honor and humiliation. Honor for an esteemed few and humiliation for so many others. Jesus is asking us to transform the relationship model. His simple, practical ideas about humility show us how to change the arranged imbalance hierarchy devises of honor and humiliation. It can be difficult to do though. We personally feel proud of our position in life or we like the recognition it gives us. We also live in a culture that has institutionalized our personal desire for honor – that is what hierarchy is. At its base hierarchy is a select few people claiming the honor of having been ordained by God. Jesus clearly rejects the relationship model in favor of humble communion.
To the degree we hold positions of status we are perpetuating hierarchy’s system of honor and humiliation. Whether we perpetuate the cycle through our parenting, our jobs, our faith community, or by accidents of birth, we’ve got to face our participation in such a culture. Our conversion from this cycle in favor of humble communion is the catalyst for the world’s conversion.
Prayer: Spirit of Humility, I am your servant.
Question: How do I benefit from and maybe even encourage receiving honor, and therefore, who do I put on the edge of humiliation?
September 1, 2013 Gospel Luke 14:1, 7-14 Twenty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time / Labor Day