Humility at the Table; Sermon from September 1, 2013

You can listen to it here;  Sermon ("Buen Provecho - For Good Benefit")

Micah 6:6-12
“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,

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.

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.