This Pentecost 13 sermon by Clay Nelson is preceded by a reading of Luke 14:1-14 by a parishioner, Love Chile. The sermon requires recent familiarity with the passage as it retells the story of the man cured of dropsy outside a dinner party as a joke. "I first learned about our national obsession with humility while still in the States reading up on my soon to be adopted country. Like Jesus, we consider it bad manners to exaggerate our own importance. From far away it seemed quite charming. Certainly it was egalitarian. It wasn’t until I got here that I understood that humility wasn’t a self-imposed Kiwi discipline. Anyone getting too full of themselves can expect a joke at their expense to cut them down to size. An example of Kiwi humour would be the farmer who when his donkey died called his local councilman, who told him he would have to bury it himself. He said, “Oh, I know that, I’m calling to offer my condolences to his relatives.”" Read entire text at http://www.stmatthews.org.nz/nav.php?sid=327&id=752.