August 31, 2025

Sometimes sermon inspiration comes from the most random of places. And this week, I want to talk to you about chairs. Chairs, you say? Yes. And frankly, they're far more fascinating than you can even imagine. Just a few hundred miles north of us, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, resides the oldest chair in existence. It is the chair of Reneseneb, who was a scribe in ancient Egypt. The chair dates to the 15th century B.C., 1,400 B.C. It is in pristine condition because it was entombed with Reneseb when he died. The only thing that's been changed over the years is the wicker seat faded away, deteriorated, and they had to re-bind it.

But that's not the only ancient chair around. In the Christian tradition, we have the cathedral, which is a fancy term for the chair that the bishop sits in. It's actually the term by which cathedrals have come into usage. Cathedrals are the place of the cathedral. The term the chair of St. Peter is a descriptor for the bishop of Rome, for the pope. But in Rome, in St. Peter's Basilica, there is an actual chair of St. Peter. It is today encased in a golden reliquary, but it's a literal wooden chair that at least dates to the 9th century and has pieces embedded within it that appear to be far older. By tradition, received tradition, it is understood that the chair or significant pieces of the chair are part of a chair that Peter, the first bishop of Rome, sat in himself.

And then in our tradition, in the Anglican Communion, we have the chair of St. Augustine of Canterbury. It is a beautiful Sussex marble chair that dates to the 13th century and is still to this day used in England for the inauguration and enthronement of the Archbishop of Canterbury each time we have a new Archbishop. But one of the chairs that captures me almost more than any other is the coronation chair used in England. It's known as St. Edward's Chair or King Edward's Chair. And it's an ancient wooden chair used by British monarchs since at least the 14th century. We know that it was used in 1308 at a coronation and has been used in recent memory as far back as we can go.

But the thing that fascinates me about it is that it's a rather plain chair with a rather plain origin. It wasn't anything fancy or made specifically for the purpose of being a throne. And today, it is quite decrepit. In the 18th century, in the 1700s, when Westminster Abbey was kind of hard up for cash, they would let people pay a few pence and sit in the chair itself. And people, tourists, in the 18th century, would carve their initials into the coronation chair. So if you see a picture of it today, it looks like a wooden bench in a park where people have come through and carved their names over time. It really is not very attractive.

And then on top of that, the seat of the chair is an ancient stone from Scotland used to enthrone the kings of Scotland. It's called the Stone of Scone, and it itself is very rough-hewn and not very attractive. So the whole design of this chair is rather plain and ordinary. But there's something really profound about that too, isn't there? Of something so plain, so ordinary, so run-of-the-mill, being the chair that is used to enthrone, arguably, the most prominent and powerful monarch in the world today.

And that brings us to the gospel passage. And this sense of what it means to be humble and how we are to live with humility in the world around us. Now there are kind of two distinct elements of this gospel passage that we hear today. Because the first is this parable that Jesus is offering about not positioning yourself at the head of the table. Not preemptively or presumptuously thinking that you will be the person of prominence. But taking that opportunity. Taking that opportunity to be reserved. To be humble. To step back. And wait until you are invited. Wait until you are acknowledged for that position of preeminence.

But in that parable, there's a little bit of a presumption there, or could be a presumption, of self-servingness. That we will have this facade of humility so that when we are recognized for the important people that we are, that we will be put in that place of honor. That we do it not out of true humility, but out of an effort not to be scandalized or not to be embarrassed. But Jesus doesn't stop with just the parable. He adds the second element that really does kind of upend our human inclinations. He says, when you throw a banquet, don't do it for those self-serving reasons. Don't be humble for self-serving purposes. But instead, go out and invite the people on the margins. Go out and invite the people that cannot repay you, that cannot do anything of their own volition, that are incapable of reciprocating this false sense of humility with some kind of recognition of your status. But do it out of a true... of connection and service to those who are in need, those who are desperate for support, compassion, and love.

And so if we take both of those admonitions today, we are presented with this call not just to deep humility, but the experience of humility as an act of service. Humility as a call in our lives to be of loving servitude to each other. As we hear in this great reading from Sirach or Ecclesiasticus, the book has both names, the beginning of human pride is to forsake the Lord. So often, so often in our lives, we get tied up in knots with our own presumptions about who we are, what is right, how we should be, how the world should be. And the moment we get ourselves down those tracks, we have forsaken the Lord. That the Lord's of orientation for us. The place in which he shows up and most fully works through us is when we are the people of humility and openness prepared to hear and receive the truths of the world around us. Hear and receive the needs of the world around us. and to be that transforming change agent in the world around us.

It can be so very easy to come in on our high horse, as it were, and to dictate to the world what needs to happen, what changes must be made, how the world could be a better place if just X, Y, or Z thing were different. Different in the ways that we think they need to be different. But I invite us to consider today that even when we are those empowered change agents in the world, when we are the voice and the presence of transformation in the world around us, we are that most fully when we have an openness and generosity of spirit, when we have a humility to be the people of faith who we are and to stand firm in that faith, but to do it with love and compassion, with a deep ear to listen to what the world is begging us for, what the needs are before us. How we might be a better service to each other.

There have been numerous thought pieces over the last 30 years that have talked ad nauseum about the decay of our social bonds and ties that bring us together. The ways in which we have been able to cross bounds and boundaries and barriers. To be in relationship even in the midst of great diversities that we have in this country. We see this politically in the dissolution of bipartisanship. If we look at the ways in which subsequent congresses have conducted their affairs in the last 50 years, we've grown further and further apart, more and more polarized, more and more centered in our own echo chambers, unwilling, unable to hear the voice of the other, to be invited into a space of deep relational connectivity, even when we are encountering an experience or a person or a community that isn't quite what we think it should be or quite how we think the world should be. But yet in that humility, in that deep place of humility, we find our ability to be the transforming change agents of compassion and love, to be the people of deep care and service that God calls us to over and over again throughout all of Holy Scripture.

Years ago when I was still in Arkansas I worked as a coordinator for disaster relief services with the Red Cross. And I had the responsibility for three separate counties, but I had an older retired gentleman who was kind of my right-hand man and helped guide me as I was taking on this kind of first opportunity of leadership as a young 20-something. And he was this kind of gruff, old Marine veteran who had been a gunnery sergeant in Vietnam. And one of the great lessons I learned from him on several occasions when we were responding to disasters was that whatever needed to be done, whatever activities were before us, if I as a leader was unwilling to do even the most basic and most menial of those tasks, then I wouldn't be respected in my leadership by the rest of the team. So not only was I the one directing stuff at kind of a top-level layer, organizing response calls, but more often than not, I was with Richard down in the muck, doing the dirtiest of jobs, responding to the most difficult of calls. Because doing that helped me understand what everyone else was doing, gave me the humility and openness to see how best to lead those who are doing the same things that I was doing.

When we're called into this place of humility, when we're called into this place of service, it's going to be disorienting. Sometimes it's going to be uncomfortable. But it's life-giving. It's transformative. And it helps us to be the most robust, and the fullest proclaimers of this gospel good news that we have to offer to the world around us. When we don't sit on our laurels proclaiming what should be done from on high, but instead get down into the thick, nitty-gritty needs, the difficult, dirty, dark spaces of the world around us, that's where we are most impactful. That is where Christ shines through us most fully.

But I want to bring us back to chairs for just a moment. Because I said that Edward's chair, King Edward's chair in England is one of my most favorite chairs. My absolute most favorite chair anywhere in the entire world is just down the road in Washington, D.C. At the Smithsonian American Art Museum, just around the corner from Chinatown, there is a space in the American folk art wing. It's an entire room. Called the throne of the third heaven of the nation's millennium general assembly. It's a mouthful. But it's an entire throne room. Lavishly decorated in this stunning metallic beauty. It was designed by James Hampton in a carriage house in Georgetown.

He spent 14 years in the early part of the 20th century. And James Hampton became convinced in his life that he was to make the throne room for the return of Jesus when he arrives again. But I say this throne room is gilded in this metallic sheen. The entire throne room, this ornate, beautiful array. Of the throne and all of its accoutrements. Is cardboard and tinfoil. How profound it would be for Christ to come arrayed in all the splendor of glory. And for his throne to be cardboard and tinfoil. I faithfully believe that that may well be Christ's throne when he returns. That is what servant leadership looks like. That is what the humility and beauty of humility looks like. For us to be present to those lowest and most left out. To be the presence of God to those most in need. To find our place in that deep humility.

Because ultimately, as St. Paul talks about in our reading from Hebrews today, that is where the depth of our love comes from. It's in that place of hospitality. That place of caring for the stranger. That place of being Christ to those most in need. So as we come this day, as we come in this weekend where we celebrate all the laborers in the society and world around us, may we see more clearly the labor we are called into, the labor of being humble and open proclaimers of a gospel that is centered on love, compassion, and care. And may we find in our humility our place of honor in God's kingdom.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.