The Pathway to Immeasurable Gifts is Paved with Humility

by Elizabeth Conway
SCRIPTURE READINGS Jeremiah 2:4-7, 11-13, Luke 14:1, 7–14
Transcribed from the sermon preached on AUGUST 31, 2025

Jeremiah 2:4-7, 11-13
⁴Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel. ⁵Thus says the Lord: What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthless things, and became worthless themselves? ⁶They did not say, “Where is the Lord who brought us up from the land of Egypt, who led us in the wilderness, in a land of deserts and pits, in a land of drought and deep darkness, in a land that no one passes through, where no one lives?” ⁷I brought you into a plentiful land to eat its fruits and its good things. But when you entered you defiled my land and made my heritage an abomination.

¹¹Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods? But my people have changed their glory for something that does not profit. ¹²Be appalled, O heavens, at this, be shocked, be utterly desolate, says the Lord, ¹³for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.

Luke 14:1, 7–14
14 On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely.

⁷When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. ⁸“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; ⁹and 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. ¹⁰But 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. ¹¹For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

¹²He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. ¹³But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. ¹⁴And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

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The Path to Immeasurable Gifts is Paved with Humility

In today’s readings Jesus and Jeremiah speak to people in the midst of good fortune – one group delivered from danger into a land of plenty and the other group hosted for a meal with community elders. Yet, the people have become occupied with the pursuit even more- status, security, resources. They dream of their own success – digging out cisterns for themselves or angling for seats of honor. It is as if their dreaming keeps them asleep to the gift of the LIVING WATER.

A life spent on measuring, positioning, and accumulating is an empty-hearted one, sometimes even deadly. So, Jeremiah and Jesus in prophecy and parable invite them to remember that there are immeasurable gifts. That there is a life-filled spectacular party to be had.

Jeremiah decries two evils: The people no longer ask, “Where is the Lord?” They forget that there is anything beyond their own little dramas. They start to believe that they are the Cause, the Alpha and the Omega, elevating themselves to the status of gods. Jeremiah’s lesson continues – and he minces no words. Their self-centeredness makes them go after worthless things, and they themselves have become worthless. They dig out cisterns that are cracked, a deadly thing for a desert people.

I read Jesus’s parable to have the same two messages.
Addressing the guests – he notes they are trying to seat themselves in places of honor. He says, no…  this is for the host to do, not the guest. They forget this is not THEIR own party. They think they are the cause of this gathering.   And addressing the host – Jesus says that repayment is not the point of the great party. Repayment is a self-centered and worthless pursuit. And to be PAID has little to do with a real party.  Jesus says – Guests! Hosts! Come in and joyfully take a seat and allow the host to do the host’s part. And open the doors of the feast wide. That’s how to really party. That is how to live.

I fear we find ourselves, 2000-some-odd years later, dreaming of our exceptionalism and believing we are self-made, obsessively checking our accounts, jockeying for influential friends and positions, and going to war to be “secure.” We think we are the cause of our lives. And we keep DOING things trying to DO enough to prove that DOING is the point of all of this. But the DOING, searching, counting, measuring, and building cause us to miss the amazing party, to sleep as our water runs out.

BEING is the counterpoint to DOING – BEING in community and connection means we stop the calculations in our heads and start listening from the heart.  The heart leads us to what the poet Julie Cadwallader Staub in her poem Measurement, calls the immeasurable gifts – the circumference of compassion and the velocity of hope. I would add to the list of immeasurable gifts: joy, forgiveness, generosity, tenderness, hospitality, and truth.

The path to this kind of being, to these immeasurable gifts, Jesus suggests, is humility.

Now, let me note that this humility should not be mistaken for self-effacing and self-deprecating diffidence. Rather, I think Jesus means humility is a quiet generosity that allows balance and perspective. It is a self-reflective and empowered break from the chains of materialism and power-seeking. It gives us a lens through which to SEE more clearly that we are not alone. That there is more than MY day, OUR family and friends, our agendas, more than our nation, and more than our humanity. We become attuned to the vast cloth of creation, we are not the CAUSE of. We believe there is a SOURCE, some of us call that God. Further, humility doesn’t mean we disdain knowledge and discovery, and our passion to create and understand the world. But we complement what drives us to our microscopes and telescopes, with curiosity informed by the eyes and ears of our hearts. In humility, we realize we are beloved first and foremost in our BEING, not in any earthly DOING. 

Of course, we may refuse this call to humility. We can choose to keep DOING and GOING as though we are the cause of everything, and we can keep living as though our part is greater than the whole. And each time we center ourselves, we may get little chemical zings of dopamine that trick us into thinking we are awake and alive. But these small gods exact an enormous price. They OCCUPY the time that could be spent in love. Worse, in order to get ahead or above or beyond or over, invariably steps on life, demeans, reduces or USEs, excludes, displaces, or sidelines something or someone else. We literally pursue the SADNESS of another and ask love to “wait” while we make more sadness. This is how our hearts become so empty.

I venture to say that refusing humility doesn’t just leave us with empty hearts. It leaves us with broken hearts. This is not just metaphor, it is medical. Look at the stress, the depression, the anxiety, addiction, disease, and death that our bodies are suffering from. Our bodies know that this is a deathly Way- the weight of hubris. So, if for no other reason, today, I ask you for your body, to step into a humility that will fill your heart with life, literally ENLIVEN the heart.

In our Western societies, these teachings may feel like a revolution, especially when we think about just how much time we spend chasing after achievement. It is counter-cultural to think that our hearts will heal when we live as if we are loved for our very beingness, NOT for our DOINGNESS. So, as I stand here in Berkeley, California, today, I hope to also appeal to our sense of RESISTANCE, and remind us that it is a practice of RESISTANCE to awaken to the miracle of the cloth that stretches far beyond the breadth of our lives.

So, come awake if you can. Come to the party. Try a revolution of humility.

And as you do, know that the choice of humility is a path, not a destination. It has its own timeline, and it takes patience to undo millennia of cultural conditioning. But we CAN choose moment by moment to stay alert to how we think, how we speak, how we sit down without glancing around for a “better” chair, how we include, and my favorite, what we put our hearts INTO. Humility means we are willing to fail and start again, 1000 times 1000 times 1000. And THIS willingness to try to seek what is small, to become still, THIS is how we begin to fill our empty hearts. This is being awake and alive.

So may you keep faith in the promise of the immeasurable gifts. May you trust that we are caused by, surrounded and buoyed by, an endless flow of living water that carries creation in vast dimensions before, around, during, and after our life’s time. May we meet in our beloved BEINGness at the unimaginably great party.

AMEN

The poem referenced in the Sermon

By Julie Cadwallader Staub “Measurement”:

Look at us:
we quantify everything we can
in this complex and astonishing world,
from nanoseconds to eons
from millimeters to miles
from basis points to billions.

But no one can measure the velocity of hope,
the way hope hatches
      fully fledged – in fact, already flying –
      between one word and the next
      between one breath and the next.

Neither can we calculate the stain of fear,
the way it infects a childhood
      spreads to a lifetime.

And we can only try to imagine the circumference of compassion
the way it shows us the shape of love
      embracing, expanding,
      factoring in forgiveness
      it invents its own quantum leap,
      its own speed of light.

 

Meditation

We also did a meditation – 
I brought hazelnuts and handed them out.  If you have a small stone, or a sesame seed, maybe you can hold that for this practice.

Please pick up the hazelnut that we gave you when you entered today. If you lost it maybe your neighbor will share theirs. For those on zoom, maybe you can imagine you hold a little hazelnut in your hand.

This is adapted from the teaching of a 14^th Century English mystic, Julian of Norwich, who had a vision of holding something as small as a hazelnut, and how much God loved even this little thing.

As you hold this hazelnut, turn it over in your fingers and feel it. Then let it lay in your palm. Look at its shape and color and gradations. And then I will invite you to close your hand over it softly and THEN close your other hand over that, and gently close your eyes.

We hold a seed of another’s making. This tiny thing like no other before or ever after will be. As a seed or as a magnificent tree it is perfectly and wholly loved just as it is, today, in its place, in its beingness. So we are.

Take a breath.

We also hold our own hand. A gesture of support and resilience so that as we practice smallness, we know that we are made, kept, and loved. There are worlds within worlds in the palms of your hand, as you sit, hand in hand, holding gently seed of life, your own hand, imagine that you will hold all that you encounter today, this week, moment by moment, with this same tenderness.

Take a breath.

Now imagine that we hold not only our hands but each other’s hands, all wrapped around each other. And then the hands of the people and beings outside of these walls. And then outside of our city. Our country. We can hold it all, if we remember how we are held. Let us sit for just a moment together, holding this, feeling the seed in our hands, feeling our hands and perhaps feeling held. Gracious source of all being. Thank you for your vast and wonderful creations and your deep love for all the small things.  Bless us as we embrace and welcome all your guests, without regard for status or repayment, always remembering that they are Yours.