Readings - Ecclesiasticus 10:12-28 and Luke 14:1, and 7-14
My newspaper last week warned that we should expect higher levels of crime this winter - especially crimes like burglary, car theft and shoplifting - because of the cost of living crisis. I guess they’re right. Some people will be driven to it by desperation; and there’ll be others who’ll see the present situation in terms of opportunity - a licence to steal, you might say.
Probably most of us have at some point been victims of crime. We were burgled in a previous parish - our house was broken into while we were asleep upstairs; and I’ve had things stolen from me in the street, too. And I know that crimes like this have a bigger impact on us than just the loss of money or valuables. It leaves us feeling vulnerable; if we’re burgled our home feels violated, no longer our own. We’re not only victims at the time it happens, we go on being victims for a while afterwards, even if we’ve not been physically harmed - which of course can happen as well.
No-one likes that sort of crime. But we might be a bit more relaxed about other ways of breaking the law, like exceeding the speed limit, or parking on a double yellow; we might even go so far as to excuse parking for free in a place where you’re supposed should have paid, even though I guess technically that really is a crime and not merely a misdemeanour. And what about those little workplace crimes like taking a few pens or paper clips home from the office? After all, there isn’t really a victim, is there, of that sort of crime?
If there is victimless crime, is there also victimless sin? Here are the seven deadly sins, so called: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. The first six of those do obvious damage, and you can see there are victims. People get damaged by the lust and greed and wrath of others. People get hurt by people’s envy or gluttony. People get let down or neglected where there’s sloth. But perhaps pride might feel a bit different.
You could imagine circumstances in which pride is something positive. A worker taking pride in their work, a gardener being proud of their vegetable plot or flower border? And even though maybe some folk do get a bit puffed up and proud in a way that’s annoying to those around them, there’s not much actual damage caused, surely?
Not so, wrote the author of Ecclesiasticus, from which our first reading came. Pride is where all sin starts, he tells us; to persist in pride leads to depravity. And even if pride itself doesn’t look too damaging, it leads on to things that are, because pride is something that denies the sovereignty of God. In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis takes the same line when he writes, “Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.” While Dante defined pride as “love of self, perverted to hatred and contempt for one's neighbour”.
So what begins with being a bit puffed up and tending to show off can become something altogether more serious - because it’s inward looking and selfish. Jesus saw in the Pharisees a sort of religion that could so easily build a sense of superiority to others. At the same time this way of thinking downgraded God into playing just a bit part at best. This sort of religious activity was all about me, and not really about God or my neighbour.
So it was easy for a Pharisee to start to think of himself (and it would be himself, I guess) as better than other folk. Pharisees were people who took enormous care never to put a foot wrong in the way they lived; they took their religion so seriously that all their time and effort went on making sure they never ever strayed outside what the Law of Moses required. So they knew themselves to be quite literally holier than thou. And while I don’t suppose all of them let that go to their heads, for some of them that’s clearly what happened. Jesus called them whited sepulchres - they looked good on the outside, but inside they were full of pride.
And Jesus, as ever, was very practical in the way he tackled the problem. He was at a dinner party, so he talked about dinner parties. Don’t grab the best seat, he told the folk there, who, it seems, were doing just that. You’ll look really foolish when the seat you’ve grabbed gets assigned to someone else and there’s nowhere for you to go except the very bottom of the table. But if you start down there instead, maybe your host will call you up higher. That’s good advice for a dinner party, but of course Jesus meant it also as good advice for a disciple. As God’s people let’s not be anything other than humble in his sight. We’re servants, not masters, we’re learners, not graduates, we’re sinners, not paragons of virtue.
And what about when you give a dinner party? Jesus had some sensible and practical advice to anyone thinking of sending out invitations: don’t choose a guest list to impress, made up of people who are sure to invite you back; no, instead invite those who need a hand up or a hand out. They’ll not be able to pay you back, but God will. And again, that’s not really advice for a party-planner so much as for a disciple. It’s about choosing to live in a way that looks outwards rather than inwards - a way that’s generous, and recalls what the great prophets of old had to say about God’s special favour towards the poor, the needy, and anyone who needs a helping hand.
Pride persuades us to act in ways designed to impress our own peer group; that’s what’s important to the proud person - their own status and the admiration of those around them. But we’re called to be disciples, followers, people doing our best to be as like Jesus as we can be. And the genuine disciple, the true pilgrim, is the person who gives rather than takes, who shares rather than keeps, who is generous because we serve a generous God. Those who care for those for whom God cares, those who take the humble place, those who always ready to serve. And a generous Church is one that adds life, and gives hope, and welcomes and affirms.
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