Primate Grooming (Proper 17C)

 

Primate Grooming (Proper 17C)

Homily Delivered 28 August 2022

8:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. Said Mass

Parish Church of St. Mark the Evangelist, Medford (Oregon)

The Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP

Sirach 10:12-18; Psalm 112; Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16; Luke 14:1, 7-14

God, give us hearts to love and feel,

Take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen

 

When I first joined the U.S. Diplomatic service, a very wise mentor told me before my first overseas assignment the following: 

 

Tony, always remember to respect the niceties of hierarchy and rank.  You will run into Ambassadors and Department of State under-Secretaries who, as products of the 60s, like to think of themselves as ‘just plain folks.’  Trying to convince themselves that they are as egalitarian and informal as they wish they actually were, they will say, “Don’t use ‘Mr. Ambassador’ or ‘Madame Secretary’ with me.  Just call me by my first name.”  Don’t you believe it for one minute, and never follow that advice, no matter how often or vehemently expressed.  Use “Sir” or “Ma’am,” always stand when an Ambassador or the President enters the room, and use first names only when you truly have become a hierarch’s friend and then, only away from the office.

 

I thought that maybe he was being a little extreme, and old fashioned, until I saw with my own eyes an example of what had led him to that conclusion: an Ambassador who indeed insisted that his senior embassy staff not rise when he entered the room at “Country Team” meetings.  Everyone continued to rise, despite the Ambassador’s protestations, until one newly arrived Peace Corps Director took him at his word and remained seated, all alone.  The Ambassador gave a look of barely concealed contempt to the newcomer, sat down, and then said, in all apparent gentleness, “I hope you look after that leg, Mr. Country Director.  What is it, a soccer injury?  I wouldn’t want to have to curtail you for medical reasons.”  There had been no soccer injury. 

 

Social hierarchies, the niceties of rank and position—all of these things are part of how we organize our community life.   Here in the casual West Coast, many of us tend to want to pooh-pooh such concerns.  And they are easy to dismiss, I admit. 

 

But we do so at our peril, because what we are talking about here is deeper than mere convention or social tradition.  We are talking primate grooming, the thinking great ape’s method of picking lice off the shoulders of our Silverbacks and allowing the Matriarchs full run of the kinship group.   Social hierarchy would seem to be part an instinctual artifact of our evolution as a species.  It is foolish to disregard such things and pretend that they do not exist.   Standing between a bear and her cubs is dangerous, and all the more so when try to overcome the bear’s dismay by pretending the cubs aren’t there. 

 

The problem, of course, is that the rules for social interaction and rank grow out of and seek to order power relationships, deep feelings and subconscious motivations.   Judith Martin, long-time writer of The Washington Post’s “Miss Manners” column, notes that manners and etiquette are aimed at easing social interaction, keeping calm in the public realm, and enforcing—through shame or embarrassment—the norms that preserve a façade of peace and civility over what otherwise would merely be a brutish and rude life.   In keeping our conflicts somewhat constrained, and in maintaining each other’s dignity, or at least the appearance of it, in giving each other ways to save face, politeness demands at times gentle insincerity.  As Miss Manner says, “Hypocrisy is not generally a social sin, but a virtue.”  And respect for rank means that we must be willing to refer to some people as “our superiors” even when they may not be worthy of the title. 

 

The difficulty, of course, comes when we confuse manners and politeness with ethics.  This not only messes up manners, but cheapens ethics.  The idea is expressed well, again, by Judith Martin when she discusses the tradition of having chaperons for unmarried young people: “Chaperons, even in their days of glory, were almost never able to enforce morality; what they did was force immorality to remain discreet.  That is no small contribution.”

 

The Gospel reading today tells us of Jesus’ take on social hierarchies, manners, and dinner party etiquette.  He is invited to a banquet.  Where generally the attention of a banquet is on the host and the guest of honor, everyone here is looking at Jesus to see how he’ll behave.   In the verses of this story that the Lectionary omits, they have set Jesus up by bringing in a man with edema whom Jesus heals.

 

When Jesus is a dinner guest, people watch. He has a reputation for telling shocking stories with twist endings, of challenging the accepted order, and of breaking rules such as the Sabbath.   They want to see if he is going to commit a faux pas, figuratively leave something unpleasant in the punch bowl.    Inviting a wild man to dinner can provide its amusements, and that seems in part to be what’s happening here. 

 

But Jesus himself is watching the watchers, and he observes their primate grooming behaviors.   He notices people jockeying for good table positions, working the room for social and professional advantage.  Then he quotes a truism found in the Book of Proverbs, 

 

“Do not put yourself forward …

or stand in the place of the great;

for it is better to be told, "Come up here,"

than to be put lower in the presence of a noble” (Proverbs 25:6-7).

 

Better, says Jesus, to be seen as a non-assuming person worthy of being lifted up among the great than to be seen a grasping wannabe who must be put in their place.  He adds, “Don’t embarrass yourselves.  For those who exalt themselves will be brought low, and those who make themselves low will be lifted high.”   Putting on airs inevitably brings humiliating deflation; a self-deprecating low profile will attract praise and honor from others.  As Miss Manners expresses it, “It’s far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.”

 

If that is all, then we are just talking about a truism, a strategy for getting ahead in the game of using rank and manners to manipulate others, to exploit them.  It is part of the practical wisdom of those on the make, of those who go along to get along. 

 

But Jesus knows the difference between good manners and good ethics.  He talks about our motives for throwing parties in an effort to get at the underlying truth of what makes manners, like Law, either good or harmful:            

 

“You invite people so you can put them in your debt, so you can get things out of them.  That’s wrong.  You need to invite people who can never repay you.  You need to invite people who need the meal and the companionship, not those whom you need to build your own network.”

 

Here and in the Gospel readings we have seen in the last few weeks, Jesus tries to describe the perceptions and values of someone who welcomes God’s Reign, of God come fully in charge, right here, right now. 

 

Last week and the week before, he said our approach to written rules and God’s Law—when to apply it rigorously and when to apply it loosely or even ignore it--must depend on whether our actions help those who need help, or simply use them for our purposes.  Manipulative behavior is not Kingdom behavior.  Manipulative legal interpretation is not Kingdom legal interpretation.  Manipulative manners and social relations are not the manners and society of the Kingdom.  

 

“Manipulation” comes from the word manus, Latin for hand.  It means handling people so they do what you want.   You treat them as instruments, a means to an end.   Welcoming God’s Reign rules out manipulating.  We must become servants, handmaids, not handlers. Manners, rank, and social interaction, if they allow us to help and serve others, are good.  Used instrumentally merely to exploit others, they must be seen as what they are:  hypocrisy.

 

The Greek word “hypocrite” simply means “actor.”  Jesus regularly calls his opponents hypocrites, saying they are just pretending to serve God in order to manipulate others.  They pretend they are better than they are in order to continue being the rotten way they are.  But here, as elsewhere, intention makes a great difference.  Jesus calls us to pretend to be better than we think we are in order actually to change, to become better.

 

So it is with the social insincerities of good manners.  If we use them to manipulate others, bad on us.  If we use them to help affirm and give dignity, good.  Jesus expects his disciples to “be as smart as snakes but harmless as doves.”  He wants street smarts and a benevolent heart.  He expects us to have good manners and adept social interaction, never merely to advance our own interests, but always to welcome the Kingdom by serving others.   

 

Jesus says that in the Kingdom, the social order will be turned upside down: the first will be last, the last first, the poor shall be exalted and the mighty brought low. He teaches us to first become a servant of all, and not strive to be a leader, of someone to be served.  We must be handmaids, not handlers.

 

This week, I want us all to take some time to think about how we manipulate others, how we use them, how instrumentally we think of them.  We all do it.  In mediation and prayer, let us identify at least one specific relationship that we have where we manipulate, and then let us think of ways that we can turn the relationship into an occasion of our own service to the other person.   

 

In the name of Christ, Amen.