The Passions of the Soul | Vainglory

Luke chapter 14, beginning in verse 7 when he, meaning Jesus,

Luke 14 · chapter mention

noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, He told them a

parable. 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. This is the word of the Lord.

For my whole life, I have struggled with a little bit of

an impulse to be seen as more interesting than I actually AM.

I can remember, even as a kid, telling outlandish stories about

myself or my family around the cafeteria table at school,

trying to get people to think that there was a lot more going

on in my life than there actually was.

I can remember as a teenager exaggerating stories about what

I got up to on summer vacation or the antics in a particular

job or sports team because I had sort of fashioned myself as a

storyteller to be interesting to people and to win friends.

You're already skeptical. You're like, I think we should

just leave. But I learned really quickly

that other people liked that. They liked that about me.

I could be seen in a particular way that gave me some validation

on the inside. There was a flash of validation,

that small rush that comes with being believed.

And it wasn't about deceiving people.

It was ultimately about belonging.

I wanted to be seen by my peers, and I wanted to feel like I had

something to bring to the table. And my own insecurity as a kid

caused me to gravitate toward whatever I could do to Curry

favor with people. I wanted to impress my teachers,

my peers, adults in my life. I learned that I could do that

by carefully curating my own image as an interesting and

intelligent person. I'll come back to some more of

my story this morning. But if you zoom out, this same

impulse really runs everywhere in our culture.

It shows up in lots of different ways, but it's the idea beneath

the sentiment that you don't have to be happy, you just have

to look happy. A curated social media feed.

One good family picture from the holiday gathering that was

otherwise a complete mess. We live in an age that rewards

the ability to curate a particular kind of life that

seems meaningful or desirable or important.

Even when we know it's a performance, we feel the

pressure to keep up in certain ways.

And beneath all of that is the same question, If no one's

watching, do I still matter? In the 2014 film Birdman, which

is one of my favourites, it captures this question

beautifully. Michael Keaton plays Riggan

Thompson, who is a washed up movie star trying to prove that

he's still relevant by staging a Broadway play, and the whole

film unfolds as his mind completely unravels under the

pressure of proving to the whole world that he is somebody

important. He's haunted by the voice of his

former superhero persona from his blockbuster movie days, that

booming echo of his old fame that says you are nothing

without me. And there's a scene where he

ends up locked out of the theater, running through Times

Square in his underwear as people watch him taking

pictures. And he's completely humiliated

with all these people filming him on their phones.

It's a picture of this desperate need to be admired.

It's a little bit of a caricature of a desperate need

to be admired and the humiliation that comes with it.

In one shape or form, this is what the Christian spiritual

tradition calls Vainglory, a fragile hunger to be noticed, to

have our worth confirmed in the eyes of the people around us.

And Jesus at the Sabbath table, in the passage that Jared read a

moment ago, goes straight for that place in us that wants to

sit close enough to the host to feel like we matter to the whole

room. Most of us would never elbow

somebody out of the way for the best seat at the table.

Although we're having a potluck this afternoon, so I'm actually

doing a little bit of a social experiment in real time.

But we spend a lot of energy, a lot of social energy, a lot of

emotional energy, arranging our lives in particular ways where

we want to be noticed or to avoid being noticed.

Lots of energy goes into what we can do to look good, to appear

good or maybe just to keep from embarrassing ourselves.

And as we work our way through this series on the passions of

the soul, I think we're maybe in the eighth week and 7th or 8th

week now. We're looking at the ways that

these inner movements shape all of our actions and our

relationships. And we've been saying that these

passions are deep, God-given capacities to feel and desire

and respond to what's good. So, so often the things that

we're talking about in this in the series kind of get framed up

as like, you know, sins to be avoided or things to sort of try

to purge your life of. But the thing that we're trying

to communicate across this entire series, one of the

reasons that we haven't over indexed to maybe the the virtue

that corresponds with each of these things is because things

like gluttony or Vainglory or pride or acedia can be a doorway

to receive the love of God into your life.

If we're honest about what's really going on in our lives.

And sometimes when these things get framed up as, you know,

vices to be avoided or or crucial sins in your life that

you have to stay, you know, so far away from, We can miss the

inside work that's actually taking place in us.

The ways that God would want to work through the dysfunction and

the pain that's part of our real circumstances of life.

So each passion, when it's touched by God's love can become

a place where transformation begins.

And Vainglory is what I would call the ultimate empty reward.

It's it, but it's it comes from a place of seeking something

that we genuinely need. I just want to pause and give

you a moment to consider what does it feel like when you maybe

don't give the credit get get the credit that you think you

deserve for something you've done?

In every family, in every workplace, in every friendship,

in every church community, there are all sorts of ways that

people show up and put in effort that we feel no one sees or

appreciates. John Cashin in the 4th century

wrote that even fasting and prayer can become fuel for

Vainglory. So this idea of being seen in a

particular way, of being perceived as a person who values

the right things or does the right things, it creeps into our

even our spiritual practices. We can use humility itself in

the form of service or good deeds as subtle ways to be

noticed by other people. And it's important to give a

little bit of context to precisely the thing that we're

talking about when we talk about Vainglory.

It's not pride, exactly, because that's what Thomas is going to

be talking about next week. Welcome back to these guys, by

the way, where pride is an outsized pleasure in your own

achievements. Vainglory isn't about

accomplishment so much as appearance.

It's it's almost less substantial in a way, wanting to

be known as good, not necessarily wanting to be good.

Some might call it saving face. Thomas Aquinas said Vainglory

seeks empty honor. In other words, honor for

something that has nothing underneath it.

There's no thing to be honored, but it's sort of seeking the the

attention and affections of people.

And so that's why we're looking at this particular text today in

our world. It's social performance.

And this story about Jesus at this table is just a little

example from his cultural moment of what social performance looks

like in the form of table placement.

So just to set the scene a little bit, it's the Sabbath and

Jesus has been invited to dinner, and the host of the

dinner is a leader of the Pharisees, is what the text

says. So this is a person whose home

would have been large enough for guests to recline on couches,

kind of arranged in AU shape around a low table, probably by

candlelight. The smell of roasted lamb and

herbs fills the air. And the conversation would have

been measured but respectable. These are very respectable

people at this dinner who appear very respectable, the guardians

of piety who kind of create this atmosphere.

And Luke tells us, you know, Jesus comes in and it says that

the text says that they were watching him closely.

He had just healed on the Sabbath before this.

From the text, we could maybe even infer the prior Sabbath one

week ago. And so, right there at the

table, the trap is sprung. In the verses before the ones

that we read this morning, there's a man with painful

swelling that left him ritually uncleaned and socially shamed,

and he has somehow been placed in front of Jesus at this

dinner. It's an odd invitation list, the

scribes and the Pharisees, hosted by the leader of the

Pharisees, Jesus, and one ailing, suffering person.

He really doesn't belong there unless he's bait.

And so Jesus looks around and he says again, is it lawful to heal

on the Sabbath or not? And no one answers.

And he reaches out and he touches the man and he's healed

and he sends him away. And the room is silent because

this table that was supposed to be the picture of holiness is

now exposed as a mirror of pride.

And I just want you to imagine the moment where all of the

righteous and upstanding people at this dinner see Jesus heal

their ailing guest and the feeling of nakedness that

follows with the spread that's in front of them, this fancy

dinner, the atmosphere they've created, the one guest who was

invited as a trap for Jesus, and this healing takes place.

And that's when Jesus starts watching them.

It's really interesting because the story opens at the beginning

of the chapter. It says they're watching Jesus,

but then the story that we read next says Jesus starts watching

them. And as the meal resumes and

everybody tries to kind of, you know, get their act together a

little bit, and, OK, we have no idea what that was all about.

That was really uncomfortable. But now that guy's gone.

Jesus has healed him and sent him away.

And so maybe we can carry on with our nice dinner party.

He notices the guests angling for position, who sits near the

host, who hangs back, some subtle glances, some shuffling

around and in. In that world, your place at the

table didn't just determine your view of the food, it determined

your worth, your value as a person.

To sit close to the host was to be seen as righteous, important,

blessed. And the whole arrangement was

like a little theatrical production of Vainglory.

And Jesus, as the guest, but also as the divine host, watches

this little Kingdom of self importance play out before he

overturns the entire seating chart of the world.

And so Jesus sees everybody subtly competing for the best

seats. He tells a story that sounds at

first like advice from a seasoned dinner guest.

Don't sit at the place of honor. You might be asked to move down,

but he isn't teaching dinner party etiquette.

He's revealing a completely different economy of worth in

what he's doing at this dinner. In this world of social

hierarchy, value depends on proximity to power, where you

sit and who notices you, how you compare, and so on.

And what Jesus is saying is, in the Kingdom of God, value is

simply received. You don't earn it, you don't

perform for it, you don't guard it.

And so this parable exposes the the quiet fear that drives so

much of our striving in our lives.

The fear of being unseen, the fear of being uncared for,

ultimately the fear of lacking connection because what we

ultimately desire as people is secure connection, secure

connection, one to another, secure connection ultimately to

God. And So what Jesus is trying to

communicate is that true humility isn't thinking less of

yourself. It's being so rooted in the love

of God that you no longer need to think of yourself at all.

You're free to take the lowest seat because you can trust that

sort of the the cosmic host of this dinner party of life is

going to call you up higher. And Jesus image is really

simple, but it's subversive to take the lowest seat and be

called higher. It almost sounds like a social

trick that he is communicating, but it's not about manipulation.

It's about trust. The idea is that thinking less

of yourself, what Jesus is trying to communicate is that

there's a there's a faith involved in that, that as you

sort of give up this need to jockey for position in life, God

will give you everything you need.

The Kingdom reversal is the great pattern of Scripture that

the proud are brought low and the lowly are lifted up.

It's all over everything that Jesus has to say throughout the

Gospels. Mary sang it at the beginning of

Luke's gospel. We're getting ready for

Christmas. He has brought down the powerful

from their Thrones and lifted up the lowly.

Jesus embodies this with his life, and the host exalts the

humble. Not because humility earns some

kind of reward, but because humility makes room for the

grace of God to operate in our lives.

And that's the thing that we've been talking about throughout

this whole series on The Passions is that as we make a

realistic assessment of what is. So for us, as we talk about each

of these things and we kind of see some ways that, yeah, that I

might see a little bit of that in my life and I might need a

little bit of help here. The acknowledgement of those

things, the the the leaning into just the reality of our lives

creates room for the mercy of God to operate around us.

And so this table setting reveals everything we need to

know about the kind of world that Jesus imagines.

It's a world where worth isn't competed for.

It's bestowed upon people, where seats of honor aren't seized,

but they're given. And we're being seen isn't the

goal. And I just think it's, it's

relevant, you know, the moment that we are living in the the

sorts of things, the sorts of scenes that we see playing out

in the world around us where human beings are are treated as

a kind of currency in a cultural war.

To be able to take this kind of view about oneself or one's

neighbor that Jesus is trying to communicate here, that God will

give us everything we need if we don't grasp for too much of it.

You know, the kind of love that God is beckoning humankind

toward is the kind that is secure, that's consistent, where

we find ourselves cared for, provided for.

Jesus is picturing a society that's founded on a table, where

joy rises up and we're the only competition.

Competition to outdo one another is in showing honor, and it's

the kind of world that God's preparing that he invites us to

start living in as though it's already here.

When the scriptures talk about the the future Kingdom that's to

come, Jesus is painting a picture here of what it looks

like for that that future Kingdom to break backward

through time into the present moment.

And so I started this morning by talking just a little bit about

some of the ways that I've experienced this distorted

desire in my own life. And I want to just share a

little bit more about how that's come full circle for me.

The impulse doesn't just show up in childhood stories.

It has followed me into my adult life and followed me into

ministry. And the pressure to have

something to say or to be insightful or inspiring or

comforting in every situation where I just don't have much has

been one of the most intense tests of that old impulse in me.

When people come looking for direction or healing or hope or

some kind of new idea, I want to be able to offer people

something that matters. But there have been so many now

at this point. High stakes, sacred moments when

I've had absolutely nothing to give.

Tragedy in my own family. Walking with people through the

loss of a child, you know, pain and suffering in in the

community. And I've sat with people in

grief or crisis and realized that my words were spent.

And I can feel that thing inside of me going.

I think I could probably cook something up right now that

would feel pretty good. And in that emptiness, I have

slowly been trying to learn a different way that God doesn't

need us to perform a part for his kindness to flow.

And man, when we talk about community, when we talk about

being part of a church, I'm just aware that there are so many

temptations. There are so many ways where we

could kind of trick ourselves into thinking, when I show up in

this room, there's a particular part that I need to play for

God's kindness to be able to flow.

And one of the richest gifts that I've experienced being

around this church and being around churches like this one,

is just this belief, this wholehearted belief.

You know deep down that God actually wants to do something.

And it might not even really depend on how you or I show up

that we can be in an environment like this.

We can be ourselves. We can bring the whole truth of

who we are. And God has kindness and love

that God wants to display to our neighbors, to the people around

us. Sometimes the holiest thing that

I can do is be quiet. To listen, to move slowly, to

resist the urge to fill the silence with promises that I

can't keep or moral proclamations that I personally

can't live up to. And in those moments, I actually

find the presence of Jesus. And when I find myself showing

up and playing my part, that's when it feels like there's not

much going on. The same Jesus who took the

lowest seat at the table keeps inviting me there too.

And I only share this sort of at length, personal reflection to

give you a picture of what it might look like for this thing

to be at work in your life, but for God to be at work in your

life. When it comes to Vainglory, it's

where grace lives, it's where the mercy of God lives.

And so this is where I, I personally find freedom from the

exhausting need to be seen as anything more than a sun.

And I think there are people in the room who know that pressure

too, just the the quiet need to appear a little bit more

composed, a little bit more competent, a little bit more

spiritual than maybe you actually feel.

And it shows up in work where you want to be seen as capable.

It shows up in parenting where you hope other people see that

you are patient and wise, where you maybe just have, you know,

friendships or you're serving in in community and you want your

care for other people to look effortless.

It's the subtle habit of managing impressions, of making

sure that the story others see about you is slightly better

than the one that's true. But Jesus invitation cuts

through all of that. He's not asking us to perform

goodness. He's freeing us to live

truthfully and rest in being known rather than being noticed.

And I think underneath so much of this is our desire to be

known. To know and to be known.

To know God and to be known by God, to know other people and to

be known by other people. And for some reason, this is the

thing that causes us to believe that we have to sort of

manipulate the circumstances. We have to stack the deck for

other people to want to know us, for God to want to know us, to

be known by God in community. And the good news is that's not

the case. We actually don't have to keep

up that act. Rebecca Deyoung in her book On

the Passions, which is not necessarily one that I would

recommend, but this line was a standout.

Vainglory makes us actors in our own lives, not participants in

God's story. And I think maybe that's the

invitation to stop performing our own story and begin to

understand ourselves as participants in God's great

drama that's unfolding on the backdrop of your life and mine,

on the backdrop of the city that we live in, on the backdrop of

the moment in time that we live in.

Paul, in his letter to the Philippians, writes, let the

same mind be in you. That was in Christ Jesus, who,

though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality

with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness, and

being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself and

became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Therefore God exalted him even more highly and gave him the

name that is above every other name, so that at the name given

to Jesus every knee should bend in heaven and on earth and under

the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ

is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

So what Jesus is communicating in His earthly ministry in the

in His in the way that He acts around other people, in the

teaching that he offers, in the parables that he offers it, it's

it's illustrating this, it's putting on display this idea.

Let the same be, let the same mind be in you that was in

Christ Jesus. And then in this passage unfolds

one of the earliest hymns of the church, a song about the

downward movement of God, the one who existed in the form of

God but didn't cling to status or glory, but let it go,

emptying himself. He didn't come in the likeness

of a king, He came in the likeness of a servant.

He chose the lowest seat. The Son of God stepped down into

our tables, into our hierarchies, into our shame,

into our competition, into the pain of our striving to be

enough for other people, into our attempts to be seen and to

be known. And in that descent reveals the

truth that the kind of being known that we're looking for

doesn't come from grasping for it.

It comes from giving. Giving of our own honest selves.

God's descent into the suffering of humankind exposes how absurd

our own self promotion is. The idea that we would be able

to, by by craving recognition or by craving being seen or known

or loved, be able to manufacture some kind of belonging that's

already found in the very presence of Jesus.

And so our deepest desire is for this secure connection to

experience the same kind of knowing and being known in

community with others. And Jesus shows us how we enter

that life by surrendering lower. And by the way, when I say by

surrendering lower, I'm aware that there's an impulse that

kind of exists for some people to serve or to be less and less

seen or to fade into the background until resentment

starts to grow. That's not exactly the kind of

thing that we're talking about. The the goal is that going lower

in community with other people, thinking less of yourself is

creating more space for God's love to come into your real

story. And so friends, this is the good

news that Jesus took the lowest seat so that even the lowest

could be honored. You know, the the places in the

scriptures that talk about Jesus says things like you'll always

have the poor. You won't always have with me,

but you'll always have the poor, the admonition in the Scriptures

to see the face of God in the least of these.

This is the sort of thing that we're invited into.

And as God gets underneath what's too heavy for us to move,

our pride, our fear, our performance, he lifts it from

within in the context of honesty.

And so that's where freedom begins, when our sense of self

can start to be recovered and repaired because we no longer

have to perform for God or for anyone else.

And maybe today, something in you recognizes that quiet nudge

toward a more restful way of being in the world, sort of a

longing to stop striving and to simply belong in whatever

setting you find yourself, whether it's your family or your

workplace or even here in this room.

The way into that life is to allow yourself to be loved to to

learn to allow yourself to be loved.

To learn to allow other people to care for you, to learn to

allow other people to see the real circumstances of your life

and to trust that Jesus has already made room for you at the

table. You don't have to have the words

just right to be able to do that, but just a simple yes to

living into that direction of just real, honest life before

God. God's Spirit will meet you there

in that place. And so what's on offer here is a

life that is secure in God, not anxious, not abandoned, not

chaotic, but calm and steady and known.

And those things don't just evaporate overnight, but as we

allow the love of God into the realities of our life, some of

those things start to get uncorked over time a little bit.

We start to notice some little things about our story, like the

way we showed up at the cafeteria table when we were

single digits in age. And God and his kindness gets

underneath some of that stuff and says, you know what?

That's actually still there. That's actually still a thing

that you might need to think about, talk to somebody about.

So if Vainglory feeds on visibility, the way we sort of

starve it out is often through hiddenness, honesty, and

generosity. I just want to talk about those

three things just for a minute as we sort of wrap up the first

thing. Hiddenness, silence, hidden

service, doing something good and telling no one.

If you notice for you that Vainglory shows up in this way,

that it's very public, very you know, the way that you you're

concerned with the way that you're seen.

One of the great antidotes to that in scripture in the

tradition is to to do good for an audience of of 1.

As they say, help someone and don't tell anyone.

Give some money anonymously, whatever it looks like, and and

you'll find you'll know pretty quickly.

I think if that's the impulse that you struggle with, you'll

go. But I ought to tell somebody

about that or that would make a really good sermon illustration,

confession, naming allowed. The places where we crave

attention and validation is one another one of the ways that we

just allow ourselves to become honest about the circumstances

of our life. And so, you know, it doesn't

have to be, but it could be in prayer in this room.

We're about to have prayer teams around.

And so if there's some things that you notice just to be able

to speak them aloud to another person who can just hold that

for what it is. Not in a not in a judgmental

way, not in a way that's trying to fix you, but it's just

inviting the presence and love of God into that place in your

life brand and finally blessing other people publicly or the

practice of just affirming people aloud, the deliberate

choice to redirect honor to other people.

You'd be surprised sometimes how how difficult this is for some

people. You hear, you know, folks trying

to compliment somebody else. And what it really turns into is

a sort of self reflection. When we lift up the gifts of

other people, we create a different kind of social order,

really, one where affirmation flows outward instead of

spiraling inward. Because one of the ways that

this gets so deeply rooted into our own life, into our soul, is

through this kind of inward spiral, A spiral of self

reflection where other people really aren't considered for

what they have to bring to the table.

We're ultimately concerned with our own faults or imperfections

or advantages or disadvantages. And I've seen this lived out

quietly in our own community, all sorts of quiet ways that

people serve one another. Shocking vulnerability from

people even throughout this series.

I mean, I'm not going to tell anybody's story up here, but

guys like good work. I mean, seriously, it's so

encouraging, you know, to just week in, week out, put some like

hard things in front of us. And then you just hear from

people who are thinking really deep thoughts, really

thoughtfully about what's going on in their lives and wanting to

experience the love and care of God coming, coming into your

lives. And these things just remind us

that the joy of the Kingdom is not being admired.

It's it's in becoming free little by little from sort of

this restless need to be noticed.

So, friends, I'm going to invite our, our worship team back up

and we're going to have a little bit of time for some prayer

ministry. So if our, some of our prayer

people could make their ways way around the, the outside of the

room. And yeah, Jared, if you've got

anything, would love to, would love to hear it.

Yeah, just as you were preaching, Parker, I had a sense

that there's somebody here is trying to find your way back to

God, and it feels like you're chasing God.

And this invitation of coming to be known by God is going to be a

really helpful reframing for you.

So if that is you, I would love to pray for you.

I, I am almost convinced there's someone here that's just trying

to find God again. And you just feel like you're

chasing and God's just like you don't need to do that.

Like I can just come and know you.

And I think something really powerful could happen for you

even today. So I'd love to pray for you.

Love it. Yeah, And just a couple other

things I would love to. You know, there's this this idea

that vulnerability and honesty starves out Vainglory in our

lives. And I I just get the sense that

there might be like one or two people who kind of have a thing

in mind. That's like, this is the part of

my life. This is the the recurring

thought that I have or the behavior that I'm kind of like

pegging as like this is the thing that that I need to that I

need the love of God to get underneath.

I would love to pray for you this morning.

So friends, we'll close. I would just invite you to stay.