• Sirach 3:19-21, 30-31
• Psalm 68:4-7, 10-11
• Hebrew 12:18-19, 22-24
• Luke 14:1, 7-14

Our God, the real God, is a God of the unexpected. If you listen to the radio, or look at the television, you will sometimes be left with the notion that the way to succeed is “smash and grab”. The readings for next Sunday suggest a rather different approach, to a rather unexpected God. The first reading is from “Ecclesiasticus” (“the Church book”), in which the author, Jesus ben Sirach, struggles to weave together the wisdom tradition into an impressive synthesis with Israel’s ancient religious inspiration. Here he is simply giving some very sensible advice about how to behave, “Child – carry out your affairs with gentleness…the greater you are, the more you are to humble yourself”. But this is not just common sense about social acceptability, for he adds, “and you will find favour before the Lord”. For God is unexpected: “Great is the Lord’s power – and he is glorified by the humble”. The one who gets it wrong is the “arrogant – for a plant of wickedness has taken root in him”. The task of the intelligent or wise is to “listen” out for this unexpected God.

 The psalm which is, as so often, an invitation to “rejoice before YHWH”, also knows of the way in which God reverses our human values. There is an enormous amount of rejoicing in the psalm, but it all refers to the unexpectedness of God, who is described as “father of orphans and defender of widows, and the one who brings out prisoners”. It is hard to be exactly sure what the Hebrew means here, but our bit of the psalm ends up enthusiastically speaking of “your goodness to the poor, O Lord”. This is an unexpected God.

The second reading, continuing our brief dance through the letter to the Hebrews, likewise alludes to the unexpectedness of God. Here the author speaks of what God has done in Christ, to bring us, unbelievably, to “Mount Sion, and the city of the Living God, heavenly Jerusalem…and the assembly of the first-born registered in Heaven, and to God the Judge of all…and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant”. This is a very unexpected God.

The same unexpectedness is evident in the gospel for next Sunday. It is one of the “disastrous dinner-parties” that are scattered throughout Luke’s gospel. We know that this one is going to go wrong when, at the very beginning of the story, Luke tells us that “they were watching him”. Then, mysteriously, the compilers of the lectionary omit what “they” were “watching”, namely the fact that Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath. Our reading instead goes straight on to what Luke calls a “parable”, aimed at Jesus’ fellow-guests who jockey for the best seats at dinner-parties. God, they must learn, is not like that, and does not naturally reward the aggressive and pushy. So they are given the unexpected advice to start at the bottom, and perhaps later be told, “Friend, climb higher”. For “exaltation” and “humiliation” are different when it is God that we are talking about. So that is the guests put in their place.

Nor does Jesus’ host get off lightly: he has invited his social equals, so as to get return invitations. But it is wrong, Jesus says, to invite “your friends, brothers, cousins, and wealthy neighbours”. Why? “Lest they should invite you back, and you get a reward”. That, however, is not the way in which this unexpected God operates. So if we are to be like God, we must look out for those who are normally excluded, “the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind – and you’ll be happy! Because they have no way of repaying you. For you’ll get repaid in the Resurrection of the just.”

We must pray, this week, to appreciate the rich unexpectedness of God.