Jen and I were the first of our group of friends to get
engaged, shortly after we graduated from college. This meant that we were the first to actually
plan a wedding, and had no one else’s experience to use as a guide. Our friends got to watch and learn from our
mistakes, but like Lewis and Clark, we had to blaze our own trail. Or so I thought. What I had not counted on were the parents,
friends, co-workers, and even total strangers who felt completely justified in offering
their advice and opinions, in most cases completely unbidden. It soon felt to me that we were becoming
merely spectators in the planning process.
As a man, I had not really given much thought to the wedding
itself. But I learned very quickly that
this is not true of women, who
usually begin planning their wedding sometime around age 7. What I had thought would be a relatively
small affair soon turned into something resembling the D-day invasion in terms
of planning and logistics. I learned
that there are myriad decisions that need to be made from where you get
married, what the date will be, what dress the bride will wear, who will be in
the wedding party. These made sense to
me and I happily participated in the decisions.
It was the rest of the decisions that started to get to
me. Would we have a band or a DJ at the
reception? What china pattern would we
select? What type of gravy boat did we
want? By the time we came to the heated
discussion about flowers, I was seriously thinking of faking a stomach problem
figuring that 6 hours in the ER had to be better than this conversation. My future wife by the way saw right through
this and made me stay.
But as I was soon to find out, all of these decisions,
large, medium and small, soon paled in insignificance against the biggest decision
of all. I refer of course to the seating
chart at the reception. I had never
stopped to consider this as an issue, but I was to learn that this is the most
important part of the entire event. My
mother, God rest her soul, approached this task as if it were a blood sport;
and I found to my dismay that I no longer needed to fake a stomach problem.
I learned that where people sit entails far more than simply
filling in names on a page. There is
serious calculus that goes into developing the correct alignment of
people. There are a number of factors to
consider. Are they family, friends, or
acquaintances? If they are family, are
they close family? Do we like them or
are we fighting with them at the moment?
Where will they expect to be seated and will they be offended if they
are seated somewhere else? Do we care if
they are offended? Do they get along with the people you plan to put at the
table? You can’t put the non-drinkers
near the bar, but you also can’t put Cousin Billy too close to the bar or he
will never leave. And of course the most
important of all, where did WE get seated at their last family wedding? If we found ourselves at a table with the
priest, the photographer and the DJ, well, retribution time is now at hand! It is enough to boggle the mind.
Today’s lessons of course brought all of this to mind. Proverbs tells us “Do not put yourself
forward in the king's presence or stand in the place of the great; for it is
better to be told, "Come up here," than to be put lower in the
presence of a noble.” In the same vein,
Jesus tells us "When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do
not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you
has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come
and say to you, `Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would
start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at
the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, `Friend,
move up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the
table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who
humble themselves will be exalted."
Those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who
humble themselves will be exalted. That
is the challenge isn’t it? For we all
want to be exalted. We all want to be the
guest of honor. We are all egocentric
enough to want it to be about US. Does
that ring true to anyone else here, or is it just me?
Now before you beat yourself up too badly about this, take
some solace in the fact that you are not alone.
It is hard wired in us to want to be praised; in fact I am sure it is
coded somewhere in our DNA. Even the
disciples were not immune. Luke tells us that right after the Transfiguration,
where Peter and James and John witnessed the glory of the Lord and realized
beyond any doubt that Jesus was in fact the Messiah, they began to argue among
themselves about which of them was the greatest. They now know that they are in the presence
of God himself, and still they think first about their own position in the
world. And when Jesus asks what they
were talking about, they don’t respond because they are ashamed of
themselves. But he of course already
knows and tells them “whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant
of all.” Or put another way, all who
exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be
exalted." Jesus was nothing if not
consistent.
But he is consistent because this message needs to be
repeated. We have a hard time grasping
it. Intellectually we can understand
what Jesus is telling us, but practicing it is another matter entirely. For we all want to be the star of the
show. We want it to be about us. But Jesus is telling us that that is not the
way it will be. When asked to name the
great commandments Jesus tells us to Love God with all your heart and soul and
love your neighbor as yourself. I assure
you, he knew exactly what he was saying when he chose those words. For loving your neighbor is not the hard part. But loving them as much as you love yourself;
well that is MUCH harder to do. We find
it very hard to love others as much as we do ourselves because in our
entrenched narcissism, we want it all to be about us.
But that is not God’s way.
God became one of us, lived and loved and cried as one of us; was
arrested, tortured and killed as one of us.
In His time as one of us, Jesus showed us what it meant to love our
neighbor as ourselves. Jesus washed the feet of the disciples, healed the
lepers, and ate with the prostitutes and tax collectors. He
cared for the poor, the sick, the prisoners, and served them before
himself.
St. Teresa of Avila said, “Christ has no body on earth but
yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours.
Yours are the eyes with which he looks Compassion on the world.” For compassion is the opposite of narcissism. And by humbling himself to take the lowest
place, Jesus taught us that compassion is the ultimate expression of love. That is how we love our neighbor as
ourselves. Jesus did NOT assume the
place of honor at table, even though he alone had the right to it. If Jesus could humble himself and love others
as much as himself, who are we to do less?
