Thoughts on Today’s Lessons for Sunday, Sept. 1, 2013. 

First Reading: Jeremiah 2:4-13
Jeremiah, who had resisted God’s call to prophesy because he feared that he was too young for such a responsibility, now assumes the prophet’s mantle and imagines God in an almost anguished reverie, lamenting to God’s self about what could have gone wrong with the chosen people. Did they find some wrong in God that led them to waste their lives on worthless things? More in sorrow than in anger, it seems, God reflects that God’s own people have not only forsaken God’s “living water” but instead built “cracked cisterns” that won’t hold what they need to slake their spiritual thirst.

First Reading: (Alternative reading) Proverbs 25:6-7
When Jesus offers his simple advice to banquet-goers in today’s Gospel from Luke, might he have been remembering this more ancient wisdom from Proverbs? Both Luke and Matthew sum up this idea in almost identical words, “… all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Psalm: Psalm 81:1,10-16
The theme of this hymn seems to flow naturally from today’s Jeremiah reading. The Psalmist shouts in joy for God’s strength, and like Jeremiah, imagines God speaking of having brought the people out of slavery in Egypt, fed them and protected them, only to see their stubborn hearts turn to their own ways and ignore God’s commands. “O that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways!”

Psalm: (Alternative reading) Psalm 112
Understood in the context of today’s lessons, the lesson in this Psalm is clear, and it clearly restates God’s covenant with the people: Follow God’s commandments and be blessed, and remember that the sum of that commandment is to be righteous and just, serve your neighbor, share your wealth and provide for the poor. Secure in God, there is no need to live in fear.

Second Reading: Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Love one another as God loves us, and remember to do good, to share with one another, and to show hospitality (as we are told that the patriarch Abraham hospitably received visiting angels). Today’s reading from Hebrews offers simple pastoral advice on living as God would have us live, and we might hear it as reflecting Jesus’s call in Matthew 25, “just as you did it to one of the least of these … you did it to me.”

Gospel: Luke 14:1, 7-14
At first this reading seems like useful social advice from Jesus: Don’t assume that the seat of honor is saved for you, or you’ll be embarrassed when the host tells you to move down. Better to take a humble place and then bask in a happy glow as the host comes and escorts you upward. But the words, as Jesus’s teachings so often do, prove to have a deeper meaning: Next time, give a banquet for the poor, the disabled and the oppressed. They can’t repay you as your rich friends might, but your reward from God will be plentiful. So again Jesus commands us to care for “the least of these.”