You can listen to it here; Sermon ("Buen Provecho - For Good Benefit")
“With what shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
7Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
8 He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
9 The
voice of the Lord cries
to the city
(it is sound wisdom to fear your name):
Hear, O tribe and assembly of the city!
10 Can I forget the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked,
and the scant measure that is accursed?
11 Can I tolerate wicked scales
and a bag of dishonest weights?
12 Your wealthy are full of violence;
your inhabitants speak lies,
(it is sound wisdom to fear your name):
Hear, O tribe and assembly of the city!
10 Can I forget the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked,
and the scant measure that is accursed?
11 Can I tolerate wicked scales
and a bag of dishonest weights?
12 Your wealthy are full of violence;
your inhabitants speak lies,
with tongues of deceit in
their mouths.
Luke 14:1, 7-14
1 On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely.
1 On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely.
7 When he noticed how the guests chose the
places of honor, he told them a parable. 8 "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; 9 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. 10 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. 11 For all who exalt themselves will be
humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted." 12 He said also to the one who had invited
him, "When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or
your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you
in return, and you would be repaid. 13 But when you give a banquet, invite the
poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. 14 And you will be blessed, because they
cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the
righteous."
I just returned from Guatemala
where I spent 6 weeks studying Spanish in Xela, a mountainous town in the Mayan
Qui’che region of Guatemala. Xela is actually
the Qui’che word for Quetzaltenango, which is what it says on the map if you
wanted to look up where I studied.
Guatemala is home to 21 different Mayan groups, who, even today, make up
51% of the population. The women still wear traditional dress, although
men only don traditional clothing in certain villages.
They are a hard-working people. Women carry their goods to market on their heads, which could be anything from laundry to chickens to roses. Men carry the heavier goods on their back with a strong strap anchored to their forehead.
In addition to my 5 hours of classes per day, my fee of $185
per week included boarding and meals with a Guatemalan family. Maria Louisa, [CLICK] the 78-year-old mother
of the house, prepared meals for her extended family and myself every day. Dinners were usually black beans, tortillas,
rice, and an egg. Breakfasts were black
beans, tortillas, and an egg. Lunches
might include stew, or might be black beans, tortillas, rice, and an egg. This is the typical meal in Guatemala –
because it is the cheapest food that will leave one feeling full. In fact, the week before I left I made dinner
for my Guatemalan family, a stew full of fresh vegetables. They were very gracious in complimenting the
meal, but were still going for the beans and tortillas after. It’s simply the most affordable food to fill
your belly on a budget. Guatemala is the
third poorest country with the highest rate of malnutrition in Latin
America.
After our meal we would share coffee. Guatemala produces some
of the best coffee in the world! But in
our house we drank instant, because like the produce, the best coffee in
Guatemala is exported, and too expensive for the average Guatemalan family. At the end of a meal in Maria Louisa’s home,
I would say ‘muchas gracias’ for the meal, and they would respond, “buen
provecho”. Buen provecho is usually
translated by foreigners as ‘bon apetit’, but that’s not correct. Buen provecho
actually means, ‘for good benefit’, as in, "May this food be of good
benefit to you”.
In all my travels, the most memorable moments always happen
when people eat together. Eating
together is an expression of comradery, generosity, and humility. People offer the gift of food, and you offer
respect by receiving their gift of food and their traditions. Sometimes you
have to watch to see how your food is to be eaten. Mealtime is when we all slow down enough to
be generous with each other and listen to each other. Sitting at a table
together humbles us and establishes us as equals. Jesus knew this.
Our scripture today from the
Gospel of Luke has Jesus participating in yet another meal. Pastors like to joke about how there’s hardly
a verse in Luke that doesn’t depict Jesus either going to, coming from, or
sharing a meal. And as we know, he eats with all
kinds of people – disciples, tax collectors, prostitues, Pharisees, and
foreigners. Earlier in Luke, the
Pharisees complain about his habit of breaking bread with the sinful. “Why do you eat with tax collectors and
sinners?” they ask. He replies, “It is
not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but
sinners to repentance”.
By our passage in Luke 14, Jesus has been invited to yet another
dinner party but begins to take issue with the way people claim seats of honor
in the banquet. Today’s reading is about
pride and humility. Jesus lived in a culture
of honor and shame. It was a
patron-client world; one did not survive by their own merit, as they do in our
culture, but by being related to networks, family, friends, and brokers of
other patrons. Being publicly embarrassed, such as being asked by a host to
give up your seat for someone more important, could impact your immediate economic
livelihood, like the ability to barter with your neighbor for basic goods, or
to arrange a marriage in your family. If
you had the ability to throw a banquet, you were of the wealthy class, and you
likely only invited those who would someday invite you in return. Jesus contradicts this status-oriented
culture immediately, calling on followers to serve the sick, lame, crippled,
and people who could in no way return the invitation, and therefore put their
status at risk.
This type of pride and humility hardly affects us in our
modern world, except perhaps when you travel. As an American, I have status
that is welcomed all over the world.
There is a certain amount of pride that comes when you travel from being
an American – our democracy, our prosperity, our free media, our freedom to
determine our own merit. But traveling
sometimes teaches you a different aspect of being American – the unintended
consequences of American foreign policy.
You see I have a hard time talking about the poverty of
Guatemala without talking about the cause.
And while chronic education deficiency, high birth rates to young
mothers, and government corruption continue to plague Guatemala’s prospects,
the country is still reeling from a 36-year civil war that began in 1960 and
only ended in 1996. And it’s difficult
to discuss that war without pointing to America’s overzealous communist-era
foreign interventions.
Because in 1944, a government came to power in Guatemala
that, for the first time in their history, bestowed equal rights to the native
Mayan population. The Indians received
social security, education, and labor rights for the first time since the
Spanish conquest. Worker unions began to
unite the Mayan Indian population with the rest of the peasant laborers in Guatemala,
and their political power grew. Ten years later that same government started
land reforms, attempting to force a government buy-back of land from the wealthy
2% who owned 72% of Guatemalan land. However
the largest landowner in Guatemala was by far the American-owned United Fruit
Company. As you might expect, the United
Fruit Company complained to the US government, who subsequently orchestrated a
military coup under a ‘communist threat’ that led to civil war.
Over decades, a war that began with ideology coupled with
systemic prejudice against the Mayan people and became something that’s been
classified as genocide against the Mayans.
Through it all, according to a United Nations report from 1999, the US
continued military support for the Guatemalan government while aware of the
genocide because it was strategically to our advantage.
I didn’t know this when I first arrived in Guatemala. I learned about it through movies and
lectures provided by my Spanish school as part of our curriculum. This is, of
course, the realm of giant political powers clashing around the globe, but it
got me to thinking about when the US comes to the table of nations, claiming
the place of honor and putting our interests first. It becomes a different experience, then, to
sit down at the dinner table in Maria Louisa’s home knowing the legacy of my
country is connected to why my Spanish language program is so very affordable. The sharing and caring shown to me was now humbling.
What does it mean for us to be Christians with this varied
legacy? What will it take to let God’s
love shine through us to be a healing force in a world divided by wealthy and prideful
interests? All that is required, says
the Hebrew prophet Micah, is to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with
your God. Walk humbly? Perhaps walking humbly with God, and with
each other, is key to finding a way to transforming that legacy into a way of
saying, “May this be of good benefit to you.”
Humility is what is required when we are faced with truths
that are uncomfortable to hear, but hearing those truths can bring
healing. Humility is required of the
members of FCC who travel with Re-Member to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
in South Dakota. Learning and listening
to the experience of the Native American is a memory that never leaves
you. But through that humility, our
church has found a way to say, “May this be of good benefit to you”, with 18
bunk beds and countless donations.
Humility is required with those we perceive as enemies, in order
to find a way to not be enemies. Earlier
this year I visited Israel and Palestine with a class from my school, and
encountered many organizations focused primarily on helping traumatized
Palestinians and traumatized Israelis listen to each other’s pain as the only
real pathway to peace in that region. That
sentiment is echoed by Rigoberta Menchu, a indigenous rights activist from
Guatemala who lost nearly her entire family during the civil war. Now after a lifetime of violence, she says;
“I think that nonviolence is one way of saying that there are
other ways to solve problems, not only through weapons and war. Nonviolence
also means the recognition that the person on one side of the trench and the
person on the other side of the trench are both human beings, with the same
faculties. At some point they have to begin to understand one another.”
We begin
this understanding by humbly listening to each other.
Humility is sometimes required to sit at a table with people
different from us, taking the risk of being wrong. Eating together is a great way to start the
conversation. As Rigoberta Menchu is
famous for saying, “the world’s not going to change unless we’re willing to
change ourselves.”
There are many signs of light in Guatemala 17 years after the
conflict. Many enterprising social
agencies have been founded to work with local populations. There is no shortage of co-operatives working
towards better trade, employment, education, housing and health for
Guatemalans. In fact, FCC has supported
the work of one of those organizations, Mayaworks, since before the end of the
Guatemalan civil war, with the help of Bob and Terry Davis. I know this because I bought this folder from
them, here, in high school, circa 1994.
Nowadays, because they are a welcoming and very affordable country, Guatemala
receives good-hearted people from all over the world who travel with church
work trips, volunteer organizations, and as students in Spanish classes.
My school offered volunteer opportunities for
students in the medical clinic or family support center, and for reforestation
on the mountainsides. But I think the
most important work of my school was our Stove Project, building concrete and brick stoves for the rural Mayans that still cook over an open fire
in an enclosed space. With the stoves
they build each year, they help decrease the amount of respiratory disease in
the population.
So today, I pray that we may have the strength to live lives
with more humility, more listening, and more understanding, knowing that if we
take the risk to walk humbly, we won’t be walking alone. God will be right
there, walking along side us, finding more ways for us to love kindness, and do
justice. So each day we may be able to
say, in God’s name, “May this be of good benefit to you.” Amen. 
