2
2010
Preparing Our Hearts for Easter: Day 10 – Shunning Status
An article by 
In the lead up to Easter we will be putting up a new lent devotion each week day. These devotions will also be available in the discussions section of our Facebook page and will be played on New Zealand’s Rhema.
One of the addictions of our culture is social status – we crave it – to be seen as important or significant in the eyes of the world around us. Sometimes we do strange things to get status and we often give preferential treatment to those who are good for our status.
Jesus challenges this pursuit in his encouragement towards humility in Luke 14 when he encourages guests at a dinner gathering to humble themselves and not take the places of honour. He says in verse 11:
“For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
He then offers the parable of the great banquet, demonstrating that the Kingdom of God is open to all and within it, offering a challenge to the Jews of the time who would think that only they were worthy of God’s Kingdom.
Jesus turns the social structure of our culture on its head and encourages us to pursue a different social order, one where we shun status and lift others up. Even in our churches we can be prone to social structures that exalt those who seem to be doing well, those who have it all together and excel in our culture and we can often fall into the trap of trying to climb that social ladder ourselves… but let’s not be like that.
As we prepare our hearts for Easter, let’s find opportunities to humble ourselves, not as a means to seek the approval of others, but as a way to lift others up and as you seek those opportunities allow yourself to be transformed by them reflecting more and more the upside down social structure of Gods Kingdom where the first shall be last and the last shall be first.
Pray
Jesus, give us the strength and humility needed to ignore the desire for social status, give us eyes to see where we can truly humble ourselves and lift others up.
Amen
Related Posts
Is Your God a Monster?
A Christmas Reflection – Power Snubbed- Xmasitis – and how to avoid it.
- The Controversy of Easter. The Crucifixion & Freedom.
About the Author: Frank Ritchie
Frank is the Education and Advocacy Manager for TEAR Fund NZ. Frank is a licensed Minister in the Wesleyan Methodist Church of New Zealand and has a keen interest in biblical perspectives of Justice and how this connects to service to, with and for the poor, disadvantaged and marginalized people of the world.
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Hear hear (Amen), yip, facebook and blogs etc are all great examples of that. Admittedly, I only ever look at the humanitarian chronicle to have a laugh and make fun of economic supersessionism, partial preterism and the liberal emergent themes that get expressed here. Popular platforms are just that I suppose, a platform to sell/push your product or idea.
It’s certainly easy to see how someone could use such tools on the internet as a way to boost their status, but I also see them as a means to share your ideas in conversation as opposed to the forcefulness that “sell/push” implies. I personally don’t engage with Facebook or blogs to increase my social status or be seen as important.
Glad to hear that the blog serves some sort of useful purpose in your life
Yes, after all no one persons ideas are more important than others. ‘Important’ or ‘correct’, I can never remember. :-\
Nice dig.
There are certainly ideas that are better than others, all I said was that I don’t use tools such as this to sell or push any ideas that I have – I’m more interested in just sharing them.
It’s my way of saying, good post!
You should really try and encourage the universalists and atheists to comment on other posts too!
Cheers. It has been good writing these devotions. They’ve also been playing on New Zealand’s Rhema… which I guess is good for my social status in some circles
I’d love to have them commenting on other posts… don’t know why universalists wouldn’t and atheists would find most of what is written irrelevant and disagreeable since a lot of it mentions my faith in some way and who wants to be someone who just disagrees with everything. That would just get frustrating.
The blog overall hasn’t been strong on comments though. Hopefully that will shift over time.