Penteocst+12/Proper 17C (Jer 2:4-13; Ps 81:1, 10-16;Heb 13:1-8, 15-16; Lk 14:1, 7-14)

The human mind is analytical in its very nature. Medieval thinkers believed that the mind has four powers or faculties. The reason and the will first come, then imagination and sensuality. We think and desire. We also imagine and experience the world through the five senses. We feel too. What constitutes the mind has a lengthy history. The entire history of philosophy perhaps is about what the human mind is and how it works. This topic of the human mind might sound quite boring since it tends to be too academic or most philosophy books you’ve ever read in the past have not been so fun if not making you yawn. Who cares about Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle nowadays unless one is a philosopher or has a vast interest in philosophy?

But right at this moment, you’re using your mind. You’re getting information as you’re listening to me through your ears and seeing me right here through your eyes. Our mind is constantly working and changing. We think, feel, imagine, and sense. Nothing remains the same but changes from moment to moment. One of the things that the mind does is to divide. We divide, analyze, and categorize the inner and outer world just like there’s yin and yang. If there’s light, then there’s darkness. The mind divides things. Things in the world or ourselves can be divided or fragmented into two like day and night but more than two. 

Let’s experiment it. Simply ask yourself how you’re feeling and what you’re thinking. You might feel fine, happy, sleepy, or bored. It’s not just one feeling that is always dominating you either. You can feel both bored and frustrated or okay. If you stretch your body or move around your neck and shoulders, you’ll feel more relaxed. Feelings come and go. They change quite quickly. What about your thinking right now? You might be thinking about what I’m talking about. But not just one thing but many things at the same time. Feelings and thoughts come and go. They can appear suddenly and can also disappear somehow. One thought creates another thought. One feeling creates another feeling. 

What we see in today’s gospel lesson is this work of the human mind that is programmed to divide things. Jesus sees it directly in the Pharisees. Now, let’s remember that today’s gospel lesson starts with Jesus being invited to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to have a sabbath meal. As he arrives at the house, he immediately notices the divisive work of the human mind. He observes how the guests choose the places of honor. Everyone in their mind knows which place is of honor and respect. The mind categorizes and sorts out who’s worthy of honor and who deserves less. The mind discriminates one from the other. This phenomenon of the guests choosing where to sit at the table is the mind’s act which is externalized and actualized. The mind judges who is to take the highest place and who is to take the lowest place. The mind tells, “You sit here because you’re good. He sits over there because he’s not so good.” So, by instructing them where to sit when they are invited to a wedding banquet, Jesus exposes the guests’ minds that constantly judge, divide, analyze, categorize, seeking their own honor, respect, and security for their own sake. 

What about the second advice that he tells the leader who invited him to the sabbath meal? He does the same thing. He exposes the leader’s mind. Jesus knows what kind of people the leader, the owner of the house would usually invite to his house for a meal. Who are they? His friends, brothers, relatives, or rich neighbors. These are the people who belong to the same socioeconomic and religious class. The leader’s mind, on the other hand, already made a decision that the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind are not considered to be invited to his house for a meal. His mind has no place for them, therefore no place at his table. 

When we hear today’s gospel lesson, especially Jesus’s two teachings (one for the guests and the other for the leader of the Pharisees), at first it sounds like he’s talking about humility and hospitality. But where do humility and hospitality come from? How does one genuinely desire to be humble? How does one truthfully want to be hospitable to those socially forgotten and unlikeable people? What enables one to be humble and hospitable? If we reflect deeper on Jesus’s advice and teaching to those at the sabbath meal, he’s not merely instructing them what to do. Instead, his questions are meant to throw them off completely. 

Let’s think about the first teaching lesson he gives to the guests. He tells them to take the lowest place whenever they’re invited to someone’s house. By the time he urges them to do something completely opposite, they’re all settled down at the leader ‘s house, taking the seats that present where they belong in their own kingdom. His saying is somewhat off putting and repellent to them. It’s like I got my seat which feels quite comfortable and fitting to me but Jesus is changing my seat to the lower part. What about the second teaching lesson he gives to the leader of the Pharisees who invited him to the house? Jesus is again off putting, repellent, and offensive to the leader. Jesus is basically telling him, “You have invited all the wrong people to your house. Don’t invite your friends or those who belong to your class. Invite the unwanted.” 

Is this Jesus’s way to offend the Pharisees? I mean we all know that the Pharisees invited Jesus to trap him and put him into a trouble. Jesus knew this more than anyone. Then, he should’ve behaved nicer than offending them. But he doesn’t just sit back passively to defend himself from the Pharisees out of fear and anxiety because he is fully grounded in the presence of God the Father as the Son through the Holy Spirit. He doesn’t care about how the Pharisees would accuse and attack him. He is proactive and fearless. He questions and tests the Pharisees. But let’s not misunderstand his intention of throwing the Pharisees off. His shock method is not to win them over or shame them but in order to gain them by changing their minds. He’s not there to fight and argue against them that he’s right. He’s rather like a firefighter who jumps into the fire to rescue the Pharisees. He doesn’t just criticize them out of hatred but out of God’s compassion and grace. After all, they’re also the children of God who carry the image of God in their very own existence. 

So this is Jesus’s intention. By interrupting their default behavior dictated by their minds, he shocks them so that they can be awakened to see their true reality. For that disrupting moment of his radical teaching, they stop thinking of themselves. That’s when they can get in touch with their true sense of being. What’s your immediate response when you’re interrupted by something? Imagine yourself as one of the guests in the gospel. You’re one of the spiritually and socially respected people. You’re invited to, say, the bishop’s house. You’re there because you have been respected and honored by people. At the dining table, you find your spot which is close to the bishop’s seat. You settle yourself there and those who are invited also believe you deserve to sit there. Now this guy, that is Jesus, who looks quite poor and whose occupation is a carpenter, hanging out twelve other men like himself, advice you to find another seat.  I’m taken aback. I’m shocked. But before I realize that I’m offended and think to myself “How dare he!?” I get to suspend my thinking and feeling. The same thing Jesus does to the leader of the house. Jesus tells him, “From now on, only invite the socially unwanted.” In a way, Jesus is identifying himself with the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. “I’m not one of your rich friends but one of the socially unwanted.”

The point of Jesus’s teaching to the guests and leader of the Pharisees isn’t so much about moving one seat from the other. The point is for them to look right into how their minds are dividing low and high, clean and unclean, wrong and right, or foolish and smart. Jesus tells them, “Look what your mind is doing. Your mind is divisive only to serve your own ego for your sake only. Detach yourself from that thought of aggrandizing yourself. I’m going to shake you so that you’re not thinking much. What you’re doing is illusionary. It means nothing. You’re just playing an ego game that is harmful to both you and others.” 

Get out of your meaningless unreality and illusion that your mind creates. See the true reality in you. Ground in the very divine nature which is already in you. Settle yourself in the image of God you carry within yourself. Go to the depth of your inner being in which God is fully and eternally present. When we go to the deepest depth of our very existence, we are in union with God. God is no longer an object of our thought but the Subject. Not just God is in our being but God IS our being but never we are God’s being. It’s the place of I am as I am. The mind is too busy to be aware of God’s presence deep in us. When we remain in the divine presence and look at people and things around us, there’s actually no you and me. That distinction disappears. This is how Jesus looks at everyone and everything around him. Only in this sense, loving others as myself makes sense. Jesus loves us or others as himself because there’s no distinction between him and others. In Jesus, others become him. Loving others then is the same as loving himself, which is what we’re striving for in this world. In this spiritual state, you have humility and hospitality. They’re just how we name some spiritual fruits. 

If this is the case, then this toxic business of deciding who’s higher is just the mind’s game. Seeing others as myself, on the other hand, is the very fruit of the resurrection. We go beyond this mind game and remain in the presence of God in which we’re fully united with him. This is saying “No” to the mind that divides ourselves, judges everyone and everything. It is then saying “Yes” to our true image, the image of God in us. Of course, we cannot just have this inner eye of love that sees everyone as ourselves. With the help of the Holy Spirit, we constantly pay attention to the very depth of our being where we meet and become united with God and conform ourselves to that image of God. We already have the ability to do this at our baptism yet need to build up our spiritual muscles. The divine seed is already sown, and it is up to us to make that seed into the flower. This is the sacrifice that is pleasing to God. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. ​